CREDIT: ALMAJE / THINKSTOCK
Always keep a case of blackberry jam in your backpack. You never know when you'll have to bribe a secret government agent.

Usually I pick a Dr. Seuss book for my weekly critical analysis, but I thought I might give the old man a break. This week I set my sights on Robert Munsch’s collection of mayhem, Blackberry Subway Jam.

This book was a big part of my childhood but it might not have been part of yours, so here’s a recap. Jonathon is left home alone, only to discover his apartment has been declared a subway station. After three subways worth of people make their way through his house, he visits city hall. While the politicians are unhelpful, he meets a man working behind a wall of computers. He trades the man some jam to move the station to the mayor’s office instead of his apartment. Moral of the story? Two wrongs don’t make a right, but four cases of jam can sabotage a city hall.

There are four characters in this story: a crotchety stickler of a mayor, a jam-addicted computer impersonator, Jonathon and his mother. It would make sense that the mother would be a voice of logic and action for her son in this story, but for whatever reason all the responsibility falls on Jonathon. This child is abandoned twice by his mother and left to deal with countless subway passengers ravaging his apartment and stealing his kitchen appliances. Meanwhile, his mother spends the book running from her problems and is later held hostage at length by, of all things, some chewing gum on a rug.

Most kids would be cowering in the corner, crying and generally helpless but Jonathon is a take-charge seven-year-old well on his way to becoming class president. He doesn’t care that his fridge is stolen, or that there are five people passed out on his couch, he needs to clean up this pigsty and fight the system!

While Jonathon’s mom stands paralyzed on the rug, he sets off for city hall. Normally I would be terrified that a child is venturing downtown alone, but in this case, I’m actually more concerned for the mother. Clearly her mind isn’t all there. She left twice to buy a single can of noodles after all, and that seems a little fishy to me. When she gets back she doesn’t say a word or make an effort to get everyone out of her apartment, she just freezes in place and shuts down. Was “can of noodles” code for the psychedelic drugs that just kicked in, or is the “Apartment-turned-train station” scenario not part of this cyborg’s programming? Is she waiting for her “bad trip” to subside, or downloading additional script from the mothership? Why does Jonathon have the clairvoyant mind of a 40-year-old in the body of a seven-year-old? Is he a science experiment? A secret agent? A clever criminal pulling a long con on a dimwitted old-timer?

Without delving too far into conspiracy theories here, I have to say that Jonathon’s apartment is a freaky place to be, and he is certainly better off on his own. That being said, this story steps out of the frying pan and into the fire when Jonathon gets to city hall. He immediately encounters a man secretly working behind a wall of broken computers and engages in a black-market trade to adjust the subway stops. Jonathon is quickly embarking down a dark path of politics and bribery. For the price of a single jar of jam, he can place a subway stop anywhere in the entire city. Of course, being the over-achieving 40-year-oldin- a-kids-body that he is, Jonathon goes out and buys four whole cases of jam. Where does a kid get that kind of money? Where does he find the strength to carry all that jam for three hours back to city hall? At this point I’m betting that this child is some kind of science experiment or secret agent. The alternative is that he wants to change four cases worth of subway stops in this city. I guess some kids just want to watch the world burn.

Nothing in this story really adds up. The mother has been lobotomized, this child’s brain has been swapped with an adult’s, there’s a shady man impersonating a $10 million computer and somehow a subway can reach the 30th floor of an apartment building. Sure, Dr. Seuss creates train tracks that lead into the ocean, but Robert Munsch is writing some Twilight Zone/Men in Black type stories here.

I sentence this book to an extensive background check on all of the main characters. I advise all their assets be frozen and that the head of this city’s subway commission is fired. Lastly, if anyone knows the name of the contractor who designed a receding wall in an apartment without anyone knowing, please put me in contact with him because that’s cool as shit.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.