If you can’t get rid of the adults in a children’s book, the next best thing is to turn them into goofs. From the schlemiel in folklore to Harry Allard’s The Stupids, from Amelia Bedelia to Polly Horvath’s The Pepins and Their Problems, the tradition of the foolish adult retains its potential to put the child protagonist front, centre, and in control.

In the case of Very Serious Children, by award-winning adult fiction writer Caroline Adderson, the zany grown-ups are Mr. and Ms. Toots, a pair of circus clowns, parents of nine-year-old Nicky (short for Nickelodeon) and his little brother Saggy (aka S.A.G., for Split a Gut). The Toots parents wear clown clothes every day and are maniacally cheerful. The family lives in a small camper encrusted with glued-on plastic toys, and they eat popcorn and candy floss for dinner. Predictably, Nicky longs to settle down in one place, go to a regular school, eat vegetables, and do homework in the evenings with a friend.

Several wacky problems in the lives of the extended circus family are handily solved by the sensible, earnest, and compassionate Nicky, but when the parents get the notion that the boys should become circus performers themselves, Nicky sees his dream of becoming an accountant dissolving and he panics. In the company of a third disconsolate circus child, the brothers run away in search of a normal life.

This intriguing short novel pulls in two different directions. Short chapters, jaunty cartoon vignettes, weird place names, slapstick, and jokes about disgusting food and the fat lady suggest that we are in Richard Scrimger territory, hearing nine-year-old boys giggling as they read. Nicky is the straightest of straight men and it is his deadpan voice that gives the comedy its original flavour: “Mimi and her husband, Claude, our acrobats last year, were French, from Montreal. Mimi liked to advise Grandma Jack on what she should add to each dress to make it haute couture, which is French for ‘high sewing.’” I particularly liked the family approach to auto mechanics: “But our camper van wouldn’t start! It must have thought it was finished for the day. Mom and Dad opened the hood and scolded the engine, but it didn’t do any good.”

Nicky’s voice is also what pulls this story into more emotionally realistic territory. Nicky is a very unhappy boy; almost in spite of itself, the narrative creates a poignant portrait of his sorrow. The jokes grind to a halt in one small, plain incident in which he goes to the post office to collect his correspondence school lesson and several letters from his friends. As we read the letters we realize that he has written them and mailed them to himself.

Even more nuanced is a moment that occurs after Nicky and his brother have run away. They are taken in by a kindly woman and indulge in the rare luxuries of proper food and a bath. In the middle of the night, Nicky hears his parents calling to him. He looks out the window and sees them in the street, searching for their boys. He is about to call out when he notices something: “They were wearing their striped socks and big shoes and foam noses and suspenders. It wasn’t Mom and Dad at all. It was Mr. and Ms. Toots.” We are reminded of Nicky’s
assertion in the opening pages of the book: “Mom and Dad are real clowns, not just people dressed up as clowns.” There is a lot going on in this recognition – disguise, identity, longing, loneliness, embarrassment, loyalty, and the fact that it is no joke at all when adults, especially parents, act like fools.

But the cartoon and the real don’t quite meld in this story. We can just about accept Saggy’s recurring stomachache as comical rather than worrisome. Little brothers are fair game. Animals, however, are not. Nicky, describing their tiny camper, says, “there was barely enough room to swing a chihuahua.” In itself, this is a good line that reminds us of the existence of the family pet, Coco (who has unrealized potential, I felt). But then it goes on, “I know this for a fact because once, for fun, Mom and Dad took Coco by the back legs and tested the expression out.” Suddenly I’m not laughing.

The stinky rollmop herrings for breakfast start to get in the way of our growing interest and affection for Nicky, who could be another Owen Skye if he were given more room. Adderson is wonderful with close observation of telling details – making ink from Saskatoon berries, the faces of houses, the delicate gavotte of forming a new friendship. When Nicky decides to sneak into a real classroom to see what school is all about, he tidies himself up by digging the dirt out of the soles of his running shoes with a stick. In Adderson’s future books for juvenile readers, I’d be eager to see more of the stick and less of the schtick.