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'The Dictionary Story' is a kids' book that defies definition

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'The Dictionary Story' is a kids' book that defies definition

Copyright © 2024 by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston/Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA on behalf of Walker Books, London

Have you ever read a children’s book where the main character is… the book?

Dictionary has noticed that even though her pages contain all the words that exist, she doesn’t really tell a story like all the other books on the shelf do. So one day, Dictionary decides to change that and bring her contents — guts? pages? definitions? — to life.

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A hungry alligator bursts out of the pages ready for a snack — and finds a donut several pages later. But Donut doesn’t particularly want to be eaten, so he rolls off further into the alphabet. Alligator gives chase and the story soon goes off the rails — they crash into Queen who slips on Soap. And that’s all before Tornado shows up! Definitions go flying, no one is in the right place. Can Dictionary put herself back together again?

“It’s a book about chaos. Chaos and order. Fine line,” says Oliver Jeffers who — along with Sam Winston — wrote and illustrated The Dictionary Story. The two previously worked together on 2016’s A Child of Books (where the main character is a child, not a book). They’ve been working on The Dictionary Story pretty much ever since.

“But not working on it full time, seven years total” clarifies Oliver Jeffers. “Maybe if you were to add it all up, I don’t know. I don’t even want to think about that.”

(Sam Winston likes to joke that they knocked this one out in a week but he’s very much kidding — this book took work).

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Copyright © 2024 by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston/Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA on behalf of Walker Books, London

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For example, how do you make a book into a character that the children and adults reading the book can have a relationship with? “It was a real challenge because we had to literally make a book,” explains Sam Winston. Luckily, his partner Haein Song is a bookbinder. “We had her literally make us two physical copies, which we then photographed and drew on and aged and then distressed in different ways.” While the prop dictionary starts out all nice and new, by the end of the book she’s looking very beat up. “But it’s told a pretty wild story,” says Winston.

Haein Song also sent Jeffers the paper that she used to bind the dummy book. “She sent enough of that to me that I was able to do the paintings on the same paper. So it looked seamless,” Jeffers explains. Then he scanned the sheets of paper with his illustrations on them. The end result is a combination of photography, painting, ink handwriting, and typography, for the dictionary definitions.

“It looks like a real dictionary,” says Jeffers. “But if you pay close attention, you’ll see that all of the definitions have been rewritten.” Like:

zero /ˈzɪərəʊ/ Zero is a word that means nothing. Nothing is a word that means nothing. Even though zero is a different word for nothing, both mean nothing. This definition has just told you nothing.

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miracle /ˈmɪr.ə.kl/ Something that is amazing or magical for which there seems to be no scientific or common-sense explanation. Often associated with finding a parking space or getting homework done.

The definitions are not not true, but they are a little sideways.

The Dictionary Story

The Dictionary Story

Copyright © 2024 by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston

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Copyright © 2024 by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston

As the characters in the book — like puddle /ˈpʌd.əl/ A small pool of water. Puddles are often made by rain and they love to look up at the sky — come to life (and, in Puddle’s case, make friends with Ghost), they disrupt the text on the page. Puddle, who Cloud made by crying, soaks through the definition for “power.” Alligator makes a hole in the “a”s as he escapes from inside the book. When Queen slips on Soap, some of the “s” words go tumbling off the page entirely. Letters end up out of order, or jumbled up in a pile. Definitions are in the wrong column. Sentences go all wonky.

“The idea behind the book is that you’ve got this very rigid structure,” Sam Winston says, of a typical dictionary. “So where some of the humor and the playfulness and the fun comes from is that this is a book doing something it shouldn’t do.” Essentially, coming alive.

And to circle back to why it took Winston and Jeffers so many years to make this book: there’s not much software designed to do this in the way they needed it to be done. “Imagine a column of type in a newspaper accidentally becoming a waterfall of type,” says Winston. “Everything gets knocked off its grid and its axis and out that waterfall emerges, say, a crocodile.”

You’ll probably never see that in a newspaper — or a normal, boring dictionary — because that is not what publishing software typically does. “We have all of these typographic structures that are not meant to be bent and then to bend them is like cutting out thousands of single letters and then sticking them back on the page,” Winston says.

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There was a lot of back and forth to get to the finished product — a lot of half completing drawings and half writing definitions, and then a lot of destroying an illustration and or a definition and sending it back again.

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“It’s a dance,” says Sam Winston. “But you know, we like it. There’s a lot of trust in the room, so we have fun.”

And, by the way, the story itself is fun. While a lot of thought and work and planning went into making it, at its heart The Dictionary Story is just a good old fashioned chase story with a lot of chaos and a heartwarming ending (can Dictionary put herself back together? Maybe with a little help from some friends!)

“I think what you’re looking at when you see these books are two individuals who have a deep respect for storytelling and the physical objects of books. Having fun together and playing well together and sharing that with the world,” agrees Oliver Jeffers. “It’s a pure joy.”

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House Democrats accuse Trump of ‘hijacking’ America’s 250th birthday for his own gain

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House Democrats accuse Trump of ‘hijacking’ America’s 250th birthday for his own gain

President Trump speaks at a rally kicking off the Great American State Fair last week, part of the anniversary celebrations organized by White House-backed group Freedom 250.

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As America’s birthday celebrations kick into high gear, so too do criticisms of the preeminent national group organizing them, Freedom 250.

Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee published a 55-page report Thursday accusing the group of aiding President Trump in turning America’s milestone into a “hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment” through tactics that potentially amount to criminal fraud.

It’s titled “From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People out of their 250th Birthday.”

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Rep. Jared Huffman of California, the ranking Democrat on the committee, told NPR that the report was months in the making. It is based on interviews with unnamed whistleblowers, sworn Congressional testimony, internal Freedom 250 documents and other written responses.

“We put it all together to really tell the story … of how Donald Trump hijacked what should have been a unifying national celebration and repurposed it for his own interests,” Huffman said in a Zoom interview. “This was a team of operatives using the Freedom 250 shell company, but it was also Donald Trump himself telling them what to do.”

The White House referred a request for comment to Freedom 250, though Freedom 250 told NPR that it does not speak for the White House.

Freedom 250 is the public-private partnership behind some of the summer’s most high-profile anniversary events, including a UFC fight outside the White House in June, a controversial state fair on the National Mall, a July Fourth fireworks show opening with a Trump rally, and the “Patriot Games,” a high school athletic competition scheduled for August.

It was created via executive order last year, and describes itself as “the national, non-partisan organization leading the celebration of our Nation’s 250th birthday.” But it’s not the only one: Congress had created a nonpartisan commission called America250 for this same purpose in 2016.

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Why Chanel Is Acquiring Charvet

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Why Chanel Is Acquiring Charvet
Following a runway collaboration with Matthieu Blazy, Chanel has bought France’s oldest shirtmaker as longtime owner-operators Anne-Marie and Jean-Claude Colban seek a succession plan. ‘Charvet is a beautiful jewel. Now there’s work to be done to set it up for its next steps,’ said Chanel fashion president Bruno Pavlovsky.
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Map: See Taylor Swift’s NYC Hotspots Ahead of Her MSG Wedding

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Map: See Taylor Swift’s NYC Hotspots Ahead of Her MSG Wedding

Swift has attended fashion’s biggest night, the Met Gala, a handful of times over the years. Perhaps no appearance was more memorable than 2016’s event where it was not her dress, but her hair that made an impact. Swift’s bleached platinum bob at the star-studded fund-raiser that year was part of a short-lived era known as “Bleachella” to some fans.

Some fans believe the 2016 event, which both Swift and her ex-boyfriend, the actor Joe Alwyn attended, is where the couple might have first encountered one another. A moment Swifties think the songstress referenced in “Dress,” singing “flashback when you met me, your buzz cut and my hair bleached,” a line that describes how both stars looked that night.

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For her first time as host on “Saturday Night Live,” a then 19-year-old Swift arrived having already written the song she would sing as the opening monologue. Seth Meyers, the show’s head writer at the time, later recalled bringing Swift into Lorne Michaels’s office, where she performed a “perfect” musical monologue and noted it was better than what the show’s writers had concocted for her to deliver. Swift has served as host and musical guest on the sketch-comedy show over the years. She’s also made repeated cameo appearances, including appearing alongside Kerry Washington and Betty White in a “Californians” sketch in 2015 for the show’s 40th anniversary.

In 2023, Swift and Travis Kelce both made cameo appearances on the show. The same day, they were also spotted by tabloids holding hands in New York City, one of the earliest public glimpses of them as a couple.

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The iconic arena in Midtown Manhattan will serve as the venue for a private, two-day event around the wedding of Swift and Kelce on July 2 and 3. The first event will reportedly be a smaller gathering of 100 people for a rehearsal dinner at the Infosys Theater, a venue inside the Garden, while as many as 1,000 guests are expected to arrive at the venue the next day for a larger celebration, with possible stage appearances. Swift has some history with the Garden, performing there several times over the years, as well as sitting courtside and cheering the Knicks to a win during a game earlier this summer.

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Whenever the singer is spotted coming and going from the Greenwich Village recording studio — which was founded by Jimi Hendrix and has hosted icons like the Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry over the years — fans are immediately abuzz with whispers about new music. Swift has worked there with Jack Antonoff, her longtime collaborator, on albums including “Lover” and “Folklore,” as well as re-releases of her older albums.

Swift has been spotted plenty of times at this Italian hot spot in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan, most recently in May, celebrating Lena Dunham’s 40th birthday. If you can’t get a table, try your hand at making their famed — and delicious — salad dressing.

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For a period between 2016 and 2017, Swift rented a four-story townhouse in Manhattan’s West Village. The pad appears to have inspired her 2019 track “Cornelia Street” from the album “Lover.” It’s a road she’ll never walk again, at least according to her lyrics.

Fans still regularly visit the house, even though it has been nearly a decade since Swift inhabited the home, which has an indoor swimming pool. In 2023, some Swifties made pilgrimages to the location after news broke on her split with the actor Joe Alwyn, whose relationship fans believe to be the inspiration for many of the tracks on “Lover.”

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Swift’s residence in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan has grown over the years. She initially bought two penthouses from the “The Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson in 2014. A fan who once visited the apartment recalled Swift’s father saying that when his daughter first viewed the place, the actor Ian McKellen, who had been living there, was sitting in the kitchen. She has since purchased several adjacent properties.

Fans have seen glimpses of the home on social media over the years and, more recently, watched Swift use a fire extinguisher to put out a small candle blaze in the kitchen in a video posted by Swift’s recent musical collaborator Gracie Abrams.

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Good luck getting a table here if you are not Swift or Kelce. The upscale American restaurant in SoHo is known for comforting dishes like a French dip sandwich and an ice cream sundae, as well as its savory sour-cream-and-onion martini from the cocktail menu. Swift has visited several times — including outings with Gigi Hadid and Sabrina Carpenter.

In “Delicate,” Swift sings of an unnamed “dive bar on the East Side.” Swifties believe this dark speakeasy on East Seventh Street is that bar. Fans also believe the song was written about Swift’s ex-boyfriend, the actor Joe Alwyn. The pair broke up in 2023; later that year she met Kelce.

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This exclusive, members-only club in Lower Manhattan is frequented by plenty of celebrities, including Swift. The club bans photography and videos, as well as members of the media, and patrons are barred from identifying others in the room on social media or to the press.

Still, even with the privacy rules, there have been plenty of posts and photos documenting Swift coming and going from Zero Bond. There was a visit in 2023 with the actor Miles Teller and his wife, Keleigh, as well as a recent celebratory evening with the Haim sisters in June after the group watched the Knicks win at Madison Square Garden in matching shirts. There have also been multiple visits with Kelce over the years.

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Swift spent part of her 34th birthday celebration at this rustic American restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Wearing a black minidress bedazzled with a moon and stars — a nice nod to the visual themes of her “Midnights” era — she partied the night away at Freemans’ upstairs cocktail bar with guests including Jack Antonoff, Blake Lively, Zoë Kravitz, the Haim sisters, Sabrina Carpenter and her childhood best friend, Abigail Anderson Berard, who was immortalized in Swift’s song “Fifteen.” The pop star was also seen dining here with Gracie Abrams earlier that same year.

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People line up for hours — yes, hours — to secure a spot at this restaurant in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn. The brick-oven pizza spot, which is B.Y.O.B. and cash only, is a favorite of pizza connoisseurs — though not those at The New York Times — and celebrities alike. (Its owner has said he does not accept reservations.) Beyoncé, Jay-Z, the Beckhams and, of course, Swift have all been seen dining here, though unclear if they had to sweat it out in the line like us mere mortals. Swift, who once sent her dad to hand out pizzas, though likely not from Lucali, to fans camping out in New York to watch her perform on “Good Morning America,” has shared meals here with famous friends including Blake Lively and Selena Gomez, as well as a date night with Kelce.

The Brooklyn neighborhood where, if Swiftie lyrical interpretations are to be trusted, Swift left a now-infamous scarf at the home of one Maggie Gyllenhaal around 2010. Swift was dating Gyllenhaal’s brother, Jake, at the time and their relationship is believed to have inspired Swift’s “All Too Well,” a 2012 heart-wrencher of a song beloved by many fans, which Rolling Stone once ranked as her best song. “You keep my old scarf from that very first week,” Swift sings. In 2017, Maggie Gyllenhaal told Andy Cohen on “Watch What Happens Live” that she was “in the dark about the scarf.”

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Swift later released an updated, 10-minute version of the track in 2021. A red scarf featured prominently as a thematic motif in “All Too Well: The Short Film,” which Swift also released that same year.

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