ALDOUS HUXLEY: LES CORBEAUX DE PEARBLOSSOM

WITH FEW EXCEPTIONS I have limited myself to English language books on We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie. However, for the sake of completion, I am compelled to mention (via reader and illustrator Maral Sassouni) a French language edition of Aldous Huxley's The Crows of Pearblossom illustrated by Beatrice Alemagna. Alemagna, an Italian-born artist whose works have been published in Italy, France, and the United States, has four two-page spreads available on her website, albeit in a frustratingly small size. It is amazing how one text can create three such striking and different illustrations.

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CHINUA ACHEBE: HOW THE LEOPARD GOT HIS CLAWS NEW EDITION

IT IS ALWAYS EXCITING when a well-deserving book comes back into print, and while I will always remain fond of the original illustrations, it's hard not to take special notice when the illustrator is Mary "I-illustrated-this-little-series-called-Harry-Potter" GrandPré. The book is Chinua Achebe's How the Leopard Got His Claws, which I wrote about quite extensively in May 2010 during my Chinua Achebe series. The new edition comes out in September and has a surprisingly extensive preview available on Amazon. Thanks to Susan Kusel over at Wizards Wireless for the tip.

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ALDOUS HUXLEY: THE CROWS OF PEARBLOSSOM

In his lifetime, Aldous Huxley was considered one of the great thinkers, a man who preached pacifism, the mystical possibility of sensual experience beyond that of the five senses, and the value of hallucinogenics to enter ecstatic states. Best known for his novel Brave New World (1932), Huxley wrote eleven novels, plus short stories, poetry, essays (one collection, The Doors of Perception, famously lent its name to the rock band The Doors), dramas, screenplays, and one piece for children The Crows of Pearblossom (written in 1944, published posthumously in 1967).

The English-born Huxley moved to the American southwest in 1937 at the age of forty-three, alternating his time between Los Angeles, California and, starting in 1941, Llano in Antelope Valley, Mojave Desert, where he had moved for his wife Maria's health. His sister-in-law's family lived in the nearby town of Pearblossom, and the Huxleys were often visited by their young niece and nephew, Olivia and Siggy. For Christmas in 1944, Huxley presented Olivia with the short story The Crows of Pearblossom, which mentioned her brother and herself, as well as their neighbors.

"ONCE UPON A TIME there were two crows who had a nest in a cottonwood tree at Pearblossom." At the bottom of the tree lives a snake, and every afternoon at three o'clock--while Mrs. Crow is at the store--he slithers up the tree and swallows whole whatever eggs are in the nest.

This goes on for a year, two hundred and ninety seven eggs we are told, until one day Mrs. Crow comes home from the store earlier than usual. She catches the snake in the act. "'Monster!" she cried. 'What are you doing?' Speaking with his mouth full, the snake answered: 'I am having breakfast.'" He then slithers  down the tree and gets back in bed.

When Mr. Crow comes home, Mrs. Crow demands that he kill the snake. Mr. Crow refuses. Accused of being a coward, he replies "'I never said I was scared. All I said was that I didn't think your idea was a very good one. Your ideas are seldom good, I may add.'" So he goes off to see his friend Owl, a "thinker," and wise, of course. Owl has a plan.

Owl leads Mr. Crow through all of the actions of making clay decoy eggs. They shape the clay from "Mr. Yost's alfalfa patch," they fire the clay in the chimney on "the roof of Olivia's house," and they paint it--"'lucky that Siggy has been doing some painting around the place"--pale green with black spots, "exactly like real eggs."

The next day, the crows leave the artificial eggs in their nest, and then go about their usual daily activities. Sure enough, the snake slithers up at three o'clock and swallows the two clay eggs whole. He's so proud of himself that he even sings a song about the fact that he can eat the eggs even though he has no wings or legs. After the song is finished, however, he notices something's wrong. The eggs have not broken before reaching his stomach, and he now has a terrible stomach ache. He twists himself up in  his agony, tying himself to the tree.

When Mrs. Crow returns from the store, she gives the snake a long lecture about eating other people's eggs. "Since that time, Mrs. Crow has successfully hatched out four families of seventeen children each. And she uses the snake as a clothesline on which to hang the little crows' diapers."

AFTER RECEIVING The Crows of Pearblossom as a gift, the five-year-old Olivia returned the manuscript to her uncle requesting that he illustrate it. The manuscript remained in Huxley's house until it burned down several years later. Fortunately, Olivia's neighbors the Yosts, mentioned in the story, had a copy that they preserved. In 1967, four years after Huxley's death, Random House published the story as a picture book with art by the legendary Barbara Cooney, who had already won the first of her two Caldecott Awards.

Nicholas Murray, in his 2002 biography Aldous Huxley, claims the tale as a pacifist fable since the snake is "defeated by intelligent strategy rather than by being killed." But in the end the snake is still dead, so that seems a bit of a stretch. He also mentions "There is possibly a touch of self-mockery in the character of Mr Crow: 'This is serious,' he said. 'This is the sort of thing that somebody will have to do something about,'" apparently something Huxley would have said. In truth, considering the cause of its composition, the story is nothing more than an excellent children's story, one that is well polished and worth reading.

And fortunately, it has just come back into print in an edition illustrated by the great Sophie Blackall, illustrator of the Ivy and Bean series and The Big Red Lollipop. Olivia, for whom the tale was written, provides an afterword signed Olivia de Haulleville. (In the 1967 edition, the note says that she is now Mrs. Yorgo Cassapidis.) "I still live in the desert, near Joshua Tree National Park, and have my own two children...My brother Siggy's daughter now lives in the Yosts' old house, and this story is read to her three children."

The background information for this post comes from the historical note at the back of the 1967 edition, and the almost identical note written by the recipient of the story, Olivia de Haulleville, for the 2011 edition. I also consulted the Nicholas Murray biography Aldous Huxley.

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WARREN CHAPPELL: PETER AND THE WOLF FOLLOW UP

MY LAST POST on Warren Chappell's music series, a series which includes three titles by John Updike, was a link to a full scan of Chappell's Peter and the Wolf. A little over a month later, Stephanie of Our Little Library posted in the comments that she had a 1973 paperback edition with extensive differences from the first edition I had scanned. Stephanie has just posted images of the 1973 edition and pointed out all of those differences. Again, it is amazing to see how an artist (or perhaps a publisher in this case?) edits, reimagines, or repurposes art from edition to edition. Thanks, Stephanie.

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GERTRUDE STEIN: TO DO: A BOOK OF ALPHABETS AND BIRTHDAYS

AFTER THE SUCCESS OF THE WORLD IS ROUND, Gertrude Stein immediately wrote a second children's book, To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays. Far more difficult than The World Is Round, her publisher William R. Scott rejected the manuscript when he received it in 1940. Stein then shopped the book around to many publishers, and through the support of her good friend Carl Van Vechten and the literary agent Margot Johnson of Ann Watkins, Inc., Stein eventually placed the book in 1942 with Harrison Smith, the English-language publisher of Babar. Problems with the illustrations, and the general difficulty of publishing during World War II, caused the book to never be released. The text without illustrations was eventually published by Yale University Press in 1957 as part of the Yale Edition of the Unpublished Writings of Gertrude Stein.

TO DO is a rambling set of anecdotes and stories and poetry structured around the alphabet. Each letter brings with it a set of children's names, "Francis, Fatty, Fred and Fanny." "M was Marcel, Marcelle, Minnie and Martin and N was Nero, Netty, Nellie and Ned." "Q is for Quiet, Queenie, Quintet and Question." The children are then either born on their birthday or not born on their birthday or any day could be their birthday or today is their birthday. Some of them die horrifically, drowned after only being introduced at the top of the page, and sometimes the story is about a horse. There is more rhyming and wordplay and nonsense than in The World Is Round with no overarching narrative, so the book can be opened at random and read without problem. Such as the end:

     "It would be sad to be all alone every birthday so that is what they all say the ten and the hundred and the thousand and the ten thousand and the hundred thousand and the million and the billion they say oh Zero dear Zero how hear oh we say that thanks to the Zero the hero Zero we all have a birthday.
     Hurray.
     And so that is all there is to say these days about Alphabets and Birthdays and their ways."

IT IS HARD TO IMAGINE what a child would make of To Do, which is perhaps why it never appeared in a children's format. Yale University Press has just released a beautiful illustrated edition with illustrations by the excellent Giselle Potter, illustrator of Toni Morrison's The Big Box. The book sports an introduction by Timothy Young, which is the source of most of this post.

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