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.

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).

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.

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

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.

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.

“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.”

On a recent Monday in August, Kevito Clark hosted a video conference call to discuss the next installment of a game night he runs at the LINE LA, a hotel in Koreatown. But over the course of the hour-long meeting, he never said a word.

Instead Clark, who has a shaved head and a full beard with a touch of gray in it, used other communication tools. When the hotel’s brand manager expressed hesitation around passing out rubber bracelets, he nodded. When a collaborator mentioned the name of a tentative performer, he used Google Meet’s settings to send heart and thumbs up emojis. In between these interactions, he typed his thoughts — “Branded cups are cute,” “Any last questions?” — into the chat. Not once did he make his voice heard.

It was an unusual way to run a meeting, but Clark’s collaborators have grown accustomed to it. As he reminded the group before the call began, he is currently living out a three month vow of silence.

Across religions, vows of silence are used to quiet the mind, develop self-knowledge and connect more deeply with the divine. They tend to conjure images of monks meditating in the mountains or ascetics living in desert caves. Clark, who is 41 and lives in Leimert Park, has added a modern-day twist to the practice. Throughout the duration of his vow, which began on June 1, he has continued to live his everyday life, throwing parties, volunteering, attending concerts and even going on the occasional date.

His is a vow of silence that applies only to speaking, which means he’s still texting, emailing and typing into the chat on video calls. In person, he communicates by typing messages into the iMessage app on his phone or writing in one of the pocket-sized notebooks he takes with him everywhere.

When he’s out in public he wears a red and blue button that reads: “Silent By Choice. Thanks for your understanding. I can talk via Text notes.” A similar message is written in marker on the front page of each of his notepads:

“Buenos Dias! Hi! Hello! My name is Kevito! Nice to meet you. I’m currently on a vow of silence. I can talk via text, chat, and this notepad. (Thanks for your understanding!)

Clark wears a pin that states “silent by choice,” while practicing his vow of silence. (Carlin Stiehl / For the Times)

Kevito Clark holds a notepad he uses to communicate with people that has pre-written pages explaining why he’s chosen not to speak for three months.

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On the following pages he keeps pre-written answers to four questions he’s most frequently asked:

1. You can talk!
2. This was taken to address unchecked grief, redirect energy and center on my purpose and personal/professional goals.
3. The vow ends Sept. 1, 2024.
4. Environmentalist John Francis inspired this vow.

Clark, who arrived in L.A. in 2022 by way of New York and Ohio, has built his life on the power of intention. His decision to go quiet in an era where so many people spend their free time speaking to front-facing phone cameras, and in a city where the squeakiest wheels get the grease, is in service of his broader ambitions. Before his vow started, he was living out what he calls “444,” which is shorthand for his aim to consistently engage with “four acts of volunteering, four acts of self-care and four ways to show up and show out for others.” His recent vow has allowed him to commit more firmly to this goal.

“As the saying goes, ‘What you don’t change, you choose,’ ” he wrote. “This vow was for me to grow, not for views or likes.”

Still, it hasn’t always been easy to integrate silence into his day-to-day schedule. Clark often works in positions where the word “communication” is in his job title. He’s the founder and chief creative officer of Love, Peace & Spades which has a monthly residency at the LINE LA, and he currently does event services for a security company and serves as a community liaison for the non-profit Black Men Hike, all while refraining from speech.

There have been business owners and collaborators who said they wouldn’t work with him until his vow is finished. And while he had fun taking a date on a choose-your-own adventure experience through Mickalene Thomas’ All About Love exhibit at the Broad, she said she would only see him again when she could hear his voice.

Kevito Clark uses a notepad to communicate with Kimoni Oliver, a barista at ORA.

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Kevito Clark walks through the streets of Leimert Park.

“I experienced how people will come to their conclusions, make assumptions (e.g., believe I have a disability),” he wrote in an email. “It takes a lot of work, patience, understanding and agreement by all parties for it to happen.”

There is no single reason that Clark took his three-month vow of silence, instead, he says a series of events catalyzed the decision. His kidneys failed in 2012 and he waited six years for a new one before a friend stepped up with a donation in 2018. Earlier this year, he mourned the back-to-back losses of two longtime friends and mentors who were like second parents to him. In the wake of their passings and the ensuing anniversaries of the deaths of other people he loved, he realized that he hadn’t made time to honor life’s transitions.

He started to ask himself, “Who are you when no one is looking?” He wondered if taking a vow of silence might provide an answer.

“It appeared like a whisper,” he wrote. “And the whisper grew into a voice.”

Online research led him to the story of John Francis, a Black environmentalist who stopped talking and riding in motorized vehicles for 17 years after witnessing two oil tankers collide and dump half a million gallons of oil into the San Francisco Bay in 1971. In a popular Ted Talk, Francis said when he decided to stop talking he found he was better able to hear others — rather than formulating a response while they were talking.

“It was a very moving experience,” Francis says in the talk. “For the first time in a long time, I began listening.”

Kevito Clark sits next to a memorial of Sika Dwimfo, an artist, jeweler, community activist and business owner known as the “Godfather of Leimert Park.”

Clark was inspired by his story. “In him I saw someone who was not only curious about himself but about how to implement positive change through discipline and facing adversity,” Clark wrote.

At the end of April, Clark began to formulate a plan to take his own, much shorter vow of silence.

He chose the time period of June 1 to Sept. 1 for his vow after reading that it takes 21 days to break habits and 30 days to begin new habits. He crafted an email explaining his decision and sent it to friends, family and collaborators describing what he was about to embark on. He could still communicate, he wrote, but only through non-speaking platforms like Google Meet, mobile text and handwritten notes.

Friends and collaborators were mostly supportive and intrigued.

“He’s a laid back, calm, cool collected dude,” said Courtney La Prince, a digital designer who met Clark while volunteering at Love, Peace & Spades. “He is really careful with his words, so when he said he was going to take a vow of silence it wasn’t hard for me to imagine.”

It has also been an adjustment for those he regularly interacts with. Conversations move at a different pace when one person is typing out their responses.

“I’ve found I need to be stationary when I talk to him,” said Kelli Boyt, who also goes by DJ Kaaos Jones. “I do a lot of my calls from the car, but I need to be in tune with whatever conversation we’re having on text messages, so I almost have to plan it out. So I’ll be in the office or sitting still in my car in the parking lot.”

Kevito Clark at ORA in Leimert Park.

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Jennie Wright, regional brand manager at the LINE LA where Clark hosts Love, Peace & Spades was initially worried about the logistical implications of his vow. She and Clark grew the event together and she didn’t know how he would run it if he couldn’t talk. At the same time, she wanted to respect his decision to focus on himself.

“He took this vow of silence to center himself and find some peace within himself, so I was like, ‘Let me take my selfishness back,’ ” she said.

Over the past three months she discovered that throwing events with a silent partner isn’t as difficult as she thought.

“We’ve continued to have Love, Peace & Spades from June and they have all run successfully,” she said. “And it pushed me to step up and become more of a leader.”

As Clark approaches the end of the vow on Sept. 1, he reflected on its impact in a written interview.

“I learned to temper my thoughts, embrace gratefulness, give myself grace, pour into myself to be available for others and magnetize the positive into manifested results,” he wrote.

Still, he’s looking forward to it ending. Love, Peace & Spades is hosting its first culture and games fest on Sept. 21. He can’t wait to talk at the event. But looking back at the past three months, he said his silent vow felt more freeing than restrictive.

“I hugged deeply. I laughed heartily,” he wrote in a Zoom chat. “Those are sincere ways to communicate whether you’re speaking or not.”

When a show is called The Accident, you know something very bad is going to happen, and when it opens with a kids’ birthday party, you know it’s probably going to be extra bad.

While on vacation, I came across the 10-episode Spanish-language Netflix series The Accident, which is currently in the Netflix Top 10. I decided to give it a whirl, as much as anything because I wanted to know what the accident was. I had not watched the trailer, which gives it away, but because it does (and it’s revealed in the opening episode), I will tell you what the accident is: At the party, the bounce house where the kids are playing is picked up by a gust of wind, and tragedy ensues.

Unfortunately, this can happen (there was a similar tragedy in Maryland not long ago), but this is only the inciting incident. As we follow the affected families, there is intrigue over a business deal, there is an affair, there is a very scary man, there is a teenage romance, and there is a tangled tale of who is responsible for this accident. The series is about the ways these people are changed by one day in their lives, but it also has a strong undercurrent of soapy drama.

I’m not sure the show is terrific, but it’s very watchable, in that I watched all 10 episodes in a single day. (Vacation!) This is a Mexican drama, and it made me think about how, wherever a story comes from, the deepest anxieties often echo pretty effectively. A nightmare that involves kids, families that start placing blame, parents who are trying to balance career and family responsibilities with devastating costs for failure – it’s all pretty horrifying.

It’s hard to transition with the words “speaking of horrifying,” but I also watched the 2019 Swedish drama series Quicksand, adapted from the book of the same name, which begins with a school shooting. A young woman named Maja (Hanna Ardéhn) is discovered covered in blood after a shooting that kills several people (including her boyfriend), and over six episodes, the series explores what her role was and what culpability she has. While some of it is about what could possibly drive anyone to commit an act like this, a lot of it is also about the toxicity that can develop in relationships between teenagers, particularly ones who feel alienated from friends or family. Ardéhn is excellent, as is the rest of the cast, and the story walks a fine line between sensitivity and mystery as it provides more and more information about the events on the day.

While both of these series are what you might call a “tough sit” because of the subject matter, it’s always interesting to look through a different lens at storytelling that touches on familiar things. For an American viewer like me, both series drive home the point that the justice system works differently in different places – and that criminal offenses can have wildly different penalties in other countries.

And as always, I do recommend watching these shows with subtitles, for the simple reason that you have to give them your attention. You can’t second-screen if you need to read along, and there’s much to be said for training yourself to let something hold your focus for, say, eight hours or so.

Netflix is now serving me recommendations for many, many, many dramas that were produced internationally. I’ll see you in a few years, when I’ve made a dent.

This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.

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