Chester Filbert is the obverse of the little boy who saw it all on Mulberry Street. A dour faced little boy, he never moves from his crouch on the curb. Nor does he turn around to look at the too-familiar Victorian houses on his block which are precisely and geometrically outlined in black and white. Chester is sunk in a slough of boredom, a total inability to find anything interesting in his surroundings but completely convinced that everywhere else there is excitement. The roots of his ennui can be deduced--his house is austere, tightly shuttered, nobody there reacts to what is happening in the neighborhood, in fact the only person who emerges is a nursemaid who occasionally tries to call Chester inside. But in all the other houses and on the sidewalk and street, brilliantly colored people and things emerge and, as the pages are turned, an overlapping series of exciting near-tragedies and triumphs. The pictorial counterpoint to Chester's claim to dissatisfaction offers hours of diversion to children who will find themselves picking out first the obvious then the many minute details, each a complex narrative in itself, as well as a graphic illustration of the sort of atmosphere that can turn a little boy into an unnoticing nobody.
