It’s a Dog’s World : The Exploits of That Famous Canine Poet, Max Stravinsky, Are Delighting All Ages

Unlike that marketing phenom Barney, you won’t find this kid-lit hero’s face plastered on T-shirts, bibs or matching sheet sets. You won’t see him hosting his own sing-along video or endorsing a new cereal made in his image.

Max Stravinsky is simply not that kind of dog poet.

And neither is Max’s creator, Maira Kalman, who is not a dog but who is something of a poet in the tricky puppy-eat-puppy world of children’s literature.

Kalman--whose work has been described as a cross between that of Matisse and Roz Chast, Wallace Stevens and Dr. Seuss--made her kid-lit debut in 1988 when she collaborated with Talking Heads’ David Byrne on “Stay Up Late,” an illustrated book of the rock group’s song of the same name.

Kalman, 45, has gone on to write and illustrate seven more books--three of which star Max, who travels to New York (“Max Makes a Million”), Paris (“Ooh La La [Max in Love]”) and Los Angeles (“Max in Hollywood, Baby”).

Along the way, he meets such memorable characters as the aromatic Madame Camembert, Megalomania Studio head D.B. Darling and Bruno, an architect-in-training waiter who wants to build upside-down houses. (When his friend Marlene worries that in such a house her skirt, to her infinite embarrassment, would fall over her head, Bruno advises: “Wear pants, Marlene.”)

Kalman admits that Max’s adventures serve as a backdrop to her own inner story.

“The books are like a journal of my life,” says Kalman, speaking from her home in Rome. “I’m a sponge, walking around taking pictures and seeing things that are odd and funny. And that’s what ends up being in the book. I mean, nothing much ever happens, really. I have a very boring life, but it’s just pleasant to run into characters and then imagine situations they might get themselves into.”

In addition to peopling her books with characters she has encountered, Kalman includes such notables as Diana Vreeland, Gertrude Stein, the hunchback of Notre Dame and Mona Lisa (both the Leonardo and Duchamp versions).

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Born in Tel Aviv, Kalman moved with her family to New York when she was 4.

“My mother decided that we had to have culture--all good girls have to have culture--and so I started taking piano lessons with this very serious piano teacher, and dance lessons with a children’s ballet teacher. She took us to a million concerts and a million museums.”

Kalman majored in English at New York University, wrote poetry she later decided was terrible, and decided to turn to illustration. Before illustrating and writing children’s books, Kalman worked as an illustrator for various magazines, including National Lampoon.

Far removed from the “Fuzzy Bunny” school of picture books, Kalman’s illustrated inner life suggests an animated Marx Brothers film--one moment a pie in your face; the next, dogs arguing about Schopenhauer.

“It’s not something I do consciously,” she says. “It’s just interesting because I can go back and forth between being stupid and being smart--as much as it is either way. It’s a lot of hard work to be stupid,” she adds, laughing.

“What’s good about Maira is that she never, ever assumes that you’re stupid,” says Lois Sarkisian, owner of Every Picture Tells a Story, a Los Angeles-based book store and art gallery devoted to children’s literature.

“She takes her imaginative trip, and we get to come along where there’s stuff happening on about 24 different levels. A 5-year-old will see one thing, my mother sees something else. The hip people who come into my gallery dressed in leather see something else again.”

And adults--who, perhaps, should be above such behavior--have been known to switch kid-book gifts at the last minute to keep a Kalman book for themselves.

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Sarkisian recalls that film and TV types visiting her gallery would “scream in recognition” over the illustrations from “Max in Hollywood, Baby.”

“Everyone has had an experience with a secretary like the one in Kalman’s book who won’t let anyone into the boss’s office.” (“She gave me the fish eye,” says Max of D.B. Darling’s secretary. “ ‘You’re no Spencah Tracy,’ she drawled, ‘but Mr. Darling will see you now.’ ”)

But are these children’s books really read by children? Yes, says 3-year-old fan Aletha Vassilakis, who thinks that anyone who doesn’t think these books are intended for children doesn’t know good kid lit.

“Kids like books to be dangerous,” she says.

Not to be confused with that which is frightening, Aletha’s idea of dangerous embraces all that cannot be explained--such as why grown-ups would voluntarily sit in a steam bath and how people learn to speak French. (According to Max’s tutor, Charlotte Russe, you put a clothespin on your nose, make your mouth--” ze bouche “--into a little bonbon shape, put your hands on your hips, stamp your foot and say, Non. Non. Non. Non. Non. Non. And Ooh la la.

(“That’s it,” says Russe to Max, “ Ooh la la and non. “).

“Kids are tuned into this kind of humor,” says Los Angeles-based writer Michael Cart. “They don’t live in a vacuum. They watch TV and film, look at magazines, see commercials. As a result, they develop a sensibility for the look and sophisticated tone of these kinds of children’s book.”

Cart says he sees a “bona fide movement” going on in children’s literature, with Kalman’s work at the forefront.

“There is definitely a group of children’s-book writers who are working in what I would call a postmodern tradition--writers like Kalman, Lane Smith, Henrik Drescher. What’s different about Kalman is the irony and sophistication she brings to her work that crowds an already crowded page.”

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Children’s books don’t have to be sophisticated to be well-written, Kalman says, but they do have to be written from the heart.

“A well-written book can be sentimental or funny or serious. But however [it’s] written, the book must feel as though it came from inside a human being. So many books are written, I wouldn’t say cynically, but as though the book were a marketing plan. And you can tell it right away.”

Christina Garcia agrees. As supervisor for children’s services at the Beverly Hills Library, she says many of the books being produced today are market-driven toys rather than readable books.

“These market-driven books are sumptuous, but they often show a lack of respect for the word. A children’s book should be balanced--words and illustrations. The world can be very confusing for children. But a good book--a balanced book--is a little piece of perfection that children can hold in their hands.”

Max’s next adventure finds him in India in an upcoming book called “Swami on Rye.” Kalman explains that after Max’s Tinseltown misadventures as a pampered writer-director (rails director Stravinsky: “I won’t have conversations, I’ll just have monologues. . . . I want more I want more I WANT MORE!”), a pilgrimage to India was the only fitting antidote.

“After L.A., Max yearns to find the meaning of life,” she says. “In addition, his wife, Crepes Suzette, is pregnant, so he’s hit with the enormousness of that situation.”

After India, Max will go to Rome, although Kalman herself plans to return to New York with her family in September.

Recently, Kalman covered the fashion shows in Paris and Milan for Mirabella to create a painted journal. But before Kalman’s piece could be published, the magazine announced it was folding.

“I really like the idea of covering stories with paintings and writing as I did at the Milan and Paris fashion shows. When I get back to New York, I’m going to pursue that kind of work as well.”

And in an inevitable nod to the not-to-be-trifled-with Christmas marketing season, next fall Viking Penguin, Kalman’s publisher, will bring out a Max Stravinsky doll.

“It’s very nicely done,” says Kalman, who insists that no matching sheet sets or sing-along videos are in the works. “It’s just this little guy with a coat, hat, scarf, khaki pants and polka dot underwear with poems in his pocket.”