I AM PAN!Written and illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein46 pp. Roaring Brook Press. $18.99. (Picture book; ages 5 to 9)  The great author-illustrator Mordicai Gerstein, who won a Caldecott Medal in 2004 for “The Man Who Walked Between the Towers,” often gravitates to myths, legends and folktales, adding his own frisky touch while mining their timeless human dimensions. His newest book, “I Am Pan!,” is as exuberant as you’d expect, and may even have some deep life lessons buried in it. Certainly, young readers or listeners will finish the book with a better understanding of Greek mythology, which these days seems an indispensable feature of kid culture. But mainly it’s pure unadulterated fun without for one moment being pandering — the kind of book called for when, say, a sluggish mood has descended upon story time, and you’re the one in the reader’s seat. With an energetic style that seems to owe as much to Old Hollywood as to modern graphic novels, Gerstein celebrates the often overlooked god of sheep, shepherds, noise and confusion as an irrepressible character without a shred of self-doubt, who brought a bit of needed levity to a family that took itself very seriously indeed.  Gerstein creates a cinematic scope for Pan’s story before the title page has even appeared, as we’re introduced to the ancient Greek setting and cast of characters — Zeus and Hera along with a handful of the more charismatic gods and goddesses of Olympus. In bursts Pan, who turns out to be our narrator. He seems determined to steal every possible glimmer of spotlight. Furry-legged and cloven-hoofed, he’s got curling ram’s horns on his head but big human hands stretched out as if he wants to hug the entire world.  The illustrations, a vibrant mixture of furiously loose pen-and-ink lines and dabs of rainbow-bright color, are laid out in boxes that often partition the pages, comics style — or, perhaps, in the style of movie storyboards. The effect is to heighten the sense of storytelling rooted in the visual (though with the ever verbally agile Gerstein, as much as his illustrations seem to be what’s taking you places, the words are never an afterthought). As Pan tells of being born to a human-seeming mother and her husband, Hermes, the messenger god, the slapstick comedy begins: The midwife is horrified by the baby’s appearance and flees the premises, but Hermes is “so excited he flew right through the roof” to tell Papa Zeus the news. We see red roof tiles flying about as the golden-hued god leaps out into the sky on the way to Olympus.  Pan gambols his way through several more stories, surviving war, heartbreak and vicious Mount Olympus gossip. Gerstein ends with a wonderful gag about Pan’s death, centuries after his peak years, when “people sailed new seas, fought new wars, and worshiped new gods.” Pan claims he announced his own death, just so he and the rest of the gods could retire in peace, free from all the responsibility. He leaves us with a parting reminder that he still likes to incite a little chaos now and then — but when you sense a mood of confusion approaching, “don’t panic!” We’re reminded, not for the first time in the book, that the word itself derives from the mischievous god’s name – another way that learning Greek mythology from a book like this is, perhaps in spite of Gerstein’s best effort at subversive frivolity, eminently useful.
A new book from the Caldecott Medalist Mordicai Gerstein stars the boisterous Pan, that most un-godlike of ancient Greek gods.