What will the Caldecott committee be talking about when it turns its scrutiny to Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen's Sam & Dave Dig a Hole? Maybe the question should be, What WON'T the committee be talking about? Like Yuyi Morales's Viva Frida, this is one discussable book. Though, perhaps, for different reasons.

The art is certainly distinguished — excellent in execution and pictorial interpretation, appropriate in style for the story and mood, with plenty of child appeal. I don't think the quality of the art will be in dispute here. Look how the palette gradually changes from soft and pale and airy in the beginning to dark and stark at the climax/nadir of the boys' adventure and then back to soft and pale at the end. Look at how the considerable white space (well, actually, soft creamy space) at the beginning is gradually encroached upon as the horizon rises and the hole gets deeper. Look at how Klassen makes the earthen landscape so varied and textured and interesting without necessarily drawing our eye to it. Look at the contrast between the softness and texture of the art with the sparseness of the compositions and the clean edges of the white space/tunnel. Both the art and the book design use geometric shapes to great effect. The art, through the tunnel's rectangles (echoed, often, in the upright figures of Sam and Dave) and the pentagons of the gems; the book design through the consistently columnar arrangement of the type. (Sometimes the art is columnar, too. Near the end, particularly. The wide vertical tunnels in the center of the page. The figures falling through space, vertically arranged in the center of the page.)

The interplay between text and art is perfect; this is a true, interdependent picture book. The simplicity and mundaneness of the text ("On Monday Sam and Dave dug a hole"; snacking on chocolate milk and animal cookies) contrasts humorously with the increasing wildness of the situation and exaggerated size of the gems the boys JUST miss as they dig. There's also an implied contrast: between the boys' limited perspective (ie, complete obliviousness) and the reader's omniscient perspective. Not to mention the dog's. That dog Knows All. Klassen's ability to telegraph the dog's bewildered awareness is brilliant: so simply, using just the eyes, whether it's looking at the reader with a "what next?" appeal or directly at the buried, just-missed gems or, at book's end, taking in the anomalies of the backyard in which they have just landed.

Ah, the ending. Yes, we've arrived at the discussable part. What happened?!? Where ARE they? The backyard looks the same, but the details are different: different tree, flowers, weathervane. (And either a different cat or a cat wearing a different collar.) Travis Jonker at 100 Scope Notes put forth a few theories, including It Was All a Dream and — my own favorite — They Have Entered an Alternate Reality. But whatever theory you subscribe to, there is no doubt that this is one open-ended story. (As Sam Bloom put it in his Horn Book Magazine review, "All that’s missing from the trippy conclusion is the theme music from The Twilight Zone. Mind-blowing in the best possible way.") The story has just begun, it seems. What happens after the last page?

And there's the rub. Will this Caldecott committee be intrigued by the possibilities or frustrated by the lack of closure? I hope it's the former. There's so much to appreciate about this child-friendly, carefully conceived and constructed, funny, provocative book.