The Boobus and the Bunnyduck

This is the first publication of a unique artist book made by the artist Jess Collins in San Francisco in 1957. The story was written by poet Michael McClure for his daughter Jane, born in 1956, who was nicknamed “Boobus”. It is his only piece of children’s literature. While it is a children’s book, this is first and foremost an artist book of considerable sophistication. The book was retained by Jess in the Victorian house in the Mission District he shared with the poet Robert Duncan and where he lived until his death.

In the 1950s the McClures were younger friends of Duncan and Jess and frequently visited them at their earlier home, a flat on De Haro Street, where the two were living after their return from Mallorca and Black Mountain College. It is likely that Michael showed them his children’s story in 1956 or 1957 and that Jess took the initiative to illustrate it in crayons. Colored wax crayons, usually thought of as art materials for children, were favored by Jess and Robert for drawings they often made as after-dinner entertainment.

In The Boobus and the Bunnyduck Jess used crayons with the skill of a highly accomplished painter. Even the lettering, as Jess wrote out the story by hand, has a painterly quality that is deceptively naïve.

The name “Boobus” may make one think of a “booby”, usually meaning a dunce or slow-witted person. Here, McClure endearingly uses it for a child not yet conditioned by the world but having intuitive sympathy for other creatures, whatever shapes they may take. Such a child might join two or more animals’ names together, creating a new name, which could account for the “Bunnyduck” in the story.

Jess intrigues the reader (and the child being read to) by repeating phrases from the story on picture pages facing the pages where the phrases are part of sentences but appear to be titles of illustrations. “To see if her”, “up into the”, “and under the”, “but mostly because” lead the viewer to search through the text to find where the words occur and what they mean, revealing the meaning of the picture.

Of special note are the endpapers, entitled “Humble Jumble”. They are in a style very different from the thick, creamy crayon “paintings” and deft ink drawings in the book. Here he has drawn precise outlines of common objects in perspective, filling them with thin, pale tones, applied with crayons but looking more like watercolor washes. We seem to be seeing a cluttered work table in a puzzle-picture designed to teach children the shapes and names of things. Subtly evoking Duchamp and Magritte, the still life is surrounded by a golden thread woven in a Celtic strap-work pattern.