posted on 13 Jul 2023

Moving the Millers’ Minnie Moore Mine Mansion by Dave Eggers, illustrated by Júlia Sardà 

What a fantastic combination! The always playful and inventive Dave Eggers and, Júlia Sardà, one of our very favourite contemporary illustrators, have combined their talents to produce a large format children’s picture book that will appeal to just about everyone from 8 to 80.

Eggers retelling of a true story of how a whole house – a huge Victorian mansion in Bellevue, Idaho – gets moved, lock-stock and barrel, from the centre of town to its outskirts in order to allow the owner to keep pigs without annoying the neighbours, will probably attract the label ‘quirky’ in most reviews of the book. But that tag is a really inadequate description and you’d be better trying these instead: creative, inventive, daring, unexpected and downright funny.

The opening pages have fun with us as Eggers explains the tongue-twisting title of the book. We start with the finding of a silver mine in the late 19th century by John ‘Minnie’ Moore that became known as the Minnie Moore Mine and move swiftly on to the purchase of the mine by Englishman, Henry Miller. Miller gets married and builds his wife a huge Victorian mansion:

“It was the most impressive and stately mansion for miles. It had three floors and high ceilings, and stained glass windows. In a region where many people were still living in small shacks and even tents, this home brought a bit of Old World civility to the Old West, which was often not civil.

The home, we can assume was known to some, if not all, the Millers’ Minnie Moore Mine Mansion.”

When Henry dies and leaves his wife, Annie and son, Douglas to fend for themselves, Annie is tricked out of her money and decides pig farming is the way forward for her. But there’s a problem. Pigs are pretty smelly:

“There is, some say, a particular smell to cows and pigs and sheep, and that smell is not considered wonderful.”

So, the choice is either to leave Bellevue or move the house – and it’s the latter that we see performed in the second half of the story.

Anyone familiar with Dave Eggers will not be at all surprised at the way he loves to play with words and how he’ll inject himself into the narrative to comment – tongue firmly in cheek:

“While Annie was gallivanting about Europe – which is what you do in Europe, by the way, you gallivant: it is a kind of traipsing – Henry was determined to build his wife a lavish new house.”

Just a note for the tender-hearted: brace yourself for the final page!

Entertaining as the story is, it’s only half the joy of the book because the illustrations are simply magnificent. It’s great that the book gives them lots of space and double-spreads – and do I detect more than a hint of the influence of the masterful Edward Gorey in some of them?

You really must rush out and get a copy of this book – it’s published in July by Walker Books so your local independent bookshop will either stock it or they will be able to order it for you.

 

Terry Potter

July 2023