In the exhibition catalog: From The New Yorker to Shrek: The Art of William Steig, at the Jewish Museum, the artist’s daughter, Maggie Steig, recalls a game her father used to play with her: “What would you rather be?

”Would you rather be a tree (sturdy, long-lived, a home for birds) or a flower (a short but exciting life, carried in weddings, pressed into books by princesses)?

What would you rather be, Maggie’s father would also ask, “a knee or an elbow?” Or more adventurously: “A pinch of pus or a pile of puke? A scab or a wart?”

Children may know William Steig as the creator of Shrek, but their grandparents can trace the ornery green ogre’s roots through a body of children’s books, New Yorker cartoons and drawings dating back to the Depression.

The child of immigrants, Steig was fortunate to come of age at an auspicious time for cartoonists. An entire industry of penny weeklies was devoted to boosting morale during the Depression and World War II. He was 23 when he began contributing to The New Yorker in 1930, and the magazine continued to publish his drawings, including several covers, until his death in 2003, at 95.

Brimming with scenes of domestic discord and references to Jewish immigrant life in the tenements, Mr. Steig’s early cartoons and drawings were a radical departure from the upper-crust dinner-party gags of previous New Yorker cartoons.

Steig also made a body of work exploring psychological states, some of which were collected in About People: A Book of Symbolic Drawings (1939). He produced deft images that were considered too serious for The New Yorker of the time, distilling amorphous mental conditions into precisely drawn caricatures. In Melancholia (1939) a woman lies on her belly in a child’s wooden cradle, too large for its enclosure, leaning on her crossed arms, bleakly staring into the distance. Our Marriage Will Be Different (1947) proclaims a cartoon showing a couple heading offstage after a song-and-dance-number; we know the show will be over. Harold Ross, The New Yorker’s editor then, called these works “too personal and not funny enough,” but they caught on with devotees of psychoanalysis.

The novelist Henry Miller put it best, in a letter to Steig that is on display at the museum: “You give a sort of geography of the emotional reactions of man, his tiny little globe built around a microscopic ego.”

Steig’s overwhelming sense of isolation found a more resonant expression in a remarkable series of children’s books he started to produce in the late 1960s. Most have become classics, with grown-up ethical and philosophical dilemmas couched in the antics of lovable farm animals. In these works Steig’s sensitive, wavering line finds a parallel in his expressive writing.

The street life of friends inspired his early series of Small Fry cartoons, in which snowball fights, sibling rivalry and fantasies of glory turned cartooning into a form of emotional documentation: here is how children play, tease, laugh, dream.

The children’s books became a way for Steig to combine and reconcile these ideas and sentiments. Animals are the main characters because they are literally fabulous, condensations of personal traits, elemental even to a child. When we read that Doctor De Soto “outfoxed the fox,” we know exactly what that means and why the dentist-mouse was right to mistrust the animal. Such villainy is part of the natural order.

Exaggeration often makes these tales most affecting. The more bizarre the artifice and the more ornate the language, the more potent they become. A ring of power? That’s the stuff of fiction and fantasy. But a talking bone! Who could have imagined such a thing? And what powers might it possess? “I didn’t know you could do magic!” Pearl the Pig breathlessly tells the bone after it rescues her, as if there had been no previous sign in the bone’s use of German, its imitation of trumpets, or in the sounds of its sneezes.

And of course the magic and the villainy are often both close to home, found in pebbles, bones and home-brewed potions, in ordinary animals and simple yearnings.

We are never fully sure of that adult world, except that it will have both trees and flowers, elbows and knees, scabs and warts. And unpredictable pleasures. Pearl the Pig, restored from the clutches of the fox by the magic bone, brings the bone home and the “two chatterboxes” are often whispering or singing together. The bone joins her family.

“And they all had music whenever they wanted it,” Steig concludes, “and sometimes even when they didn’t.”

New York Times review

William Steig at the Jewish Museum

Even in the weak winter light seeping into the room, his colors astonish me. Russet brown and tan, silver, black, white and gray. … His are the shades of subtle intimation, the perfection of understated tones.

One day, a baby sparrow plummeted 25 feet from a nest tucked in the eaves of a Southeast Portland home and landed in a clump of dying irises.

This would have been an entirely unremarkable event had the home’s owner, a man named Chris Chester, not discovered the baby bird in his flower beds, naked-winged and helpless - a limp, clammy thing not much bigger than Chris’ thumb.

At first he was hesitant to pick it up, his “compassion having been hobbled by childhood memories of failed bird rescues. … I remembered shoeboxes with plucked-up grass as padding, inappropriate offerings of bread and worms. The tiny, inevitable corpse come morning.”

But eventually, he took it in his hands and carried it into his home.

Maybe, in the end, we are drawn to vulnerable things because we recognize in them our own frailty - that deep down we are all somehow broken, flightless, naked in a heap. When he found this particular vulnerable thing, Chris was 41, and in his own words, as depressed as he had ever been, living “below sea level,” struggling to get things done.

Chris had always dreamed of writing a book. He would say that he just knew it was what he was meant to do, and he would try in fits and starts - he’d written poetry for years, even frequented open-mike nights around town many years ago - but he could never get far. “He just couldn’t focus,” his ex-wife, Rebecca Lester, says. He doubted. He fretted. He silenced himself with terrible writer’s block.

And then, down tumbled the sparrow.

When it became clear the bird would survive, Chris named him B. Just B. Just Be. One of Chris’ favorite things to do was to cradle B in his cupped hand, feel his warmth.

In the days following Chris’ death everyone agreed that this was one of the happiest times in Chris’ life. It was as if he had finally found the words for everything he ever wanted to say.

I offer B my right shoulder after I walk inside. He puffs and stretches, glances at the papers in my hand before hopping down. We’ve gone through this routine innumerable times, yet I ponder each repetition as the steps unfold, knowing that I’ll one day be desperate to recall all B-related things. Every day I vow and every day fail to take nothing for granted regarding those tricks time plays on complacency.

B pulled Chris outside of himself, and in doing so, he gave him something to write about: this crazy life he was living - living - with a bird flying around in the background, seed husks crunching underfoot.

But that was just the starting point.

Really, what B gave Chris was the chance to write about finding meaning and wonder in the smallest things. About the joy of finding something, anything, that can keep you focused on the moment and away from your more destructive forces: the doubts and worries and fears that keep us from being present in our own lives, that keep us from risking our feelings, even if that means experiencing the ache of loss.

One night, you accompany Rebecca as she goes to fetch Chris’ birds, and move them to her house.

Rebecca is pale and shaky, and she keeps repeating, alternately “I can’t believe he’s gone,” and “It’s so hard to be here.”

It’s clear by the state of his house that Chris had suffered both physically and existentially in his last year. That, as his nephew put it, it had become more and more like a birdhouse Chris was simply visiting. The pain of his last few years is almost palpable.

And yet, while Rebecca is upstairs preparing the birds, and you are wandering through the rooms downstairs, studying his collection of books and marveling at the mind they reflect, you spot a small rectangle of paper lying on one of the bookshelves.

Just a few minutes before, you had ventured upstairs to be introduced to the birds, and as the rest of the flock careened and spun around the room, one brave sparrow landed briefly on your open palm. And you imagined you could feel the weight of every tiny bone, every feather.

You are reminded of that moment as you pick up the piece of paper and realize that it is Chris’ name tag from the Oregon Book Awards, the dark fibers of his jacket still stuck to the back - and you know you are holding something incredibly fragile in your hands.

Sparrow Man

Le Parfum, the story of a murderer, is the work of the German writer, Patrick Suskind. This novel has been translated from the original German into 45 languages. A movie, starring Ben Whishaw and Dustin Hoffman, was adapted from this bestseller in 2006.

The novel takes place in France during the 18^th century. It tells about the life of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a man who possesses an extraordinary sense of smell.

Jean-Baptiste was born into the stench of the fishmarket at the Cemetery of the Innocents in Paris. His mother, who had borne four bastards before him, gave birth standing behind her fish stall, and threw the baby onto a pile of rubbish as she had done with the others. But this baby was different. The newborn started crying, and attracted the attention of passers-by. This ended with his mother being arrested and condemned to be decapitated for attempted infanticide.

Little Jean-Baptiste was handed over to several nurses in succession, but none of them wanted to have anything to do with him. He was greedy, and worse, he had no odour. They all knew how sweetly babies smelled, but Jean-Baptiste was strangely different. He ended up with Madame Gaillard, a woman without emotion and without a sense of smell, for she had lost the latter in a childhood accident. She collected children and looked after them for a suitable fee. It was in her house that he learned to recognize the smells of his surroundings – flowers, grass, wood, water… But the other children sensed that he was somehow different, and rejected him from the start, even attempting to suffocate him.

One day, Madame Galliard had had enough of Jean-Baptiste, and handed him over to Monsieur Grimal, a tanner who needed man to help him. Young Jean-Baptiste worked hard at his disagreeable and dangerous tasks.As a result, Monsieur Grimal gave him permission to go out for an hour every day. During his free time, Jean-Baptiste roamed around Paris and explored every nook and cranny in search of the most extraordinary smells.

One evening, during the feast celebrating the coronation of Louis XV, Jean-Baptiste sensed a perfume that he had not experienced hitherto. This magnificent perfume led him across the entire city to a young girl in the Rue des Marais. Overwhelmed with desire to possess this perfume, Jean-Baptiste strangled her and tore her clothes off, to better savour her scent. He escaped the scene of the crime, but not without planning to become the best perfumer in Paris.

Later, his plan started to come to fruition. He arranged to deliver some goatskins to a master perfumer, Giuseppe Baldini. Visiting Baldini’s shop was overwhelming. It was chock full to the rafters with perfumes, unguents, pomades, herbs and oils, and had a laboratory with a wealth of essences.

Baldini scoffed at his offer to come and work as an apprentice, but he was quick to convince the master that he could formulate the most delicious perfumes. He started by replicating Amor and Psyche, a perfume by Pelissier for which all Paris was clamouring. Then he improved on it. At Baldini’s, he was hungry to learn all of Baldini’s techniques, and Baldini was well rewarded by his efforts. Of course, the magnificent scents that he invented were sold to the adoring Parisiennes under Baldini’s name.

Despite his success, Jean-Baptiste was frustrated by his inability to capture the scent of objects like glass and stone. More importantly, he would have liked to replicate the smell of the young girl in Rue des Marais. Baldini confided to him that there were other, more sophisticated techniques that were used, and that these could be learned in the city of Grasse.

It wasn’t long before Jean-Baptiste left Baldini’s house and set out to learn these techniques.

As soon as he had left Paris, Jean-Baptiste felt a certain well-being. At first, it was the experience of fresh air, away from the stench of Paris, but after awhile, he noticed that what he really disliked was people themselves. As a result, he wandered into the mountains of Auvergne and became a recluse for a period, living in an imaginary kingdom of scents.

Eventually, he set out for Grasse, and there he found work as a perfumer-apprentice. His goal was to create a perfume that was not only human, but superhuman – so powerful that anyone who inhaled it would fall under its spell.

One day, he sensed, far away, the odour of a young girl. This girl was the beautiful Laure Richis, daughter of the consul. Jean-Baptiste knew that he absolutely needed to possess this scent, but she was still too young. He knew that it would take two more years for her pheromones to have the time to ripen and be perfect for his perfume.

During this time, twenty-four murders were committed in Grasse. Each time, a beautiful young virgin was murdered, and her hair was cut off. Terror was the order of the day, and fathers were at a loss as to how to protect their daughters from the murderer who took only the best.

One night, it was time for the twenty-fifth. Jean-Baptiste stealthily climbed into the bedchamber of Laure Richis. He killed her quickly with a blow to the head, wrapped her in oiled cloths to extract her scent, cut her hair off, and removed her chemise to preserve the odours therein.

When the news of Laure’s death spread throughout Grasse the next day, the citizens decided to make every effort to capture and bring to justice her murderer. After several days, they ended up at Jean-Baptiste’s house, where they dug up the hair and chemise, as well as those of other victims.

Jean-Baptiste was summarily arrested and condemned to death.

His execution was fixed for five o’clock that afternoon, and the good people of Grasse arrived early in the morning, so as not to miss a minute of the spectacle.

As he ascended the scaffold, Jean-Baptiste sprinkled a little of Laure’s scent on him. The crowd went wild and abandoned all reason. They could see no reason why this pure and innocent man should be executed. Love was in the air, and Jean-Baptiste was the god who had brought it.

It couldn’t last, of course, so Jean-Baptiste headed for Paris before the effect on the crowd had worn off. He ended up in the old neighbourhood where he had been born.

Tired of his own solitude, and after the exhilarating experience in Grasse where he was adored by the crowd, he just wanted to be loved. But none of this was possible without his perfume. He was nothing without it, in the eyes of the world.

He sprinkled the remainder of Laure’s essence on himself, and was immediately surrounded by an adoring crowd. This time though, they advanced on him and, after they were finished, there was nothing left. He had disappeared