Long Strange Trip

RedPsych Productions, a small press located in Fairfax, California, was kind enough to send along the galleys for a cool new picture book called Monkey and the Engineer. If that rings a bell, you might know the Grateful Dead song–and if you do, you’ll recognize the lyrics in this book. It’s actually a Dead cover of an original tune by Jesse Fuller.

Fuller was a bluesman, inventor, folk artist, and occasional one-man band, born in 1896, who found fame late in life in the early ’60s folk/blues scene in San Francisco and ultimately recorded a number of albums in the ’60s and ’70s after having been nearly unknown for most of his life. His lyrics for the song “Monkey and the Engineer” are typically spare, evocative blues:

Once upon a time there was an engineer

He drove a locomotive both far and near.

He was accompanied by a monkey who’d sit on a stool,

Watching everything the engineer would do.

And so on. As the text of a picture book, the lyrics become abstract, providing just the bare bones of a story but enough of one for any three-year-old to understand and enjoy: monkey steals train, engineer and friends panic, monkey drives the train all around the countryside without incident.

The illustrations, by David Opie, fill in some of the gaps in the text and add some visual humor. They aren’t exactly lush or awe-inspiring, but they get the job done.

There are trains, engines, freight cars, tracks, etc. on every page of the book. My Thomas the Tank Engine-addicted son loved them. And it’s a fun change of pace to have the monkey driving, instead of Thomas’s nameless driver or Sir Topham Hatt.

I recommend this book for parents or relatives who love the Grateful Dead and who’d get a kick out of giving their child a book built around a Dead cover. And beyond that, I recommend this book for any kid who loves trains (or who loves a good monkey story).