Wonderful Junk

Ted McGee is an associate professor of English specializing in
children’s literature at St. Jerome’s College, University of
Waterloo.

Troon Harrison’s dedication of this book to “uncle Jack and aunt
Jill” is useful for our purposes. First, Jack and Jill are names that
suggest a conventional story, and Wonderful Junk is conventional in its
structure.

Jeremiah is an auctioneer who “[tries] to get people to pay high
prices for useful objects” but who “never [pays] money for anything
himself if he [can] help it. Instead he [likes] to trade.” One day,
Jeremiah decides he wants a horse and sets out to trade for one. That
the auctioneer will get the horse he needs is assumed from the start of
his quest. The fun and artistic satisfaction comes from the circuitous
route by which he trades his way to success, from a ship in a bottle, to
a bike, to a bridle, to a bag of oats, to a hammer, to three cans of
paint (each half full), to a painting, to a lunch of shrimp sandwiches,
to a pottery bowl, to a horse.

Second, “uncle” and “aunt” are titles of an earlier generation
fondly remembered, and Wonderful Junk is apparently set in the past,
certainly in a smaller rural maritime scene. Jeremiah and his niece,
Charlotte, travel from the blacksmith, to the miller, and so on to the
preacher whose horse has been rendered redundant by his new car.

Geoff Hocking’s watercolors—sometimes of figures sans ground,
sometimes of elaborately detailed scenes—make a good story even more
amusing. The point of view from which we see figures is sometimes comic,
as when we face head-on Jeremiah and his hen coming at us on a bicycle
or Lily the truck driver pushing an obstreperous bull from behind. In
the elaborate scenes, patches of bright color provide focus. Highly
recommended.