I have never been on a Caldecott committee (and nor will I ever be, since I write publicly at more than one place throughout the year about picture books), and I have a deep reverence for the work these committees do annually. But I admit to a sort of hushed reverence, because it's all rather cryptic to me. Even though the criteria are laid out for everyone to see and we know the committee members are devoted to these guidelines, I've never been in the room where the big decisions happen. For that reason, I always imagine a Great and Thrilling Mystery swirling about the whole thing. I can't help it.

However, I would like to think that Patrick Downes's Come Home, Angus, illustrated by Boris Kulikov, could be a serious contender this year, because it is a book that does a handful of things I would think the committee likes to see. (See my word acrobatics here — a lot of "I would like to think"s? It's that mystery again.)

If you haven’t seen the book, it tells the story of a boy who wakes up angry, gives his mother some serious what-for, and storms out of the house with his backpack. I wrote about this book over at Kirkus earlier this year, and I talked about how it's striking that the mother in this book doesn't let the boy speak rudely to her without reprimanding him. "That’s no way to behave. You’ll have to apologize," she tells him. She also says (in a way that manages to avoid coming across as didactic): "In this house, being angry doesn’t let you be rude." Are we going to see an increase in picture books with parental responses like this, while we simultaneously see in the culture-at-large more articles that question helicopter parenting? Will we see a departure from the anything-goes, unconditional-love-trumps-the-harried-parent themes of books like No, David!? That, sociologically speaking, is something noteworthy to me about Come Home, Angus — though, to be clear, the mother follows the boy on his angry stomp into the city, even if he doesn't realize it till the end, and is there to greet him with a hug. So, a bit helicopter-y. (As I wrote at Kirkus, it's unconditional love for the win after all, but at least the mother attempts to remind her child what it means to be courteous in this world.)

But the illustrations! Boris Kulikov — as I understand it, he is eligible for this award because he lives in the United States, though he was born and raised in Russia — plays with scale and color in effective ways all throughout this book. When we first meet Angus and read that he "woke up angry," this small boy is over-the-top large, and he overpowers his twin bed. His tousled, bed-head hair leaves spiky shadows on the wall behind him, as if he physically is a monster (and not just feeling like one). Everything in his room is also upside down; anger can make your world feel topsy-turvy.

Over the next few full-bleed spreads, he stomps his way angrily over white space, Kulikov letting the boy's very bad mood take the stage. If you look closely at these early spreads, you'll see Kulikov paints the boy with a type of large crosshatching, as if he is one big eggshell about to crack. The boy gets paler as his frustration grows, while the colors around him grow more intense. Interesting choice, huh? Is Kulikov also trying to say it's as if he is disappearing into his own anger?

As his temper calms and his apprehension increases on his journey into the city — again, look closely and you'll see that his mother is always a few steps behind him, Kulikov hiding her in crowds and behind buildings — he shrinks in size, and the scary, confusing city gets larger and more imposing around him. Kulikov successfully crowds these spreads, pairing the chaos of the city with Angus's inner chaos. The colors on the boy's skin and clothing also return to a regular saturation; on one spread, you can see the metamorphosis happen, a rich red sliding down his T-shirt sleeve.

In the end, boy and mother sit on a park bench. Reunited, and it feels so good. She's even brought him his favorite sandwich. "The bread was mushy; wheat not white, but Angus ate and ate" brings to mind a certain bowl of hot soup, waiting for a child who has misbehaved but is still loved.

Who else has read this one? What do you think? Do you think this relatively under-the-radar book will drown in a sea of other picture book titles discussed way more often this year?