Mo Willems’ artwork is star of High Museum show

Bottom line: A kid-scaled celebration of the off-kilter personality and work ethic behind their favorite picture books.

These days, art museums are in the necessary business of building audiences. And luring new, younger visitors through their doors is a big part of that campaign. So it make perfect sense that the High Museum of Art is dedicating one current, and two upcoming shows, to children’s book authors.

Few things loom larger over a young child’s life than the books they love. And what better way to create that same sentimentality and affection for a museum than showcasing a favorite author in its galleries?

Award-winning author and illustrator Mo Willems is the first children’s book author to be featured in this High triumvirate.

A sort of mishmash of “Sesame Street” inclusivity, “Where the Wild Things Are” stylization and “Portlandia” hipster absurdity, Willems’ “New York Times” bestseller “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus,” is representative of the Willems way. In the book, a pigeon with the pleading-bullying personality of a young child campaigns to do the unthinkable: drive a bus. Willems has a thing for these kind of improbable situations where absurdity delights the kid brain. He also loves oddball critters: who else but a Brooklyn-based former stand-up comedian would make a grubby city bird the star of a storybook?

But that irrepressible pigeon spewing feathers with rage over his desire to commandeer mass transit is utterly relatable to anyone who’s ever been close to a small child with their similarly demented, mercurial, passionate urges to do things they shouldn’t, from scarfing a plate of cookies before dinner to painting bedroom walls with permanent marker. And what child couldn’t relate to the pigeon’s Wile E. Coyote frustration at being perpetually foiled and frustrated in his ambitions?

“Seriously Silly: The Art & Whimsy of Mo Willems” at the High is a chance for younger audiences (with artworks hung at child-eye level for their edification) to revel in the anarchical, gleeful energy of Willems’ work. Willem’s brand of nonsense is the kind kids eat up in greedy spoonfuls because they often feel confined by the arbitrary and unfair laws of the adult world.

The exhibit also performs a kind of service by showing children that the books they love are the result of many, many sketches and rough drafts. “Seriously Silly” gives children a sense of the wizard behind the curtain and the hard work involved in any worthwhile enterprise.

In addition to showing the rough sketches that will become the essence of Willems’ books featuring his beloved characters Knuffle Bunny, his “Odd Couple” Elephant and Piggie and Leonardo the Terrible Monster, among others — this exhibition invites children to sit at colorful plastic tables in the gallery to gorge on Willems’ books for as long as they like. From those tables to the sugary pastel colored walls decorated with ice cream cones, this kid-scale exhibition may convince Atlanta’s children that their local art museum is a place for them, and perhaps even a substitute for the endangered neighborhood bookshop.