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Milk
Teeth
by Julie Morstad is not a traditional story—the stories
here are told through drawings. While some drawings speak
to each other, most stand alone, evoking strange, other-worldly
narratives where delicate children seem lost in their thoughts.
They eat flowers, hide from tigers, fall blindfolded into
nothingness and recline among stacks of teacups like characters
left out of Alice in Wonderland.
There
are no teeth in Milk Teeth, or smiles. There is a series
of visual poems whose language references birds, heads, and
hair. The hair is sleek. It covers faces, wraps around necks,
turns into castles, plants, and rabbits. There is longing,
somberness, and dismay. Everyone is trapped somewhere and
must accept it. Hair wraps around and around a huge head,
where two thin girls are bound, their hands and legs hanging
limply, though one clutches a rabbit by the ears.
After
looking at them for a while, many of the images appear to
have macabre elements, which may be why Morstad's work is
compared to that of illustrator Edward Gorey (best known for
the melodramatic credit sequence of the BBC's Mystery!
series). Clusters of men in suits sprout from flowers
while from nearby blooms, ominous wolves peer. An elegant
flapper gazes into the air with ennui while diaphanous curtains
blow around her, and from one finger, blood drips and pools
on the floor. A swarm of angry bees emerges from a girl's
ear. A girl sits up in bed, seemingly surprised that her arms
and legs have turned into long fluffy ermine-like tails which
spill over and entwine on the floor.
The colors
are beautiful, like hand-tinted sepia photos. The intricate
detail suggests many hours spent in the sumptuous palace of
Morstad's imagination, and the imagery feels irrationally
right. This little book is a pleasure.
(January,
2008)
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