Lost in one corner of a vast sepia-toned vista, a bearded farmer forks up a load of hay while a swirl of black crows circles overhead. It’s a lonely unbroken landscape. Lovers of the Caldecott Honor book “A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever,” may well wonder if writer and illustrator Marla Frazee has entirely forsaken her antic sense of humor in “The Farmer and the Clown.” Not to worry. With the turn of a page, a gaily tinted circus train resembling an old-fashioned box of animal crackers puffs into view. One more page turn and a baby — a clown baby, as it happens — falls off the back of the caboose, round and ripe as a pointy-headed melon. The fun has only just begun. The farmer takes the tyke home, feeds him, shows him how to wash up and pops him into bed. Almost identical facing pages capture this newly minted friendship: On one, the farmer keeps watch at the end of the moonlit bed; on the next, as sunlight streams through the window, he rouses the tot with silly faces. Canny use of red — the clown’s costume, the farmer’s long johns, a brightly checked table cloth and a barber-pole striped blanket — all vibrate against somber brown backgrounds, visually underscoring the link between these two unlikely comrades. Droll vignettes — milking the cow, collecting (and juggling) eggs, picnicking — are interrupted by the only three words in the book: “Toot! Toot! Toot!” The train reappears, and the little clown practically helicopters with happiness. After heartfelt hugs all around, the farmer is once again alone. Or is he? Joyful, tender and triumphant, without a word spoken, this is storytelling at its finest.
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