Book-A-Day 2018 #148: The New Yorker Book of Mom Cartoons

Sometimes my timing sucks. I realized I had this book sitting on my shelf on Mother's Day. So I was able to read it on Mother's Day, but I really should have posted this review on Mother's Day.

Well, such is life. Que sera, sera, as someone's mother said once.

So here, belatedly, is The New Yorker Book of Mom Cartoons, a 2008 book extruded from the Cartoon Bank and The New Yorker apparently without the aim of human hand. (In other words: it doesn't credit any editor.)

Like the other New Yorker books in the same oblong paperback format, it has one hundred cartoons, each appearing alone on a page, all on one loose theme. Some of the cartoons are about actual mothers and their children -- small or adult -- and some are about people acting like mothers, or referring to mothers, or threatening others with mothers. Basically, these are cartoons that could be tagged "Mom" in some large database...which, coincidentally, is probably exactly how they were identified in the Cartoon Bank.

There are forty-six total cartoonists: the book may not have an editor credited or any front matter, but it has a useful index of cartoonists, because the New Yorker knows what cartoon fans really care about. Barbara Smaller takes pole position with eight cartoons here, followed by Bruce Eric Kaplan, Donald Reilly, and Danny Shanahan all tied at six. Nothing is dated, but my sense is that the choices skew more towards the modern than the classic period -- and that breakdown of cartoonists tends to reinforce that impression.

I've written about New Yorker cartoons before, and the same rules still apply: they do tend to be arch and allusive, and the least of them are very Zeitgeist-y in a way that can make them opaque as soon as a few weeks later or as far as a couple of states away. I didn't find this particular book to have much that fell into that category, but then again I tend to like New Yorker cartoons (obviously).

This series is generally fun: they each have a good mixture of cartoonists in various flavors of the New Yorker style, and so are great as a way to sample New Yorker cartoons. Pick one on a topic that seems funny to you, and it's one of the best ways to see if these cartoons will click with you.