Word: gnomes
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...Gnomes, translated from its original Dutch and marketed in the U.S. in time for the lucrative pre-Christmas gift-book-buying season, is the culmination of almost twenty years of field study and interviews of gnomes by author Huygen and illustrator Rien Poortvliet. Gnomes is written in the manner of an Audubon book about a newly-discovered bird species, and it describes in detail the physiology, folkways, legends, industries and daily routines of the wee folk. Although the book concentrates mostly on the red-capped woodland variety of gnome, other gnome species, like the barn, dune, and Siberian gnomes, find...
Besides their stature, gnomes have several other qualities that set them apart from their larger cousins, human beings. They live to the ripe old age of 400 years, and they have never even heard of Dannon yogurt. They also see and hear better, run faster, and are smarter than humans. It is clear Huygen wishes he were born a gnome instead of a Dutchman...
After a century or so of life, the young male gnome begins dreaming of finding a gnome just like the gnome who married dear old dad. After building a home for his family-to-be in the roots of a large tree, the male asks the father of the blushing, young and preferably plump maiden for his daughter's hand in marriage. Gnomes enjoy a stable home life, with twin baby gnomes soon coming to the young couple. There are no problems of women's liberation for the gnomes--mother, father and the little gnomes all have their roles...
...Huygen is not content to rest on subtlety and understatement, so he adds a final chapter to Gnomes that explicitly makes his point. In so doing he bludgeons us over the head with a simplistic sermon on "What We Should Learn From Gnomes." After reciting the familiar litany of human failings--wars, pollution, exploitation, violence, the gnome narrator concludes...
...creatures are so amiable. Goblins, those foot-high fiends of the forest, and house ghosts are obnoxious and troublesome. But the real threat to gnomes comes from the troll--a disgusting, hairy and unkempt Northern European dolt who gets his jollies by keeping his gnomes to the grindstones and by lighting a gnome on fire and then playing hot potato with him. Gnomes are for whom the troll yells, so to speak...