Waking Ben Doldrums

A small building – “the Big House” - holds four different domestic units in two apartments up, two apartments down.

I live with my father in the bottom left.

Ben Doldrums lives above us.

The Mercredis live in the top right apartment.

Edwina and Martha Reynolds live in the bottom right apartment

with their cat, Trouble.

Each apartment is shown, and each person is captioned with one or two phrases to describe their notable traits.

Residents have a morning routine to start the day: the narrator hits the ceiling with a broomstick to wake up Ben, Ben knocks on the Mercredis’ wall after which they drum on their floor to make sure the Reynolds’ day has begun. However, one morning, Ben does not respond to the broomstick alarm, and the other households are in a bit of a spin. The same thing recurs several days running. What is the matter with Ben Doldrums? Why does his expected knock not come?

At a house meeting, all the families ponder what the problem is with Ben.

“Is he mad?” asked Edwina and Martha.

“Is he sad?” asked the Mercredis.

“Is he confused?” asked my father.

“Meow, meow, meow?” asked Trouble.

“I’ll go ask him,” I said.

Ben does not seem able to pin down the reason for his slumping spirits, and so the neighbours try to think of ways to cheer him up. Accordion performances, yoga breathing tips, tasty food offerings, even Trouble’s gift of a dead rat do nothing to help Ben’s mood. He says he is just tired.

Our young storyteller Frida thinks about what has been the usual sequence each morning to get everyone up. She offers Ben her broomstick (she says she has a hockey stick she can use instead) so that he can tap on the wall to wake up the Mercredis without getting out of bed.

Every morning Ben wakes the Mercredis. Sometimes he uses the broom.

Sometimes he doesn’t.

Either way, he is part of something big. We all are.

The last spread shows a number of multi-family buildings in cross-section, with “the Big House” in the foreground, all set in a pleasant streetscape where the occupants are starting the day.

Ben Doldrums appears as a cereal-eating young man with a television set resting on a plastic milk crate and an overflowing laundry basket. It seems to this reviewer that his exhaustion and ennui require more serious intervention than quail legs with tamarind glaze or a broomstick to deal with his problems. Although the promotional blurb says the book “addresses the reality of mental health challenges experienced by some university students”, ultimately the resolution to Ben’s situation is unsatisfactory.

Children enjoy books that let them in on the day-to-day of those leading a different kind of life, and Frida is certainly part of a charming little community. But some of the arch humour here seems more directed at adult readers than the primary-aged children who are the intended audience. Calling Edwina a “party planner and party animal” and the narrator Frida “a mature-cheese lover”, and giving the characters’ ages in terms like “twentysomething” and “fortysomething” strikes a wrong note for me.

The illustrative format of depicting the various apartments and people with details that demonstrate their diversity draws the eye. The best thing about Eggenschwiler’s pictures is all the little things in each of the four apartments that let us in on the particular lives lived there. The multiple images of a worried Frida looking through Ben’s keyhole to get his attention show an original perspective. Less satisfactory is the execution of the human figures which are rather awkwardly drawn. Perhaps because I was looking at an advance reading copy, the four-colour reproduction is not just subtle but almost washed-out.