Melvin the Mouth

by Katherine Blanc, Jeffrey Ebbeler (Illustrator)

Overview

Meet young Melvin—the future Mel Blanc of Looney Tunes fame—as he drives everyone a little nuts with the noisy soundtrack to his day-to-day life

Melvin is an imaginative and noisy little boy who grows up to be Mel Blanc, Looney Tunes cartoon character pioneer and the voice behind Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Woody Woodpecker, the Tasmanian Devil, and so many more familiar personalities. Readers are treated to a typical day for young Melvin, when ordinary tasks like getting ready for school, riding the bus, and completing his chores are charged with sound effects and accompanied by his own personal soundtrack. His knack for making funny noises and using the versatility of his voice was like no other—much to the relief of his teachers.
 
Penned by Blanc's daughter-in-law, this first-person fiction-based-in-reality story is a fun romp and is sure to inspire young readers to turn trouble into triumph!

“Reading this book aloud will guarantee a boisterous romp of a story time in a library or classroom setting.” —School Library Journal

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781607348740
Publisher:	Charlesbridge
Publication date:	09/19/2017
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	8 MB
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Katherine Blanc is the author of The Boy Who Conquered Everest: The Jordan Romero Story, and the daughter-in-law of the late Mel Blanc, known as the "Man of 1,000 voices" including most of the Looney Tunes characters for Warner Bros. She currently lives in Southern CA.

Jeffrey Ebbeler has illustrated more than forty picture books, including the Main Street School series (Looking Glass Library/Random House). He has worked as an art director, done paper engineering for pop-up books, created large scale murals for schools and churches, and sculpted puppets. He currently lives in Cincinnati, OH. www.jeffillustration.com

Read an Excerpt

I’m flying over the cat, laughing like a loony bird: Ha-ha-ha-HAY-ho! I’m Melvin the Mouth, maker of sounds.
 
“Melvin, let’s go,” Mom calls.
I’m dressed, except for my shoes. But now I’m a dragon––HHHhhhhhhh––and dragons have bare feet.
“Melvin, my dear dragon,” Mom says, “please put on your shoes.”
 

At school I whooooosh into the main hallway. It’s a tunnel with tile walls––perfect for making BIG sounds. I can’t help myself. Whenever I’m in that hallway, I open my mouth and . . .

. . . I’m a tiger roaming in a deep cave, looking for people to eat. I stomp my feet and flash my teeth and roar. Rroww-RROWW!
No one can escape––unless I let them.

Editorial Reviews

A day in the youth of motor-mouth Mel Blanc, written by his daughter-in-law.Mel Blanc—the "Man of 1,000 Voices," including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and the ear-splitting Woody Woodpecker—wasn't born with a wizard's tongue; he had to work at it—at top volume. Ebbeler's setting for this tale of young Mel is pleasingly Edwardian, with lovely background plains of graded color or design with deep, inky linework laid over. This intimacy makes Mel's riotous creations that much more voluble. Out of bed, he is a dragon, "HHHHHhhhhh…." The sounds Mel creates are hand-lettered, drawn to swirl, evoke, and enfold. Mel finds the best acoustical venues for the figments of his imagination at school: a vaulted hallway for a train ("Woooooo…woo"), the tiled bathroom for a giant shark ("Chomp"). He's a rascal, which doesn't escape the principal, for instance, or the playground monitor, or the bus driver (all white, just like Mel and his family). But his vocal cords and his robots, race cars, tornadoes, and bulldogs won't be tamed. "I'm still the fastest mouth in the world," even when he is sentenced to school-kitchen duty or raking the family lawn. Blanc's text is trim and keeps a jazzy, upbeat tempo, presenting the story of one very inventive kid rather than a biography of one of the 20th century's most oft-heard voices (though a biographical note follows). Dandy and dazzling and top-notch fun.
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Mel Blanc, aka the “Man of a 1,000 Voices,” is the star of this rollicking, exuberant picture book biography. Melvin, who was born in 1908, is depicted here dressed in a suit with short pants and a tie. He’s first seen terrorizing his cat and laughing like Woody Woodpecker before insisting to his parents that he’s a dragon. His imaginary ink-drawn dragon looms over him. At school. He can’t sit still and makes noises wherever and whenever he pleases, earning himself trash duty for recess and a “speeding ticket.” His classmates aren’t sure what to make of him. At home, his supportive yet exhausted parents try to rein him in. but chores turn disastrous as the large-headed, bug-eyed youngster simply cannot be contained. The illustrations combine watercolor and ink drawings and Adobe Photoshop, along with hand-lettered sound effects that swoop and swirl across spreads that contain fun period details. While much of the narrative is fictionalized, a short biographical note follows. VERDICT: Reading this book aloud will guarantee a boisterous romp of a story time in a library or classroom setting, especially if time is set aside to share some well-chosen clips of Blanc’s work.
—School Library Journal

Bugs, Tweety, and countless other well-loved characters can all thank one man for giving them a voice in movies, television, and radio, but before Mel Blanc became an actor, he was a precocious boy with mountains of energy and imagination, earning the nickname Melvin the Mouth. Mel's daughter-in-law, Katherine Blanc, tells his story with an array of creative artwork from Jeffrey Ebbeler, who fuses lively black-and-white sketches with color spreads, showcasing Mel's irrepressible spirit.
—Foreword Reviews

In a scandalously overdue introduction to Mel Blanc—the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Marvin the Martian, and approximately 1,500 other characters—from his daughter-in-law, hyperactive young Melvin (“fastest mouth in the world!”) sets school halls ringing as a roaring tiger and whooshing locomotive, becomes a whirling tornado when asked to sweep the floor at home, a hungry hippo at dinner, and finally ends his day (as he began) by impersonating a hissing dragon. Ebbeler dresses the lad, and the discombobulated adults around him, in buttoned-up early-twentieth-century garb and superimposes ghostly black-and-white renditions of Mel’s adopted personas over the genteel settings. If a few anachronisms sneak in, notably references to a “rocket in space” and Melvin using his “robot voice” to count down, views of him leaning insouciantly on an elbow while munching a carrot, or laughing like a certain woodpecker more than compensate as sly visual gags. The author adds an afterword with family photos of her renowned relative as a child and an adult to this exuberant fictionalized tribute.
—Booklist

From the Publisher

11/01/2017
K-Gr 2—Mel Blanc, aka the "Man of a 1,000 Voices," is the star of this rollicking, exuberant picture book biography. Melvin, who was born in 1908, is depicted here dressed in a suit with short pants and a tie. He's first seen terrorizing his cat and laughing like Woody Woodpecker before insisting to his parents that he's a dragon. His imaginary ink-drawn dragon looms over him. At school, he can't sit still and makes noises wherever and whenever he pleases, earning himself trash duty for recess and a "speeding ticket." His classmates aren't sure what to make of him. At home, his supportive yet exhausted parents try to rein him in. But chores turn disastrous as the large-headed, bug-eyed youngster simply cannot be contained. The illustrations combine watercolor and ink drawings and Adobe Photoshop, along with hand-lettered sound effects that swoop and swirl across spreads that contain fun period details. While much of the narrative is fictionalized, a short biographical note follows. VERDICT Reading this book aloud will guarantee a boisterous romp of a story time in a library or classroom setting, especially if time is set aside to share some well-chosen clips of Blanc's work.—Brenda Kahn, Tenakill Middle School, Closter, NJ

School Library Journal

★ 2017-06-27
A day in the youth of motor-mouth Mel Blanc, written by his daughter-in-law.Mel Blanc—the "Man of 1,000 Voices," including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and the ear-splitting Woody Woodpecker—wasn't born with a wizard's tongue; he had to work at it—at top volume. Ebbeler's setting for this tale of young Mel is pleasingly Edwardian, with lovely background planes of graded color or design with deep, inky linework laid over. This intimacy makes Mel's riotous creations that much more voluble. Out of bed, he is a dragon, "HHHHHhhhhh…." The sounds Mel creates are hand-lettered, drawn to swirl, evoke, and enfold. Mel finds the best acoustical venues for the figments of his imagination at school: a vaulted hallway for a train ("Woooooo…woo"), the tiled bathroom for a giant shark ("Chomp"). He's a rascal, which doesn't escape the principal, for instance, or the playground monitor, or the bus driver (all white, just like Mel and his family). But his vocal cords and his robots, race cars, tornadoes, and bulldogs won't be tamed. "I'm still the fastest mouth in the world," even when he is sentenced to school-kitchen duty or raking the family lawn. Blanc's text is trim and keeps a jazzy, upbeat tempo, presenting the story of one very inventive kid rather than a biography of one of the 20th century's most oft-heard voices (though a biographical note follows). Dandy and dazzling and top-notch fun. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews