A World Where No Premise Is Too Absurd

BOSTON — Alas, poor Yorick: You have snuck into the laboratory of your father, the alchemist, and mixed up a potion that has shrunk you to “no bigger than a cockroach.” A healthy dose of transmogrification is obviously in order. Some humility wouldn’t hurt, either.

This is the plot line, effortlessly spun out, of “The Toy Brother” (Harper Collins), William Steig’s 26th book for children.

It is dross turned to gold: a medieval fable that seems right at home in a world of Web sites and electronic chaos. It is also vintage Steig, published just before Christmas, the same week the author observed his 89th birthday.

“I was on the phone all day, accepting boxes of chocolates and flowers,” he said. “We had a bouquet here that was the tallest thing I had ever seen. Roses. I didn’t know they made them that long. Did you, dear?”

Seated opposite her husband, feet curled under her on a matching love seat, Jeanne Steig nodded with vigor.

“Long-stemmed roses, dear.”

She is a sculptor who makes art from objects she finds on the streets. He is a cartoonist, the New Yorker magazine’s longest-running living contributor, who turned to children’s books when he grew tired of waging advertising campaigns for mattress firms and chicken czars. All day long, they begin and end each other’s thoughts and sentences. They toss praise and admiration back and forth.

He leads a tour into her studio, crowing about her amazing ability to turn trash into artistic treasure. She shows off his tapestries, splashed with Impressionist light and color. Late in the afternoon, with midwinter Boston bustling beneath their light-filled apartment, they pause for a foamy elixir. Down the street, at the crusty Ritz Hotel, the city’s matrons are sipping tea from fine china cups. The Steigs prefer ice-cold beer in frosty glass tumblers.

“We’re living in Boston because we can’t run fast enough to live in New York anymore,” Bill said. He’s a spry man with brushy gray hair and deep cobalt eyes. He looks like nobody’s definition of a near-nonagenarian. Two decades younger, she wears her gray hair in a playful pixie style. Her eyes are virtually the same disarming shade of blue.

Four years ago, they decamped to the grand flat that occupies an entire floor of a sturdy old doorman building here. It has a long gallery hallway where artwork from best friends and children from assorted marriages is displayed. Jeanne Steig’s sculptures abound.

“We adore New York,” she said. “But the New York we yearn for is from 25 years ago.”

Still, Bill remonstrated, “Boston is a little boring.”

Their conversation is smart and snappy, much like the couples in Steig’s highly identifiable New Yorker cartoons, as well as the characters who inhabit the books Steig began writing and illustrating when he was 60. Except that most of Steig’s characters are animals; “The Toy Brother” is only his fourth book to feature human beings.

Pigs, dogs, donkeys, mice, it makes no difference. Steig’s animals are thoughtful creatures whose lives often are touched by magic. His illustrations buttress the sense of enchantment, with bright colors and a willing accommodation of the occasional outrageous element--such as a goat or a pig who plays dress-up in human clothes.

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The veil of magic also means no premise can ever seem too absurd. A mouse who practices dentistry, for example--as in Steig’s “Dr. DeSoto” books--seems perfectly reasonable. A donkey who punishes his parents by turning into a rock (“Sylvester and the Magic Pebble”) also seems not at all far-fetched.

The books began in 1968 when Steig’s friend Robert Kraus, another New Yorker contributor, persuaded Steig he could make more money in the emerging world of children’s literature than in the philistine universe of advertising. Money was an important consideration to Steig, who had ex-wives and children to support from three former marriages. He also supported his aging parents, who had relied on their middle son since the onset of the Great Depression.

Steig’s father was a house painter, an Austrian immigrant who lost all his work when the U.S. economy crashed in 1929. An older son was off and married. The youngest boy was still in school. Bill Steig tells people he flew out of the nest with his parents on his back.

He never got to be footloose and fancy-free, but his very first drawing sold instantly to the New Yorker. “I went to work early,” he conceded. “But I went to work drawing funny pictures.” While much of New York around him was dining from Depression-era soup lines, Steig made $4,000 in his first year of self-employment. It was as if he had millions.

The children’s books came just as easily. “Sylvester and the Magic Pebble,” his second title, won the Caldecott Medal, children’s literature’s highest prize. “It turned out to be that easy,” he said. “I just sat down and did the books. It also turned out to be fun.”

The ideas come from “Oh, I don’t know, the way anybody gets an idea, just by looking for an idea,” he said. With kids’ books, “you pick your character first, a donkey or a duck, and then you think of a story to go with the character. If you watched yourself getting an idea, you’re not getting an idea.

“I never get an idea unless I have to, that’s a fact,” he confided. “I cannot claim to be inspired.”

Jeanne interjected: “Except ‘The Real Thief.’ ”

“Oh yes,” Bill said. “I wanted to write a story about injustice, someone who was falsely accused.”

He never reads books by other children’s authors. “I can’t read my colleagues’ books because I’m a grown-up,” he protested. Nor does he think about the age or intellectual level of his target audience. “An author can’t think about those things,” he insisted. He just writes the book, confident that it will find its audience.

“You know not to use impossible words and not to be too pessimistic,” Jeanne said.

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Yet death and abandonment are frequent themes, and just about every Steig title sneaks in some challenging vocabulary. “Transmogrification,” a key aspect of “The Toy Brother,” for example, is not a word that slides off the average 5-year-old’s tongue.

“Yes, once in a while, you do throw one in,” Jeanne said.

Critics have labored to analyze the moralism of stories that separate children from parents or leave evil foxes with their jaws glued shut. Not Bill Steig. “I don’t think about that,” he said. “I never preach.”

Again, this contribution from Jeanne: “You’ve done a number of books in which the protagonist gets locked up.”

Bill: “You think I have a fear of getting locked up?”

Jeanne: “And you did all those books about people in bottles. Fear of confinement? Kind of ‘let-me-out-of-here’ syndrome?”

Bill: “I think everybody has that.”

The Steigs married 28 years ago, but the way they interact--genuinely listening to one another and asking questions based on actual interest--makes it seem as if they met only recently. What happened, Jeanne recalled, is that both were between marriages: six, cumulatively. Jeanne had sworn off men and marriages when a friend pressed her to attend a party in Brooklyn Heights. When they arrived, the friend said, ‘Oh, there’s a handsome man,’ and shoved Jeanne in Bill’s direction. With two fresh drinks in his hands, however, he was headed toward a beautiful actress.

But by the time he reached the actress’ side, some other gallant knight had supplied her with refreshment. Jeanne took over, thoughtfully offering to relieve him of one of the beverages. Even though Bill was “hopelessly politically incorrect; he kept calling me a ‘girl,’ ” they have been together ever since.

Recently, Bill decided that he will stop illustrating his books and will concentrate exclusively on the stories. It could be argued that at 89, he has earned the right to stop working so blasted hard.

He shrugged. “I keep on working,” he said. “It’s what I do.”