tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1428939901644686732024-03-05T19:45:23.162-05:00We Too Were Children, Mr. BarrieBeing a Compendium of Children’s Books by Twentieth<br> Century “Adult” Authors Currently Out of PrintAriel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.comBlogger116125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-73225868453552317612016-04-11T10:15:00.000-04:002016-04-11T10:15:01.140-04:00BARREN COVE AVAILABLE APRIL 26, 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiTyKEYUyRuK7_T3ANbugWt1-xencO5qiDtImpDTlMtx1nFSZMQoMmlFZuxfVHclrxjaXVdnJdKXr9kTMx8aScniGUwifjtgypQHqFNjIzktLdNyRqYxugK2lxTWQmJd8pzOPHpsYnjN8/s1600/BarrenCove.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiTyKEYUyRuK7_T3ANbugWt1-xencO5qiDtImpDTlMtx1nFSZMQoMmlFZuxfVHclrxjaXVdnJdKXr9kTMx8aScniGUwifjtgypQHqFNjIzktLdNyRqYxugK2lxTWQmJd8pzOPHpsYnjN8/s320/BarrenCove.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
IT HAS BEEN LONG ENOUGH SINCE I last posted on <i>We Too Were Children</i> that I have to admit the blog is defunct. There are still a lot of books I want to highlight, but the amount of work each post takes has become prohibitive. Hopefully, a time will come when I can revive the blog or find other ways to get out new material.<br />
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One last product of <i>We Too Were Children</i> is my article on Ken Kesey's lost novel <i>Tales of Grandma Whittier</i>, which appeared in <a href="http://www.slicemagazine.org/magazine/subscribe/issue/17">Slice Magazine Issue 17</a>. I started to do a series on Kesey's children's books for the blog, and discovered that he had self-published an unfinished serial novel. That discovery led to months of research that culminated in the article, so that article can be considered the final publication of <i>We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie</i>. Please click through to Slice's website to find out how you can get a copy of the magazine.<br />
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My new novel <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Barren-Cove-Ariel-S-Winter/dp/1476797854">BARREN COVE</a></i> will be released on Tuesday, April 26, 2016. The starred review in <i>Booklist</i> called it "A quietly brilliant look at what it means to be human....A modern classic." And <i>Kirkus Reviews</i> said it "Weaves a uniquely dreamy spell and a lingering one. Lyrical, unexpected, and curiously affecting...a story that lodges uneasily in the heart and mind."<br />
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I will be making the following appearances in support of the book:<br />
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April 17, <a href="http://www.bethesda.org/bethesda/bethesda-literary-festival">Bethesda Literary Festival</a> @ The Hyatt Regency, Bethesda, MD<br />
April 26, <a href="http://cornerbookstorenyc.com/">The Corner Bookstore</a>, New York City, NY<br />
April 27, <a href="http://www.mainpointbooks.com/">Main Point Books</a>, Bryn Mawr, PA<br />
April 28, <a href="http://www.atomicbooks.com/">Atomic Books</a>, Baltimore, MD<br />
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Please come out and introduce yourself. I'd love to meet readers of the blog. And if you are a bookstore or a book group that is interested in scheduling an event, please get in touch.<br />
<br />
I will try to update this page occasionally, but the best way to stay up to date is to "Like" my Facebook page <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Ariel-S-Winter-208335272588292/">Ariel S. Winter</a> and to follow <a href="https://twitter.com/ArielSWinter">my Twitter feed</a>.<br />
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Thank you for reading over the years. On to other projects...<br />
<br />Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-22668182832928700472014-12-18T10:58:00.000-05:002014-12-19T10:21:14.738-05:00MARGARET MEAD: AN INTERVIEW WITH SANTA CLAUS<div abp="112" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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MARGARET MEAD HAD THE DISTINCTION, perhaps still has the distinction, of being the most famous anthropologist in the world. Close to the birth of modern anthropology, Mead's landmark book <em abp="58">Coming of Age in Samoa</em> (1928) helped introduce the idea of cultural relativism to the masses. For the rest of her life, even as her work was sometimes questioned, she remained a vocal and visible member of the intelligentsia on a wide range of subjects: sexual mores, parenting, folk traditions, and....even Santa Claus.</div>
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IN DECEMBER 1942, with America's entry into World War II, Margaret Mead became the executive secretary of the National Research Council’s Committee on Food Habits. One of her research assistants was a woman thirteen years her junior named Rhoda Metraux. After the war, Metraux followed Mead to New York to became a graduate student at Columbia University, where Mead was a professor. From that time until Mead's death, the women collaborated on countless papers and books, and starting in 1955, Mead, divorced from her third husband, and Metraux, separated from her husband, moved in together as lifelong partners.</div>
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In 1977, the women decided they needed to answer some of the difficult questions Metraux's three-year-old granddaughter (Mead's goddaughter) had regarding Santa Claus. "Where does Santa come from?" "Where does he live?" "How can Santa be in so many places at one time?"</div>
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<a abp="1983" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6gNYeK09oyv4e5XGo0VBOJjPQmYb1zfzlQauiNzuevhHHIHc3hwE4D3D6A2R1oNVs8XWyFybKVeNO4Ke0Jal_v9UBVn__kEnWxhr9lOvl71RGvWp1QO6F8iCWh5Oxa_DHocqswk7S3c0/s1600/Mead+-+Interview+With+Santa+-+002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img abp="1984" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6gNYeK09oyv4e5XGo0VBOJjPQmYb1zfzlQauiNzuevhHHIHc3hwE4D3D6A2R1oNVs8XWyFybKVeNO4Ke0Jal_v9UBVn__kEnWxhr9lOvl71RGvWp1QO6F8iCWh5Oxa_DHocqswk7S3c0/s1600/Mead+-+Interview+With+Santa+-+002.jpg" height="320" width="203" /></a>The obvious solution was to go to the source. They needed to interview Santa Claus. So they gave him a call. </div>
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MARGARET MEAD AND RHODA METRAUX: Is this <em abp="66">The</em> Santa Claus?</div>
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SANTA CLAUS: I suppose you might say so, yes.</div>
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M & R: Are you really alive?</div>
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SANTA: I certainly am--and very busy these days, too.</div>
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The interview appeared in <em abp="1992">Redbook Magazine</em>, where Mead and Metraux were contributing editors for over fifteen years. It turned out Santa was extremely knowledgeable about his familial history.</div>
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SANTA: I belong to a very big clan and a very old one--a clan of givers. As far as I know, our history goes back at least two thousand years, and maybe much longer, but when you get back that far, it's all hearsay and tales that are almost like fairy tales.</div>
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Pressed to talk about his first ancestor, Santa explained who Saint Nicholas was.</div>
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<a abp="1996" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWAgE-iVR6lpe84G1qZTs95HRwTAnPcSwCoY6SZLSCv41ZTkHgXTU-286zW4oY5dN42fYm-VVrLrqllFe0mkF2CqusLrOD1FHtxkriI5wHnFGxgCp-qLZZuQnz0LG6YaBv3GeaztT3n2c/s1600/Mead+-+Interview+With+Santa+-+004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img abp="1997" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWAgE-iVR6lpe84G1qZTs95HRwTAnPcSwCoY6SZLSCv41ZTkHgXTU-286zW4oY5dN42fYm-VVrLrqllFe0mkF2CqusLrOD1FHtxkriI5wHnFGxgCp-qLZZuQnz0LG6YaBv3GeaztT3n2c/s1600/Mead+-+Interview+With+Santa+-+004.jpg" height="320" width="203" /></a>M & R: But how did he leave Asia Minor and come to Europe?</div>
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(I'm sure that was one of three-year-old Kate's questions.)</div>
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SANTA: Well, there are two different stories about that.</div>
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There were actually many more stories than two. And they included how Santa got conflated with St. Nicholas, how some of the clan "had to pretend to be scary" like Knecht Ruprecht and Klaubach to punish naughty children, how some of the gift-givers were women like St. Lucia in Sweden and Austria and Babushka in Russia.</div>
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M & R: But, Santa Claus, let's come back to you.</div>
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SANTA: Oh, that's an exciting saga in itself. You know my immediate ancestors came to America with Dutch and German families. We were immigrants. And like all the other immigrants, we developed a whole new life style as we became Americans.</div>
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It turned out, in the New World, the Santa clan used airplanes, helicopters, snowmobiles, and speedboats to get the toy deliveries done. But what about the reindeer? Oh, he still kept <em abp="2004">some</em> reindeer, for the sake of tradition.</div>
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SANTA: Besides, there's a legend about a man--or maybe he was a god--who is said to have been one of our earliest ancestors. Thor, his name was, and people say that in the Far North, in midwinter, he used to come rushing down on the wind, bringing snow and ice and driving a team of reindeer. I wouldn't want to forget that, even if maybe it's only a legend.</div>
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(See, Santa proved you could be both jolly <em abp="2007">and</em> academic.)</div>
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In case any children might have gotten confused about the conceit of this history lesson, Mead and Metraux revealed at the end that the phone call was all a dream, and that "gifts that seem to be given freely by wonderful, benign visitors are tokens of happy care given by mothers and fathers."</div>
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WE HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING how satisfied little Kate was with her grand- and godmothers' Christmas story. Sey Chassler, editor-in-chief at <em abp="2019">Redbook Magazine</em>, wrote in the preface to the book edition of <em abp="2020">An Interview With Santa Claus</em> (1978), "we believe [it] will become the new classic Christmas story." <em abp="2021">The New York Times</em> wrote, "If aiming for something in the tradition of 'Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus,' this one disappoints."</div>
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Despite the question as to whether <em abp="2022">An Interview With Santa Claus</em> is appropriate for the intended audience, Mead and Metraux should at least be applauded for adhering to their ideological beliefs. In <em abp="2023">Margaret Mead: Some Personal Views</em> edited by Metraux and released the next year, Mead said:</div>
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<a abp="2052" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMyQQlSGXB5x4gOsyPj5ysFx-ehcxqY1W2RfuKxKoNym5_E63bV-iRaNAOAflqOeMOGcWniYKj4tn04y0CgEeBVftdO3cV3_AN2P7QGVUujBXqR7chCNpwc8gThPROO0KwVSFFus9zTzM/s1600/Mead+-+Interview+With+Santa+-+005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img abp="2053" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMyQQlSGXB5x4gOsyPj5ysFx-ehcxqY1W2RfuKxKoNym5_E63bV-iRaNAOAflqOeMOGcWniYKj4tn04y0CgEeBVftdO3cV3_AN2P7QGVUujBXqR7chCNpwc8gThPROO0KwVSFFus9zTzM/s1600/Mead+-+Interview+With+Santa+-+005.jpg" height="320" width="219" /></a>One thing my parents did — and I did for my own child — was to tell stories about the different kinds of Santa Claus figures known in different countries. The story I especially loved was the Russian legend of the little grandmother, the <em abp="2025">babushka</em>, at whose home the Wise Men stopped on their journey. They invited her to come with them, but she had no gift fit for the Christ child and she stayed behind to prepare it. Later she set out after the Wise Men but she never caught up with them, and so even today she wanders around the world, and each Christmas she stops to leave gifts for sleeping children.</div>
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Mead's hope was that:</div>
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Children who have been told the truth about birth and death will know, when they hear about Kris Kringle and Santa Claus and Saint Nicholas and the little <em abp="2028">babushka</em>, that this is a truth of a different kind.</div>
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As they said at the end of the <em abp="1311">Interview</em>:</div>
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Now it is enough for Kate, and all small children, to learn the legends of Santa Claus. Later, when legend and reality meet in a new way, she will begin to understand, we think, that giving is itself a kind of thank offering.</div>
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FOR MORE INFORMATION on Mead's ideas about Santa Claus, see <a abp="2108" href="http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/12/16/margaret-mead-santa-claus-myth-deception/">Maria Popova's article on <em abp="2109">Brain Pickings</em></a>, which is where I found the quotes from <em abp="2111">Margaret Mead: Some Personal Views</em>.</div>
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For more literary Christmas fun, see my previous holiday posts:</div>
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Pearl S. Buck's Christmas Stories <a abp="2114" href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2013/12/pearl-s-buck-christmas.html">here</a>, <a abp="2133" href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/01/pearl-s-buck-christmas-follow-up.html">here</a>, and <a abp="2137" href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/01/pearl-s-buck-christmas-mouse.html">here</a>.</div>
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<a abp="2116" href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2012/12/jrr-tolkien-father-christmas-letters.html"><span abp="2117" style="color: #993300;">J.R.R. Tolkien's "Father Christmas Letters"</span></a></div>
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<a abp="2119" href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2011/12/eleanor-roosevelt-christmas.html"><span abp="2120" style="color: #993300;">Eleanor Roosevelt's <i abp="2121">Christmas</i></span></a></div>
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<a abp="2123" href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2010/12/merry-christmas.html"><span abp="2124" style="color: #993300;">Warren Chappell's <i abp="2125">The Nutcracker</i></span></a></div>
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<a abp="2127" href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2010/06/ilonka-karasz-wrap-up-twelve-days-of.html"><span abp="2128" style="color: #993300;">Ilonka Karasz's <i abp="2129">The Twelve Days of Christmas</i></span></a></div>
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.</div>
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-9876144459792381412014-09-22T11:19:00.000-04:002014-09-22T11:19:16.445-04:00ISAK DINESEN ON HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I HAVE SAVED THE BEST INTRODUCTION in Michael Di Capua's 1962 series of classic fairy stories for last. Isak Dinesen may now be best remembered for her memoir <i>Out of Africa</i> from the movie starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, but in her lifetime she was known for her Gothic stories. When asked to introduce a collection of her countryman Hans Christian Andersen's stories, rather than write a simple introduction, Dinesen supplied a ghost story, conjuring Andersen's spirit into her childhood room. "I had been told that the Dead were cold, but I have learned from him that there are people who have got such a rich, sweet glow in their hearts that they will always warm up those they touch." Taking Andersen's ghost by the hand, Dinessen follows him as he magics her room and her playthings like the numerous toys brought to life in his stories. Then, pulling him after her, she drags him through his own fictions, excitedly pointing everything out as though he had never seen them before, and he follows with an amused, knowing smile.<br />
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"You can make big things small," the young girl says, "and small things big and everything talk, and I am much braver since I have known you than I was before. Just wait till I grow up, and you will see that because I have known you, I am not even afraid of lions."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYHOhnoENykF11JQScnj-77baIPGFG9rfmoYk8f2SEDmMQAYS1gUtt8E1ZYWXJ1KzuvOJjbVW1K7Mie_NX-6sERmshKHIQ-cyCfNyE1oBxZ9P0du2z9gLX4rtuLS3K353BigxTABjQy4c/s1600/Andersen+-+Thumbelina+-+011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYHOhnoENykF11JQScnj-77baIPGFG9rfmoYk8f2SEDmMQAYS1gUtt8E1ZYWXJ1KzuvOJjbVW1K7Mie_NX-6sERmshKHIQ-cyCfNyE1oBxZ9P0du2z9gLX4rtuLS3K353BigxTABjQy4c/s1600/Andersen+-+Thumbelina+-+011.jpg" height="320" width="232" /></a>Eventually, Andersen is able to convince his passionate fan to return to bed, promising to "go and play with children in other countries," but he asks one last parting question, "which of my tales [do] you like best?"<br />
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The child Dinesen, or perhaps it is the adult writer Dinesen, says "I like them all! Let's ask the other children."<br />
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The stories included in this volume for consideration are "The Tinderbox," "The Nightingale," "The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep," "The Little Match Girl," and "Thumbelina." If a child never read any other Andersen collection, this is a near perfect selection of the essentials. As with the rest of the Macmillan series of fairy tales, the illustrations were provided by Sandro Nardini and Ugo Fontana.<br />
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At the end of her introduction, Dinesen's biography is given:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The greatest Danish writer since Hans Christian Andersen is certainly Isak Dinesen, who is really Baroness Karen Blixen Finecke. She is most admired for her "tales of blood and doom and honor in the old grand manner," tales that she writes in English rather than her native language. From 1914 until 1931 she lived in Africa, where she managed a coffee plantation for ten years before returning to Rungstedlund, her ancestral home in Denmark. She lives there today.</blockquote>
To read the complete introduction--or short story, I would venture to call it--click on the images below.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5MvWmpTU2OpS2XLPKBUVtjoe0VRk9adndCpYZTJi_1MKMEQFnLMfsUxcTzNmg0-rdv9oYS4YzZI8cAE2dMa4nyVVHtvLUtixNl3EDaHMLlLVgUaFo6CaCiJVvlCoYCJa21_Mk-OedipE/s1600/Andersen+-+Thumbelina+-+004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5MvWmpTU2OpS2XLPKBUVtjoe0VRk9adndCpYZTJi_1MKMEQFnLMfsUxcTzNmg0-rdv9oYS4YzZI8cAE2dMa4nyVVHtvLUtixNl3EDaHMLlLVgUaFo6CaCiJVvlCoYCJa21_Mk-OedipE/s1600/Andersen+-+Thumbelina+-+004.jpg" height="200" width="145" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1FBFtOLqr95_-zYuQl70p1nrrBTrSLh5TMJQOmmvw23M6EEjFiR26igO1mxDf4DXgHjjFMlAyfNwpsudy70iT1vAPmKUpPA787JcqtSgIp2QVFP9pwz0lDdL1PkgvcZOukk3nYQov77M/s1600/Andersen+-+Thumbelina+-+005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1FBFtOLqr95_-zYuQl70p1nrrBTrSLh5TMJQOmmvw23M6EEjFiR26igO1mxDf4DXgHjjFMlAyfNwpsudy70iT1vAPmKUpPA787JcqtSgIp2QVFP9pwz0lDdL1PkgvcZOukk3nYQov77M/s1600/Andersen+-+Thumbelina+-+005.jpg" height="200" width="145" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWcAvplIfvKHyp_vAqqyvU0HriT2f6oyBnZk6DTu9c7q9qx3_QT8mERzp9HYnPSuwrbqpOhwTP8lSqHOKwJi2vb9fG_R3SACNXcFFMxQl_cnrXv-UxPcwZH3yLfIQYYvFxofs7MzyHfrI/s1600/Andersen+-+Thumbelina+-+006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWcAvplIfvKHyp_vAqqyvU0HriT2f6oyBnZk6DTu9c7q9qx3_QT8mERzp9HYnPSuwrbqpOhwTP8lSqHOKwJi2vb9fG_R3SACNXcFFMxQl_cnrXv-UxPcwZH3yLfIQYYvFxofs7MzyHfrI/s1600/Andersen+-+Thumbelina+-+006.jpg" height="200" width="145" /></a></div>
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For the previous entries in this series, see:<br />
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<a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/07/elizabeth-bowen-on-ruskins-king-of.html">Elizabeth Bowen on John Ruskin</a><br />
<a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/07/jean-stafford-lion-and-carpenter.html">Jean Stafford on the Arabian Nights</a><br />
<a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/06/john-updike-on-oscar-wildes-fairy.html">John Updike on Oscar Wilde</a><br />
Randall Jarrell on the <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/06/randall-jarrell-golden-bird-and-other.html">Brothers Grimm</a> and <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/06/randall-jarrell-rabbit-catcher-and.html">Ludwig Bechstein</a><br />
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-91582458031499202822014-09-08T21:36:00.000-04:002014-09-08T21:36:36.884-04:00WILD THINGS!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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IF YOU FOLLOW MY BLOG, you are most likely interested in the esoterica of children's books: forgotten classics, eye-opening stories that make you reconsider cherished authors, behind-the-scenes history of children's literature. Three of the biggest bloggers in the children's book world have just released a book that is full of such tidbits, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Things-Mischief-Childrens-Literature/dp/0763651508/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1410225590&sr=8-2&keywords=wild+things"><i>Wild Things!</i></a> by Betsy Bird (<a href="http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/"><i>Fuse #8</i></a>), Julie Danielson (<a href="http://blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/"><i>Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast</i></a>), and Peter D. Sieruta (<a href="http://collectingchildrensbooks.blogspot.com/"><i>Collecting Children's Books</i></a>). It's like sitting around a table with three very amusing (and very amused) experts expounding on what they love, an informal book for causal reading. As my blog remains embarrassingly quiet, <i>Wild Things!</i> is a good alternative. I thank the good people at Candlewick Press for sending a copy my way.<br />
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<br />Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-19473304278392545372014-07-15T14:50:00.001-04:002014-07-15T14:50:57.014-04:00ELIZABETH BOWEN ON RUSKIN'S KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqUHxwAu3HIM30LxtOJOjuzHbMhT8ft95DeSnO0RJKyb2aWXMQrZ2-xw8ZU0wCZqeyBw-1ZfdpTEvRVR5BAmaG6N0WWZPWZbUj2gZ9VTWdjSQl9Ro3-SMTis0xDlazCQY5KZpLxxEM4DA/s1600/Ruskin+-+King+of+the+Golden+River+-+001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqUHxwAu3HIM30LxtOJOjuzHbMhT8ft95DeSnO0RJKyb2aWXMQrZ2-xw8ZU0wCZqeyBw-1ZfdpTEvRVR5BAmaG6N0WWZPWZbUj2gZ9VTWdjSQl9Ro3-SMTis0xDlazCQY5KZpLxxEM4DA/s1600/Ruskin+-+King+of+the+Golden+River+-+001.jpg" height="200" width="145" /></a></div>
JOHN RUSKIN IS BEST KNOWN as a highly influential 19th century art and architecture critic most famous for his three-volume treatise <i>The Stones of Venice</i> (1851-53). It seems natural then that his children's book, his only work of fiction, would appear on <i>We Too Were Children</i>. That's what <i>WTWC</i> is about after all, a towering writer not known for his children's work. However, <i>The King of the Golden River</i> was published in 1850, fifty years before <i>WTWC</i>'s 20th century requirement, making it ineligible for inclusion. Which is why I'm happy to sneak Ruskin in the back door, as the fifth of the books I've covered in Macmillan's 1962 series of fairy tales with introductions by esteemed authors.<br />
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RUSKIN'S TALE IS INTRODUCED by Elizabeth Bowen. Bowen, who went on to win the John Tait Black Memorial Prize for her 1968 novel <i>Eva Trout, or Changing Scenes</i>, was already a literary grande dame when she contributed to the Macmillan series. Her bio reads:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiok3QFU1KioFblIwzQBKSYIspvaShmhdxXRCQmIWIPyGRhs6dtehYoFazBrnMh49_CYX0V27W_m50_Zs8txQibGHNGJ_HaHlYhgsGWRL9H4NhFeI-jYptqEJUAiIBWY30WsxSzh6sulgQ/s1600/Ruskin+-+King+of+the+Golden+River+-+006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiok3QFU1KioFblIwzQBKSYIspvaShmhdxXRCQmIWIPyGRhs6dtehYoFazBrnMh49_CYX0V27W_m50_Zs8txQibGHNGJ_HaHlYhgsGWRL9H4NhFeI-jYptqEJUAiIBWY30WsxSzh6sulgQ/s1600/Ruskin+-+King+of+the+Golden+River+-+006.jpg" height="320" width="232" /></a>Elizabeth Bowen has published five books of non-ficiton (including a memoir of her Dublin childhood), six collections of short stories and eight novels...In the Birthday Honours List of 1948, Elizabeth Bowen was created a Companion of the British Empire.</blockquote>
Bowen's inclusion in the Order of the British Empire, the first order of chivalry to admit women, is testament to the regard with which her work was held.<br />
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Her introduction to Ruskin situates <i>The King of the Golden River</i> in the fairy tale tradition. "You may notice that while no good fairy stories are ever at all the same, many of them have something in common." In Ruskin's case, the fairy tale trope is three brothers, of whom the elder two are reprehensible and the youngest is fair and good.<br />
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There's no princess, Bowen admits, but there are fairies of a sort, "an odd-looking, fussy, bossy pair of old men." They are the South-West Wind, Esquire, who destroy the brothers' farm after the elder two show him no courtesy, and The King of the Golden River, who rewards the youngest brother for his generosity. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuIbtwE9ExtZeKd7kYAF4Chr2LdV2UoGcR7lpikZkK719jWwgpoE1_YLweW-bH4TTf6aN4WKvn-dlle2dxQFroIL5oowvKcwX1fjM3STetj6uFUQkGW00EdyrN8r8t9laoNkm3VCsfsnA/s1600/Ruskin+-+King+of+the+Golden+River+-+008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuIbtwE9ExtZeKd7kYAF4Chr2LdV2UoGcR7lpikZkK719jWwgpoE1_YLweW-bH4TTf6aN4WKvn-dlle2dxQFroIL5oowvKcwX1fjM3STetj6uFUQkGW00EdyrN8r8t9laoNkm3VCsfsnA/s1600/Ruskin+-+King+of+the+Golden+River+-+008.jpg" height="320" width="230" /></a>After addressing the story, Bowen draws attention to the story's setting. "<i>The King of the Golden River</i> (unlike many fairy stories) is <i>not</i> set in a quite imaginary land. This marvelous region of beauties, perils and mysteries is a real one, to be found on the map--Styria, a province of Austria." Bowen explains, "[Ruskin] gloried in natural scenery...He loved to breathe pure air (far from his dim-lit study) and sought it through travel and mountaineering." These life experiences find their way into the story.<br />
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Bowen does not go into any of the historical facts surrounding the composition of the story, which was written by Ruskin at age twenty-two for the twelve-year-old Effie Gray. Ruskin later married Gray, but never consummated the marriage, which was annulled six years later. Those details, while fascinating, wouldn't have been appropriate in a children's book, on the off chance any child were to actually ever read the introduction.<br />
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Regardless of how he came to write it, Ruskin clearly had fun in the composition. The story is five chapters long, much longer than a typical fairy tale. It does have a bit of moralizing, but Bowen is quick to say, "Don't, however, form the idea that John Ruskin 'preached' when he gave us <i>The King of the Golden River</i>. On the contrary: you are about to discover an exciting, semi-magic adventure story, with some eeriness but also some sturdy comedy."<br />
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Ruskin's story is easy to come by having been printed and illustrated many times, but as far as I know, Bowen's introduction has not been in print since the Macmillan edition. I've included the entire thing below. Click on the images to read.<br />
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FOR PREVIOUS ENTRIES on the Macmillan series see:<br />
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<a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/06/randall-jarrell-golden-bird-and-other.html"><i>Tales of the Brothers Grimm</i> translated and introduced by Randall Jarrell</a><br />
<a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/06/randall-jarrell-rabbit-catcher-and.html"><i>Tales of Ludwig Bechstein</i> translated and introduced by Randall Jarrell</a><br />
<a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/06/john-updike-on-oscar-wildes-fairy.html"><i>Tales of Oscar Wilde</i> introduced by John Updike</a><br />
<a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/07/jean-stafford-lion-and-carpenter.html"><i>Tales of the Arabian Nights</i> retold and introduced by Jean Stafford</a><br />
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For more of Sandro Nardini's beautiful art from <i>The King of the Golden River</i>, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/40423298@N08/sets/72157645697245101/">see my Flickr set</a>. If anyone knows anything about Nardini, please let me know. I've been unable to find anything about him.<br />
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-24435606995665354212014-07-07T17:12:00.002-04:002014-07-07T17:12:17.251-04:00JEAN STAFFORD: THE LION AND THE CARPENTER<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjAEMtvxq5-GX7Ua6of11Cl_PNE0b3Eog-F2UIvzKEvAhBMie1Col5Mbynh9ieUP2ETTclEipbtmtkbUGxIHjblaZ7Ptnxf5XpDzZJyPUgpJ5HriBO2EbPfA733YR7wtD1L7aIUiA3WaA/s1600/Stafford+-+Lion+and+the+Carpenter+-+001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjAEMtvxq5-GX7Ua6of11Cl_PNE0b3Eog-F2UIvzKEvAhBMie1Col5Mbynh9ieUP2ETTclEipbtmtkbUGxIHjblaZ7Ptnxf5XpDzZJyPUgpJ5HriBO2EbPfA733YR7wtD1L7aIUiA3WaA/s1600/Stafford+-+Lion+and+the+Carpenter+-+001.jpg" height="320" width="233" /></a></div>
JEAN STAFFORD WAS THE ONLY CONTRIBUTOR other than <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/06/randall-jarrell-golden-bird-and-other.html">Randall Jarrell</a> to write the stories in her volume of fairy tales for Macmillan's 1962 series of oversized picture books, instead of just the introduction. In <i>The Lion and the Carpenter and Other Tales from The Arabian Nights</i>, Stafford's credit reads, "Retold and Introduced by Jean Stafford." Her included bio says: <br />
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"Miss Stafford...is the author of three distinguished and much admired novels (<i>Boston Adventure</i>, <i>The Mountain Lion</i>, and <i>The Catherine Wheel</i>), many short stories that have appeared in <i>The New Yorker</i>, <i>Harper's Bazaar</i> and elsewhere, and <i>Eliphi, The Cat With The High I.Q.</i>, a book for children about her own cat of the same name."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR9atbe_ebeOKgsj9m6z0yO_PBFcdGVEkKHhdA3bwn3_HCbNM7-HqJ61_LrwSkpoQ9Rju8Be6hfH-6fVlIbe9XrFe22I1tnmirwDhjgP_NdEhOs6SZkbiQtBkV5BXyP3GglX1YJjaU9M8/s1600/Stafford+-+Lion+and+the+Carpenter+-+003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR9atbe_ebeOKgsj9m6z0yO_PBFcdGVEkKHhdA3bwn3_HCbNM7-HqJ61_LrwSkpoQ9Rju8Be6hfH-6fVlIbe9XrFe22I1tnmirwDhjgP_NdEhOs6SZkbiQtBkV5BXyP3GglX1YJjaU9M8/s1600/Stafford+-+Lion+and+the+Carpenter+-+003.jpg" height="200" width="140" /></a>Stafford went on to win the Pultizer Prize for fiction in 1970 for her <i>Collected Stories</i>, but when she started working on her own versions of stories from the Arabian Nights for Michael di Capua's fairy tale series in 1962, she was seven years past her deadline for a new novel, and her most recent published novel was over a decade old. Writing the fairy tales was a way to avoid her more serious writing.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc7zdNwp-OpX0zdYAiOA7oRBmdh_Ce92Tl_wr57qdNOqFg228s2sNzNsiff-l4g408nBiubWX0lGpyPv70FN5XhTGUUn0rmfUdECgwc1pK35d5S8G4RGhkIbg1z__8APZgtIcExsIDA6U/s1600/Stafford+-+Lion+and+the+Carpenter+-+004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc7zdNwp-OpX0zdYAiOA7oRBmdh_Ce92Tl_wr57qdNOqFg228s2sNzNsiff-l4g408nBiubWX0lGpyPv70FN5XhTGUUn0rmfUdECgwc1pK35d5S8G4RGhkIbg1z__8APZgtIcExsIDA6U/s1600/Stafford+-+Lion+and+the+Carpenter+-+004.jpg" height="200" style="cursor: move;" width="108" /></a>Which didn't mean that she turned in inferior writing. In the plain language of fairy tales, Stafford retells the stories she selected with good humor and enough excitement for a reader to get lost in the telling. She explains in her introduction the Shahrazad frame narrative--the queen who must keep her husband in a constant state of anticipation by telling one story after another, or be killed in the morning--and that she chose "amazing happenings that are not quite so well known as the strange things that befell Sinbad in his wanderings, or Ali Baba's rapid rise from rags to riches, or the ups and downs of Aladdin's life when he became owner of his magic lamp." The stories are "Prince Kamar Al-Zaman and Princess Budur," "The Sandalwood Merchant and the Sharpers," "The Lion and the Carpenter," and "The Story of Abu-Kir and Abu-Sir."<br />
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In "Prince Kamar Al-Zaman and Princess Budur," we learn of the most beautiful prince and the most beautiful princess in the world, who live many countries away from each other, unaware of the others' existence. A pair of genies, arguing over who is more beautiful, the prince or the princess, transports the sleeping princess to the sleeping prince's chamber so they can compare the two side-by-side. First, the prince, and then the princess wakes and sees the other one sleeping, and falls immediately in love. And once separated again by the genies, the two young lovers pine for each other for years, deathly sick with love until the princess's loyal brother manages to find her love and bring him to her.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhedQHiQmGlg7wWxSt-YfhzZbosjgggM6lCyxocebt5bM3e1Dch03tWZYgt6WIiU1AIiLPhd26V5vLY6L6WZPQo9PwfDm6kJ0uiDDQ9Sab1yfs2ybGQpUcmsXSgm4Rx0Zk1Bfl6v5pHHtc/s1600/Stafford+-+Lion+and+the+Carpenter+-+006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhedQHiQmGlg7wWxSt-YfhzZbosjgggM6lCyxocebt5bM3e1Dch03tWZYgt6WIiU1AIiLPhd26V5vLY6L6WZPQo9PwfDm6kJ0uiDDQ9Sab1yfs2ybGQpUcmsXSgm4Rx0Zk1Bfl6v5pHHtc/s1600/Stafford+-+Lion+and+the+Carpenter+-+006.jpg" height="320" width="229" /></a>"The Sandalwood Merchant and the Sharpers" feels like a long joke. The sandalwood merchant goes to a distant city where he has been told that sandalwood is very valuable. Just before entering the city, a shepherdess warns him, "The people of this town are robbers and rogues, and their favorite sport is hoodwinking strangers." Despite the warning, the merchant is soon tricked out of his sandalwood for the promise of two handfuls of whatever he wishes, is accused of stealing a one-eyed man's eye, promises a cobbler whatever he desires for repairing his shoe, and ends up in debt to a gambler unless he drinks all of the water in the sea. Certain that he has caused his own doom, he meets the shepherdess again, who tells him that there is a wise man who all of the con artists consult at night to have that day's cons judged. The merchant finds this man, and hiding behind a rock, he hears the wise man explain to each of the con men how he could get out of their cons: He can request two handfuls of fleas, one of only males and one of only females, and when the man can't deliver, reclaim his sandalwood. He can demand that he and the one-eyed man each pluck out an eye to have them weighed in order to prove the one-eyed man's claim, and if they are equal in weight he will pay, but if not, the one-eyed man must pay him. Not wanting to be left blind, the man must drop the accusation. He can tell the cobbler that he has driven the sultan's enemies out of the country and that the sultan and his family are safe. If the cobbler says he is unsatisfied by this payment, he will be charged with treason. And he can tell the gambler that he will drink the sea, if the man brings it to him in a bottle. When the gambler is unable to, the merchant will be absolved of his debt. The sandalwood merchant enacts all of these solutions, sells his sandalwood at its proper value, and leaves the city rich.<br />
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"The Lion and the Carpenter" is a story within a story. A duck, "quaking and quacking as if she had had the scare of her life," explains to a pair of peacocks that she is afraid of "the son of Adam." She tells them of meeting a horse, a camel, and a donkey who were all running away from the son of Adam, because of the horrible things he would do to them. A lion prince reassured the other animals, however, promising to protect them all. But when the man, a carpenter, came, he tricked the lion into a box so that even the lion was defeated. The peacocks reassure the duck that the son of Adam can't reach them on their island, and that she should stay with them in safety. But years later, a group of shipwrecked sailors appear and eat the duck. When the men leave, the peacocks agree that the duck died, because he didn't praise Allah enough.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4gIz27Xf0uT6VAT0fecQiNZMFJDHKWWbLsupcE7KMzDhIu3rr_KpTwMjLesxSz6-Qh75GGdZOzYYOVGWtXEuOH-zKGVD-UdYdrm_R6y96g8V7F1dPucBzKJdhT9LVDYq1q2B3O8rC_Xw/s1600/Stafford+-+Lion+and+the+Carpenter+-+008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4gIz27Xf0uT6VAT0fecQiNZMFJDHKWWbLsupcE7KMzDhIu3rr_KpTwMjLesxSz6-Qh75GGdZOzYYOVGWtXEuOH-zKGVD-UdYdrm_R6y96g8V7F1dPucBzKJdhT9LVDYq1q2B3O8rC_Xw/s1600/Stafford+-+Lion+and+the+Carpenter+-+008.jpg" height="320" width="228" /></a>In "The Story of Abu-Kir and Abu-Sir," we are introduced to the nefarious dyer Abu-Kir and his friend, the noble barber Abu-Sir. For the first half of the story, Abu-Kir takes malicious advantage of Abu-Sir. Then, when Abu-Kir is in a position of wealth and power, instead of helping Abu-Sir, the way the barber had before, he has him beaten and thrown in the street. When Abu-Sir rises to a position of wealth and power himself, Abu-Kir accuses him of a plot to kill the sultan, and the sultan orders the good Abu-Sir's death. However, the truth is revealed, and Abu-Kir is rightfully killed instead.<br />
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JEAN STAFFORD's other children's book, <i>Eliphi, The Cat With the High IQ</i>, mentioned above, came out in the same year as <i>The Lion and the Carpenter</i>. Stafford never published for children again<br />
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I will get to <i>Eliphi</i> in a future post, and there are two more volumes in the Macmillan series that I hope to touch upon.<br />
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-5377800869973504012014-06-23T22:18:00.001-04:002014-06-23T22:18:47.703-04:00JOHN UPDIKE ON OSCAR WILDE'S FAIRY STORIES<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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MANY YEARS AGO, in the early days of <i>We Too Were Children</i>, I invoked Rachel Cohen's superb book <i>A Chance Meeting</i>, which describes the ways in which literary lives are intertwined as one writer meets another, in some cases only once, in others in lasting friendships over many years, and that author meets another and so on, drawing a haphazard line through the history of literature. On <i>We Too Were Children</i>, the authors and illustrators might never have met in person, but one book leads to another, which leads to another, which often leads back to another book I have already covered. For example, Nancy Ekholm Burkert, who <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/06/randall-jarrells-grimm-illustrators.html">I most recently wrote about in relation to Randall Jarrell</a>, <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2011/02/john-updike-childs-calendar.html">I first wrote about over three years ago in relation to John Updike</a>. Jarrell contributed translations of two volumes of fairy tales--<a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/06/randall-jarrell-golden-bird-and-other.html">Grimm</a> and <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/06/randall-jarrell-rabbit-catcher-and.html">Bechstein</a>--to a series spearheaded by Michael di Capua at Macmillan in 1962, something I discovered when I set out to write about Jarrell's other children's books. And it wasn't until one of those books was in my hands that I even discovered on the back of the book that it was part of a series, and that one of the other illustrious writers who had contributed to the series, in this case an introduction, was an author I had already covered, John Updike. A "chance meeting" indeed.<br />
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John Updike's introduction, entitled "Forward For Young Readers," graces a volume of three fairy tales by Oscar Wilde. Wilde published two collections of fairy tales in his varied career, many of the stories first appearing in magazines: <i>The Happy Prince and Other Stories</i> (1888) and <i>House of Pomegranates</i> (1891). As Updike reminds us, "Oscar Wilde wrote in a time when grown men wrote very seriously for young readers." Updike, who in 1962 was about to publish his first children's book, wrote his "Forward For Young Readers" just as seriously. He opens with a discussion of the etymology of the word "Fairy," which he uses to segue into the way in which Christianity drowned out pagan beliefs in Europe, leaving only fairy stories, "the substance [of which] is pagan wood, but the taste and glisten is of Christain salt."<br />
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In the modern age, fairy stories become necessary, Updike says, "For if men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money. This danger was not so clear until machines entered the world in force and began to make men resemble them."<br />
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Updike does manage to introduce the actual stories contained in the volume, "The Young King," "The Devoted Friend," and Wilde's most famous children's story, "The Happy Prince," teasing each one with a cryptic image central to each respective story. Then he warns us that the stories, unlike "so many modern books for children," do not "skip the subject of suffering. On the contrary: suffering is exactly what they are about....But," he goes on, "if you dare read them, you will enter a rich and precious world."<br />
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As with all of his writing, Updike brings to his introduction deep intelligence, visceral language, and humor. In some ways, his essay is more enjoyable to read than Wilde's overwrought stories. It is amazing to read in his attached bio that he was only thirty years old when he wrote it. "As the father of Elizabeth, David, Michael, and Miranda," he adds, "he has a special interest in fairy tales and storytelling." His own children's books followed in the subsequent few years.<br />
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Updike included "Foreword for Young Readers" in his first collection of nonfiction, <i>Assorted Prose</i>, but as near as I can tell, the essay is currently out of print. I have scanned the entire thing, and posted it below. If you click into each image, it should be easy to read. It's short, and worth it.<br />
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In addition to Updike and Jarrell, the Macmillan series of "marvelous tales" included introductions by Jean Stafford, Elizabeth Bowen, and Isak Dinesen, which I plan to write about in upcoming posts.<br />
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-74635846944754172962014-06-18T14:35:00.000-04:002014-06-18T14:35:50.531-04:00RANDALL JARRELL: THE GINGERBREAD RABBIT<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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AFTER RECEIVING <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/06/randall-jarrell-golden-bird-and-other.html">RANDALL JARRELL'S TRANSLATIONS for The Brothers Grimm</a>, his editor Michael di Capua suggested that Jarrell try his hand at an original children's story. Intrigued, Jarrell took a notebook to the hammock in his backyard, and with a radio blaring, he composed his own fairy tale, <i>The Gingerbread Rabbit</i>.<br />
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<i>The Gingerbread Rabbit</i> is a variation on the story "The Gingerbread Boy." In Jarrell's version, a young mother makes her daughter a gingerbread rabbit while her daughter is at school. When the mother steps out for a moment, the kitchen implements inform the Gingerbread Rabbit that he is going to be eaten. Frightened by the giant with "dozens of tremendous shining white teeth the size of a grizzly bear's," the Gingerbread Rabbit races out the door with the young mother in pursuit.<br />
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In the woods, the Gingerbread Rabbit meets a fox, who tells the rabbit that he is also a rabbit, and invites him into his den with the intention of eating the Gingerbread Rabbit. A real rabbit comes along just in time, and drags the Gingerbread Rabbit away. He brings the Gingerbread Rabbit to his burrow, where he and his wife, who have "always wanted to have a little rabbit of [their] own" adopt the confectionery bunny. The human mother gives up her chase, and decides she will go home and sew her daughter a cloth bunny instead.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5iAirG3Z2dpypHnBDemAT-moww8jVLFFC6zCJJAGuZ5FdRIqFgnuw5oyxhS5heHbt0tyTwhytH0WpwJ6a0ZtytoBt2JGxCuM6oD65RHbfb629TC3P-n0UujljOKHxg1Z73doxgIKB_uY/s1600/Jarrell+-+Gingerbread+Rabbit+-+004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5iAirG3Z2dpypHnBDemAT-moww8jVLFFC6zCJJAGuZ5FdRIqFgnuw5oyxhS5heHbt0tyTwhytH0WpwJ6a0ZtytoBt2JGxCuM6oD65RHbfb629TC3P-n0UujljOKHxg1Z73doxgIKB_uY/s1600/Jarrell+-+Gingerbread+Rabbit+-+004.jpg" height="320" width="215" /></a>AS FANTASTICAL AS THE STORY SOUNDS, and as openly as it wears its folkloric origins, <i>The Gingerbread Rabbit</i> is built from Jarrell's own childhood, from material he had already mined in his poetry. At the age of eleven, Jarrell's parents separated. His mother returned to Nashville, Tennessee with his brother, while Jarrell remained with his grandparents at their farm in Hollywood. There, his grandparents gave him a pet bunny named Reddy. One traumatic day, the young Jarrell witnessed his grandmother slaughter a chicken. As he describes in his poem "The Lost World:"<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[Grand]Mama comes out and takes in the clothes<br />
From the clothesline. She looks with righteous love<br />
At all of us, her spare face half a girl's.<br />
She enters a chicken coop, and the hens shove<br />
And flap and squawk, in fear; the whole flock whirls<br />
Into the farthest corner. She chooses one,<br />
Comes out, and wrings its neck. The body hurls<br />
Itself out--lunging, reeling, it begins to run<br />
Away from Something, to fly away from Something<br />
In great flopping circles. Mama stands like a nun<br />
In the center of the awful, anguished ring.<br />
The thudding and scrambling go on, go on--then they fade,<br />
I open my eyes, it's over...Could such a thing<br />
Happen to anything? It could happen to a rabbit, I'm afraid... </blockquote>
Jarrell asked his grandmother if she could ever do such a thing to his pet rabbit, and his grandmother reassured him that she never would. Then, after a year on his own at his grandparents, it was decided that he should rejoin his mother and brother. Jarrell didn't want to go, and begged his grandparents to let him stay with them. His appeal was denied, and once he had gone back east, Reddy was slaughtered and eaten for dinner.<br />
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The Gingerbread Rabbit's fear of being eaten is Jarrell's childhood fear for his pet. And his wish to be adopted by a kind older couple, the real rabbits at the end of the book, is Jarrell's desire to stay with his grandparents. But in the picture book, these fears and wishes could be answered in a way they weren't in reality, with a happy ending.<br />
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WHEN JARRELL FINISHED the writing for <i>The Gingerbread Rabbit</i>, he turned his attention to the illustrations. His wife Mary wrote, "Jarrell rather assumed that the writer found some illustrations he liked, told the editor about it, and the illustrator would come running." After seeing <i>The Rescuers</i> by Margery Sharp, Jarrell settled on the illustrator Garth Williams without realizing that the illustrator of <i>Charlotte's Web</i> and <i>Little House on the Prairie</i> might not be an easy illustrator to hire. In the end, di Capua was able to convince the esteemed artist to take on <i>The Gingerbread Rabbit</i>.<br />
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With Williams in Mexico and Jarrell in North Carolina, all communiques were made through di Capua. In July of 1962, Jarrell sent the following guidelines,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The rabbit himself ought to be very sincere and naive and ingenuous, so that his whole body and face express what he feels. The big rabbit ought to be handsome, secure and competent-looking; the mother rabbit should be delicate and demure and beautiful. The fox should be very smooth and flashy, like Valnetino playing W. C. Fields. The little girl's mother should be young (28 or so) and beautiful and kind, just the mother a little girl would want; the little girl should be something any little girl can immediately identify with."</blockquote>
Over the next few months, Jarrell finished writing his second children's book <i>The Bat Poet</i>, begun in the same hammock that had yielded <i>The Gingerbread Rabbit</i>. di Capua wanted Maurice Sendak to do the illustrations, and provided Jarrell with examples of Sendak's work. With Sendak's art as a point of comparison, Jarrel began to doubt his original choice of illustrator. In December of 1962, a disheartened Jarrell wrote to di Capua, "If you could tell Williams how much I liked the pen-and-ink style of <i>The Rescuers</i>, and that I would be enchanted to have <i>The Gingerbread Rabbit</i> somewhat like that, perhaps he'd feel like it."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwj3DeuuB4Ij_Q9XSM9E2wKTbLuosnDu5fqp4h3HPe9Ux8n0M_SWngorYHfToVB3WwlQHembE71Rd854t8DheTWPnTMzf4Gl74_PIZb_iAbmuQ7tFv1oujWUV0VV4BY8pY8aSVlm_X7ts/s1600/Jarrell+-+Gingerbread+Rabbit+-+005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwj3DeuuB4Ij_Q9XSM9E2wKTbLuosnDu5fqp4h3HPe9Ux8n0M_SWngorYHfToVB3WwlQHembE71Rd854t8DheTWPnTMzf4Gl74_PIZb_iAbmuQ7tFv1oujWUV0VV4BY8pY8aSVlm_X7ts/s1600/Jarrell+-+Gingerbread+Rabbit+-+005.jpg" height="320" width="215" /></a>Whatever reservations Jarrell harbored that winter, when nearly finished illustrations for <i>The Gingerbread Rabbit</i> reached him in March of 1963, he wrote:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I'm delighted with the drawings: the gingerbread rabbit's <i>very</i> cute and touching. The fox is wonderful, and the old rabbit in the colored sketch makes me want to be adopted by him...I believe Williams is getting quite inspired and will make a charming book."</blockquote>
<i>The New York Times</i> agreed. Of the finished product they said, "Garth Williams has drawn his landscape and personae in the best possible way, without "side" or innuendo, <i>en punto</i>." They said of Jarrell, "As always, [Jarrell's]
prose here is straightforward, the tone is right, the learning informs
subtly, the sensibility is in control. In short, the tale is in perfect
taste."<br />
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The book, while now considered the weakest of Jarrell's works for children, resonated with readers as well. It remains in print today, a great accomplishment for a first-time children's book author. Without it, there might not have been the three books to come.<br />
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QUOTES FROM JARRELL'S LETTERS come from <i>The Children's Books of Randall Jarrell</i> by Jerome Griswold with an introduction by Mary Jarrell, and from <i>Randall Jarrell's Letters</i>, edited by Mary Jarrell. Additional background information came from <i>Randal Jarrell: A Literary Life</i> by William H. Pritchard.<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-49361922127846345972014-06-04T21:55:00.000-04:002014-06-04T21:55:09.444-04:00RANDALL JARRELL: THE RABBIT CATCHER AND OTHER FAIRY TALES OF LUDWIG BECHSTEIN<span id="goog_332733105"></span><span id="goog_332733106"></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"EVERYBODY has read some of <i>Grimm's Tales</i>," writes Randall Jarrell in his introduction to <i>The Rabbit Catcher and Other Fairy Tales of Ludwig Bechstein</i>, "but it is surprising how few people have read German fairy tales translated from other books." Jarrell sets out to remedy that with his second contribution to Macmillan's series of marvelous tales, three stories by Ludwig Bechstein.<br />
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Bechstein was a contemporary and ardent admirer of the Grimms. When they refused to allow him to produce an abridgment of their work, he chose to write his own book of fairy tales, which was published in 1845. Jarrell: "In his introduction to his book Bechstein calls the fairy tale 'the restless and homeless, floating bird-of-pardise of innocent tradition.'" Bechstein managed to catch that 'bird-of-paradise.' His volume outsold the Grimms' in Germany until the 1890s.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinjxhN8pyNMJLdnaGQYvLEHw-zgUiEY3uLJ5BjWGAx2GNzItAIeRpx7JcWVeb9YXiLs3FAr8mlJNzoFrcK35QMPAenjBkc_LGoqsaROo4Oxy675ppkpyogmKI2xZJndXyQ5j0u5DFmkaA/s1600/Jarrell+-+Rabbit+Catcher+-+007a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinjxhN8pyNMJLdnaGQYvLEHw-zgUiEY3uLJ5BjWGAx2GNzItAIeRpx7JcWVeb9YXiLs3FAr8mlJNzoFrcK35QMPAenjBkc_LGoqsaROo4Oxy675ppkpyogmKI2xZJndXyQ5j0u5DFmkaA/s1600/Jarrell+-+Rabbit+Catcher+-+007a.jpg" height="273" width="400" /></a>From the introduction through the translations, Jarrell's Bechstein is far more relaxed than <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/06/randall-jarrell-golden-bird-and-other.html">his Grimm</a>. Where the Grimm introduction quoted at length from a German poet and mentioned the H-bomb, the Bechstein introduction includes revealing intimacies: "I never heard anyone called a heavenly man before, but it's already become a family phrase in my family." Throughout the whole book, the reader can sense how much fun Jarrell is having.<br />
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The tales are "The Rabbit Catcher," "The Brave Flute-Player," and "The Man and the Wife in the Vinegar Jug." Jarrell says, "The stories, even down to their last bit of style, are as plain and homely as can be." But he means this as a compliment. His love for the stories is apparent. Except he takes especial care to make clear that the "Fisherman and His Wife" variant "The Man and the Wife in the Vinegar Jug," holds nothing to the original.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCSQ1d8PuSzI54dwNVn3darlOyI143LFWg1KjgiHvNq26tAhU8Rv89bu36-DMEcXjxYBCsoJxwyqoaJl093KgVT9KBnIQcGSo4gtMpLZjpNV9GRI7AdjYUITqP8CXff4AmE4XSaHieylg/s1600/Jarrell+-+Rabbit+Catcher+-+011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCSQ1d8PuSzI54dwNVn3darlOyI143LFWg1KjgiHvNq26tAhU8Rv89bu36-DMEcXjxYBCsoJxwyqoaJl093KgVT9KBnIQcGSo4gtMpLZjpNV9GRI7AdjYUITqP8CXff4AmE4XSaHieylg/s1600/Jarrell+-+Rabbit+Catcher+-+011.jpg" height="153" width="200" /></a>"THE RABBIT CATCHER" is of the variety of tales where a young suitor is set a series of impossible tasks in order to earn the right to wed the princess. When given the first task--to lead one hundred rabbits out to the fields, let them graze for the day, and bring every single one back--he asks for a day to think it over. As he is fretting over this challenge, a little, old lady gives him a whistle and tells him, "'Take good care of it, it will do a lot for you!'" With the whistle in hand, he agrees to the challenge.<br />
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But the king and princess are concerned that the boy might succeed. Each comes to him in the field in disguise asking to buy a rabbit, so that he will not have all one hundred when he returns. First he convinces the princess to kiss him in exchange for a rabbit, and then the king to kiss his donkey. But as each leaves, he uses the magic whistle to recall the bunnies, and at the end of the day he brings all one hundred in.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNZo_bgZlE743rjI1Wnl_WiK1h44yjcUe328d13zUoApCdA9zd2V3dwiAoW44t11SGF1AV64iO9B0l5WsBndMoguQqJ261PxXK3J02Sn0fm6r8azLMKaiRcgR1uOTAxduOZnHg3pKIxcQ/s1600/Jarrell+-+Rabbit+Catcher+-+019.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNZo_bgZlE743rjI1Wnl_WiK1h44yjcUe328d13zUoApCdA9zd2V3dwiAoW44t11SGF1AV64iO9B0l5WsBndMoguQqJ261PxXK3J02Sn0fm6r8azLMKaiRcgR1uOTAxduOZnHg3pKIxcQ/s1600/Jarrell+-+Rabbit+Catcher+-+019.jpg" height="267" width="320" /></a>The whistle helps with the next task--to separate one hundred bushels of peas and a hundred bushels of lentils in the dark--by bringing a swarm of ants who complete the challenge, and the last--to eat a roomful's worth of bread in a night--by bringing "so many mice..that it was almost sinister."<br />
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Having completed the challenges, the king tries one last trick to try to cheat the boy out of the princess's hand: he must fill a bag of lies. But when the boy starts to say that he had made the king kiss a donkey, the king cuts him off, says the bag is full, and relinquishes his daughter.<br />
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"THE BRAVE FLUTE-PLAYER" tells of a musician who stops for the night at a farm, where he learns that the nearby abandoned castle is home to a treasure that no one can claim, because it is haunted and everyone who has gone in at night has never returned. Unafraid, the musician goes into the castle, and the farmer, left at home, can gauge how the musician is faring, because the sound of his flute drifts down to the farm.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4xyp4JznfkmSS6JEzD5bPv3oEubbudoGZbrsrZf7smVIVrAjUeiSlJsxP5y1fQpsZ6mT6xPkF1y8f33YRXFR88hhJo0m5_0pmXH1o-1O-0THL7NE43NXV-5h5xRCQvfqdT9uEG6BMzAY/s1600/Jarrell+-+Rabbit+Catcher+-+029.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4xyp4JznfkmSS6JEzD5bPv3oEubbudoGZbrsrZf7smVIVrAjUeiSlJsxP5y1fQpsZ6mT6xPkF1y8f33YRXFR88hhJo0m5_0pmXH1o-1O-0THL7NE43NXV-5h5xRCQvfqdT9uEG6BMzAY/s1600/Jarrell+-+Rabbit+Catcher+-+029.jpg" height="283" width="320" /></a>At eleven o'clock, two men carry in a coffin and leave. The musician opens the coffin--the farmer is sure he is dead, because the music has stopped--takes out the little shriveled corpse, sets it by the fire, and soon it comes to life. The wrinkled, little man leads the musician to a room full of gold, and tells him if he can evenly divide the gold in two, half would belong to him and half would go to the poor. The musician divides the piles of coins, but there is one left over. He cuts it in half, making him the first to succeed in one hundred years, and the old man grants him the money. The musician begins to play, and the farmer is overjoyed at the sound.<br />
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"THE MAN AND THE WIFE IN THE VINEGAR JUG," as Jarrell said in his introduction, is a variant of "The Fisherman and His Wife." In this, it is a golden bird who grants each of the couple's escalating wishes, and for no apparent reason. And unlike the fisherman who is driven to each new wish by his greedy wife, here both members of the couple seem equally eager to first live in a cottage, then in the city, then as nobles, as king and queen, and at last as God. With that request, "<i>Bang</i>, all their magnificence went down to the devil, and both of them, the man and his wife, were back in the vinegar jug again."<br />
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<a href="http://www.edizioniets.com/Priv_Foto_Libro/3765.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.edizioniets.com/Priv_Foto_Libro/3765.jpg" height="200" width="151" /></a><i>THE RABBIT CATCHER</i>'S BEAUTIFUL ILLUSTRATIONS were done by Ugo Fontana, a legend of children's book illustration in his native Italy. Fontana was selected this year as the first illustrator to be spotlighted in the annual exhibition 'The Lost Treasure' at the Bologna International Children's Book Fair. A <a href="http://www.edizioniets.com/Scheda.asp?N=9788846738844&from=ricerca">200-page bilingual book</a> was released in conjunction with the festival. If anyone has this book and is trusting enough to lend it to me, I will happily devote a blog post to this amazing illustrator. To see all of his illustrations for <i>The Rabbit Catcher</i>, view <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/40423298@N08/sets/72157645009480392/">my Flickr set here</a>.<br />
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For information on Ludwig Bechstein, I consulted <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Tellers-Tale-Classic-Writers/dp/1438443544/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1401839311&sr=8-2&keywords=teller%27s+tale+lives"><i>The Teller's Tale: Lives of the Classic Fairy Tale Writers</i></a> edited by Sophie Raynard.<br />
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NEXT: Jarrell's Original Children's Books <br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-24187028218252837282014-06-03T17:43:00.000-04:002014-06-03T17:43:50.071-04:00RANDALL JARRELL'S GRIMM: THE ILLUSTRATORS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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WHEN NANCY EKHOLM BURKERT'S picture book <i>Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs</i> was published in 1972, John Gardner writing in <i>The New York Times</i> said, "People who care about book illustrations have known for some time that one of the best illustrators to be found is Nancy Ekholm Burkert...[and] her new book...transcends her previous accomplishments." He then goes on to say, "Looking at [the illustrations], you wish they were the first pictures you'd seen in your life...Though...I would <i>not</i> wish that the first fairy tale I ever heard was a version by Jarrell. I find his version anything but faithful."<br />
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Gardner's harsh criticism, however, must be a minority opinion if the caliber of illustrators who have chosen Jarrell's text is any indication. In addition to Burkert, the legendary Maurice Sendak and the Caldecott-winning illustrator Margot Zemach have also taken turns illustrating the stories that originally appeared in Jarrell's <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/06/randall-jarrell-golden-bird-and-other.html"><i>The Golden Bird and Other Fairy Tales</i></a>. The Brothers Grimms' tales are a children's book illustrator's delight, a chance to showcase her art the way that an actor puts his stamp on Shakespeare. And artists of Burkert, Sendak, and Zemach's stature can take their pick of translations, or even warrant new translations. But all three chose Jarrell, and through his translations created some of their best work.<br />
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LONG TIME READERS OF WTWC,MB, will remember <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2011/02/nancy-ekholm-burkert.html">how highly I revere Nancy Ekholm Burkert</a>. <i>Snow-White</i> has become her legacy, appallingly the only one of her books (save her most recent) that remains in print. This is because the American Library Association awarded Burkert the prestigious Caldecott Honor for it, recognizing it as one "of the most distinguished American picture books for children."<br />
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The book in its first edition was 12.25" x 9.25" making it a little too big for my scanner. So my scans, as it seems are most of the scans available online, are slightly cropped. The good news is that you can easily see the illustrations as they are meant to be seen by <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Snow-White-Seven-Dwarfs-Brothers-Sunburst/dp/0374468680/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401808711&sr=8-1&keywords=snow-white+burkert#reader_0374468680">buying the book</a> now.<br />
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MAURICE SENDAK, who needs no introduction, was Jarrell's primary illustrator, illustrating three of Jarrell's four original children's books. In 1962, when Jarrell turned in his Grimm translations, editor Michael di Capua was so happy with them that he thought about commissioning a larger translation from the poet. di Capua approached Maurice Sendak about illustrating the expanded Grimm, but before the project progressed any further, Jarrell turned in his original story <i>The Bat-Poet</i>. di Capua convinced Sendak to illustrate the new book, and plans for a new Grimm were put on hold. When Jarrell died in 1965, the Grimm book had never begun.<br />
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Several years later, Sendak and the Austrian-born author Lore Segal started work on their own Grimm. Growing out of the earlier project, four of Jarrell's five translations were included: "The Fisherman and His Wife," "Hansel and Gretel," "The Golden Bird," and "Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs."<br />
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In his preparatory notes for the illustrations for "The Fisherman and His Wife," (the woman pointing at the rising sun above; right: preliminary sketches) Sendak wrote, "No fish! No hut! No palace! Her <span class="st">à</span> la Grafina Potatska! Yes!" Grafina Potatska, an idiotic Polish count, was what Sendak's mother called his father when she was angry with him. The woman's expression is his mother's. The puppy on the bed is Sendak's golden retriever Io.<br />
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Sendak found that the more familiar tales were harder to illustrate. The single illustration for "Snow White" took over six months with several iterations. The illustration for "Hansel and Gretel" took two weeks. His goal with each illustration was "catching that moment when the tension between story line and emotions is at its greatest." For "Snow White," he focused on the conflict between the older generation and the young generation. For "Hansel and Gretel" he tried to capture the moment "the very second before she performs her fearless deed."<br />
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There are twenty-three other stories in Sendak's Grimm, entitled <i>The Juniper Tree and Other Tales from Grimm</i> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Juniper-Tree-Other-Tales/dp/0374339716/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401819256&sr=8-1&keywords=juniper+tree">still in print</a>. Sendak said of the book, "It was a watershed book for me, one that solved a great many technical and emotional problems...a hard job, which took many years of preparation and concentrated effort."<br />
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ON MARGOT ZEMACH'S DEATH, Maurice Sendak said, "Margot not only revivified the American picture book, but was one of the very few who helped elevate it to an art form." Awarded the Caldecott Medal in 1974 for her book <i>Duffy and the Devil</i>, she also received two Caldecott Honors in the 1970s. In 1980, Zemach published her rendition of Jarrell's telling of <i>The Fisherman and His Wife</i>. On its appearance, Kirkus Review said, "'If <i>The Fisherman and His Wife</i>' must be illustrated, let it be by Margot Zemach--who has the comic-cataclysmic range, the vigor, the intelligence for the task."<br />
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Kirkus comments on Jarrell's translation as well, quoting his "well-chosen words....His is a less patterned telling than, say Wanda Gag's--richer in language, fuller in incident."<br />
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All of Zemach's illustrations for the book are brilliant, overflowing with energy and details that make the story her own. Unfortunately out of print, I have posted many more illustrations on <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/40423298@N08/sets/72157644583219860/">my Flickr set here</a>.<br />
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IN UPCOMING POSTS, I will further explore Sendak and Jarrell's collaborations as well as work by some of the other artists who have worked on Jarrell's children's books. For background information on Maurice Sendak's work in this post, I consulted <i>The Art of Maurice Sendak</i> by Selma G. Lanes.<br />
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-90011715980513472702014-06-02T21:19:00.000-04:002014-06-02T21:19:06.219-04:00RANDALL JARRELL: THE GOLDEN BIRD AND OTHER TALES OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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IN THE WINTER OF 1962, Randall Jarrell, the former United States Poet Laureate and recipient of the 1961 National Book Award for Poetry, was bedridden with hepatitis. Too tired to read his own mail, his wife Mary sat by his bedside opening and reading aloud the get-well cards and other correspondences that arrived each day. One of those letters was a note on Macmillan letterhead from a young children's book editor the Jarrells had never heard of named Michael di Capua. di Capua was planning a series of over-sized picture book collections of fairy tales with new introductions by literary stars such as John Updike, Isak Dinesen, and Elizabeth Bowen. Having noted Jarrell's repeated references to the Brothers Grimm in his poetry, di Capua wanted Jarrell to contribute a selection of tales from the Brothers' folktales. Energized by the prospect in a way he hadn't been for weeks, Jarrell sat up and asked Mary to bring him a copy of the complete tales in German. He chose five stories--<i>Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs</i>, <i>Hansel and Gretel</i>, <i>The Golden Bird</i>, <i>Snow-White and Rose-Red</i>, and <i>The Fisherman and His Wife</i>--and began translating while still in bed.<br />
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It is no surprise that di Capua thought of Jarrell for the Grimm entry to his series. Jarrell's poems include "The M<span class="st">ä</span>rchen," the German word for folktales, which is subtitled "(Grimm's Tales)," "Cinderella," "The Sleeping Beauty: Variation of the Prince," and dozens of others that refer to the folk stories. Jarrell uses the tales to explore the ways in which childhood forges identity, but even more so, to understand how a person can live in the modern world of machines and atomic weapons, and still find a home and family. As he says in his introduction to the <i>The Golden Bird and Other Tales</i>:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibP7JcwhcXH5WOJ6V8NfVOhJ61x_m5HtumNhMo8BrtqC8tcWQZ_rUesSf9VMDADBhR1lDaHf6GyJTWdbbay-PmWHhBII2BXmazyz3clXcXsOwLZ1fXMxhl4vUUpysArOqX2pTtu_8G344/s1600/Jarrell+-+Golden+Bird+-+015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibP7JcwhcXH5WOJ6V8NfVOhJ61x_m5HtumNhMo8BrtqC8tcWQZ_rUesSf9VMDADBhR1lDaHf6GyJTWdbbay-PmWHhBII2BXmazyz3clXcXsOwLZ1fXMxhl4vUUpysArOqX2pTtu_8G344/s1600/Jarrell+-+Golden+Bird+-+015.jpg" height="245" width="320" /></a>"As you read the stories they remind you of what the world used to be like before people had machines and advertisements and wonder drugs and Social Security. But they remind you, too, that in some ways the world hasn't changed; that our wishes and dreams are the same as ever. Reading <i>Grimm's Tales</i> tells someone what we're like, inside, just as reading Freud tells him. <i>The Fisherman and His Wife</i>--which is one of the best stories anyone ever told, it seems to me--is as truthful and troubling as any newspaper headlines about the new larger-sized H-bomb and the new anti-missile missile: a country is never satisfied either, but wants to be like the good Lord."</blockquote>
The rest of Jarrell's introduction is devoted to a poem by the German poet Eduard M<span class="st">ö</span>rike, in which M<span class="st">ö</span>rike reads <i>Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs</i> to a child, and comes to the realization that he has a fairytale wish: to have his own wife and children. Jarrell never had children of his own, but helped raise Mary's two daughters from a previous marriage, so it is easy to imagine how M<span class="st">ö</span>rike's wish resonated with Jarrell.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvpmWMnooiIQmZzON9YaDeifXcz5cI4onWKI5HzldAAP8KFRHlGC9VwWNfKNK-tcgUTIjFh3inaXQa75f6XkqXLS_IxehfzKLYT1d3tXlt6VmxVQ14Ck7H2OJVBda35kxEInwiYvnthkQ/s1600/Jarrell+-+Golden+Bird+-+021.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvpmWMnooiIQmZzON9YaDeifXcz5cI4onWKI5HzldAAP8KFRHlGC9VwWNfKNK-tcgUTIjFh3inaXQa75f6XkqXLS_IxehfzKLYT1d3tXlt6VmxVQ14Ck7H2OJVBda35kxEInwiYvnthkQ/s1600/Jarrell+-+Golden+Bird+-+021.jpg" height="320" width="232" /></a>IT WASN'T JUST THE SUBJECT MATTER, however, that attracted Jarrell to the Grimm project. He was also a greater lover of the German language. His wife Mary once said, "I came into Randall's life after Salzburg and Rilke, about the middle of Mahler; and I got to stay through Goethe and up to Wagner." Mary clearly felt that Jarrell's life could be defined by his German influences. As Jarrell himself wrote, "Till the day I die I'll be in love with German." But some of that passion relied on the mysteries of the language for him. He never spoke German, and understood it only well enough to labor
through his translations with the assistance of a German/English
dictionary. "My translations of the stories," he wrote in his introduction, "are as much like the real German stories as I could make them." Comparing them side-by-side with other translations of the tales, it seems that Jarrell was very faithful. <br />
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But when a reader chooses a version of the fairy tales to read, the illustrations are sometimes more important than the translations, and Jarrell was fortunate to have such an incredible illustrator in Sandro Nardini. While his paintings might be overly idyllic at times, the lush colors, and evocative Medieval setting of the stories make Jarrell's book beautiful to look at as well as to read. To see more of the illustrations from the book, head over to <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/40423298@N08/sets/72157644574260177/">my Flickr account</a>. And look for samples of other illustrators who have chosen Jarrell's text for their own versions of the fairy tales in an upcoming post.<br />
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<span class="st">FOR THIS POST, I consulted <i>The Children's Books of Randall Jarrell</i> by Jerome Griswold with an introduction by Mary Jarrell, <i>Randall Jarrell's Letters</i> editd by Mary Jarrell, <i>Randall Jarrell: A Literary Life</i> by William H. Pritchard, and </span>"Jarrell and the Germans" by Richard K. Cross.<br />
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-65817807811294232652014-01-08T20:02:00.001-05:002014-01-08T20:02:26.511-05:00PEARL S. BUCK: THE CHRISTMAS MOUSE<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5FOXaKpo2b84Jst5dFRBYzP2dHI8maArUsFekzpdp4VzUXElDha8Axe6GwmLTHOM9ev7muj54104trjRUaJMKD-qFPPxiyvQkJ7cnxEtMBvGI8Sa7767qTkp1Oi_mC7YP0qE8iBiOZDE/s1600/Buck+-+Christmas+Mouse+-+001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5FOXaKpo2b84Jst5dFRBYzP2dHI8maArUsFekzpdp4VzUXElDha8Axe6GwmLTHOM9ev7muj54104trjRUaJMKD-qFPPxiyvQkJ7cnxEtMBvGI8Sa7767qTkp1Oi_mC7YP0qE8iBiOZDE/s1600/Buck+-+Christmas+Mouse+-+001.jpg" height="320" width="247" /></a>TALK ABOUT GETTING a lot of mileage out of one story. We have already looked at <i>Christmas Miniature</i> by Pearl S. Buck as it appeared in <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2013/12/pearl-s-buck-christmas.html"><i>Family Circle Magazine</i> and <i>Once Upon a Christmas</i></a>, and then as it appeared as <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2014/01/pearl-s-buck-christmas-follow-up.html">a stand-alone book and in <i>A Gift for Children</i></a>. Well in Great Britain in 1958, <i>Christmas Miniature</i> was published again under the title <i>The Christmas Mouse</i> with new illustrations by Astrid Walford. From the back of the book: "The delicate and perceptive line and wash drawings by Astrid Walford are among the loveliest work she has ever done."<br />
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There are a few minor differences between the U.S. and U.K. editions. For some reason the bicycle becomes a tricycle. The flashlight on the back of the book is translated as a torch, but within the book remains a flashlight. And the British spellings of words like pajamas have been predictably adopted.<br />
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Below are a sample of Walford's illustrations. To see them all visit <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/40423298@N08/sets/72157639555967663/">my Flickr set</a>.<br />
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COMING SOON: More Pearl S. Buck<br />
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.<br />
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<br />Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-34590637094961796272014-01-07T21:41:00.003-05:002014-01-07T21:41:39.687-05:00PEARL S. BUCK: CHRISTMAS FOLLOW-UP<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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SHORTLY BEFORE CHRISTMAS, I wrote about several of <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2013/12/pearl-s-buck-christmas.html">Pearl S. Buck's Christmas stories for children</a>. At the time, I was still waiting to get my hands on some other editions of the stories, and promised I would post scans as soon as I did. Well the books came in...<br />
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<i>Christmas Miniature</i> and <i>The Christmas Ghost</i> were both published as books by The John Day Company with illustrations by Anna Marie Magagna almost immediately after the stories appeared in <i>Family Circle Magazine</i>. Magagna was at the start of an illustration career that would go on to include editions of <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>, <i>Little Men and Little Women</i>, <i>Five Little Peppers</i> and many others. Her drawings for <i>Christmas Miniature</i> were shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. in 1958.<br />
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In addition to her accomplishments in the world of publishing, Magagna is possibly best known as the exclusive fashion illustrator for the high-end women's store Henri Bendel starting in 1969 throughout the early 1970s. A selection of her fashion drawings was exhibited in a one woman show last year.<br />
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From <i>Christmas Miniature</i>: <br />
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From <i>The Christmas Ghost</i>:<br />
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Just after her death in 1973, The John Day Company put out a collection of Pearl S. Buck's children's stories called <i>A Gift for the Children</i>. Despite <i>Once Upon a Christmas</i> having appeared only the year before (see my previous post for scans from that book), both <i>Christmas Miniature</i> and <i>The Christmas Ghost</i> were included each with yet another set of illustrations, this time by Elaine Scull.<br />
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<i>Christmas Miniature</i>: <br />
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<i>The Christmas Ghost</i>:<br />
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Not all of Buck's Christmas stories were illustrated so many times, but all of them had multiple lives. I now have several other Christmas books in hand as well as these, so even though Christmas is behind us, bear with me as I stretch the holiday into January in my upcoming posts. To see even more of Anna Marie Magagna's illustrations for these books, view my Flickr sets for <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/40423298@N08/sets/72157639534787145/"><i>Christmas Miniature</i></a> and <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/40423298@N08/sets/72157639535046295/"><i>The Christmas Ghost</i></a>. <br />
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-14637979946675665642013-12-23T21:15:00.000-05:002014-01-28T11:40:18.952-05:00PEARL S. BUCK: CHRISTMAS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKOWKCRR2GuhVLAFTbCKgm-U79J-Il3RwN6P2YpFrZH1btdwZRJAaLTkHuzFFnTDEBTMHSUZlwxRzG7uNsxpy-gK6lf9MYQ0kUk58Vhy0t8NobTRrBOHv66YpD4g0HvnI7XqaMpyfnm_Y/s1600/Buck+-+Christmas+Day+in+the+Morning+-+Collier%27s+12-55+-+004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKOWKCRR2GuhVLAFTbCKgm-U79J-Il3RwN6P2YpFrZH1btdwZRJAaLTkHuzFFnTDEBTMHSUZlwxRzG7uNsxpy-gK6lf9MYQ0kUk58Vhy0t8NobTRrBOHv66YpD4g0HvnI7XqaMpyfnm_Y/s1600/Buck+-+Christmas+Day+in+the+Morning+-+Collier's+12-55+-+004.jpg" height="488" width="640" /></a></div>
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PEARL S. BUCK WON THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE in 1938 <span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">"for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces."</span> Her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize winning novel <i>The Good Earth</i>, detailing peasant life in China, remains a perennial classic. Born to American Southern Presbyterian missionaries, Buck moved to China at the age of three months and lived there until she returned to the United States for college. Despite growing up in a country that did not celebrate Christmas, Buck's family and the families of other American missionaries, along with the English who lived in the British Concession, made Christmas with all the joyous trimmings of home: trees and holly, stockings and presents, parties and feasts. "From such memories of my Chinese childhood," Buck wrote, "it is no wonder that when I had an American home of my own, complete with husband and children, every Christmas was as joyous as we could make it."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcHrHylBghLRMVRB5EEWv3B9ZlfHlrxBg9TKeJ6qV05ahb4HrdOE5TMD4cGUi9c-ZoY7kSrfUHIRVxWi53ipCHd_ytgnw1RQG5YkDnRcfWRblsSPKGKDwLOjNd5PaC6k2JcJkEJJUkpdol/s640/FCcvr.12.56.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcHrHylBghLRMVRB5EEWv3B9ZlfHlrxBg9TKeJ6qV05ahb4HrdOE5TMD4cGUi9c-ZoY7kSrfUHIRVxWi53ipCHd_ytgnw1RQG5YkDnRcfWRblsSPKGKDwLOjNd5PaC6k2JcJkEJJUkpdol/s640/FCcvr.12.56.jpg" height="400" width="297" /></a>For Buck, a large part of that celebration was telling stories, many of which she recorded and published in magazines and as books. "I told my children many stories when they were small enough for bedtime stories, and each year they chose one to make into a book. The Christmas stories, of course, were always special." They included stories such as "A Certain Star," "The Christmas Ghost," "The Christmas Mouse," "Christmas Day in the Morning," and many others, which appeared in special Christmas issues of magazines like <i>Good Housekeeping</i>, <i>Family Circle</i>, <i>Ladies' Home Journal</i>, and<i> Collier's</i> before being reissued as books.<br />
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In "Christmas Miniature," a 1956 special insert in <i>Family Circle</i> with art by the Walt Disney Studio, six-year-old Sandy makes the midnight trip downstairs "not indeed to peep at the Christmas tree but only to see what time it was." In so doing, he finds his cat Snips about to eat a mother mouse hiding behind the miniature manger under the tree. He grabs the mouse first, who bites him to escape his grasp, and dashes under the couch to return to her babies. The story was published as a book the next year with illustrations by Anna Marie Magagna, and included in Buck's <i>Once Upon a Christmas</i> with illustrations by Donald Lizzul (seen below).<br />
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"The Christmas Ghost," which first appeared in a 1960 issue of <i>Family Circle</i> with illustrations by Gyo Fujikawa, tells the story of Jimpsey, a young boy whose family is celebrating their first Christmas in their new farm house after leaving the city. Mr. Higgins, the hired hand, tells Jimpsey that the ghost of the former owner Timothy Stillwagon walks from the barn to the bridge over the brook every Christmas Eve. When Jimpsey goes out in the middle of the night to see, he only finds Mr. Higgins there, who explains that it is the memory of Timothy Stillwagon that walks with him those nights, and that is what he meant by ghost.<br />
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Buck's own gardener "always insisted that the ghost of Old Devil Harry did walk every Christmas Eve at midnight from the big red barn to the bridge, to meet the ghost of a former crony with whom he used to get drunk each Christmas Eve." In the story, Mr. Higgins and Timothy Stillwagon meet to admire each other's Christmas trees. Like "Christmas Miniature," "The Christmas Ghost" appeared as a book almost immediately with illustrations by Anna Marie Magagna. The story was included in <i>Once Upon a Christmas</i> as well.<br />
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A story that Buck for some reason did not include in <i>Once Upon a Christmas</i> is "Christmas Day in the Morning," a story that first appeared in <i>Collier's</i> in 1955 (see art at top). "Christmas Day in the Morning" tells of how Rob, the eldest son of a farmer, realizes that the best gift he can give his father for Christmas is to wake up extra early and do the milking before his father has even gotten out of bed. This act grew out of the realization that his father truly loved him when he overheard his father saying to his mother how much he hates to wake Rob in the mornings. When his father finds the milking done, they hug in the darkness, unable to see each other's faces, but communicating their mutual love better than they have ever done before.<br />
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"Christmas Day in the Morning" was not strictly a children's story when it was published in <i>Collier's</i>, but it was made into a picture book posthumously in 2002 with some light editing, which removed the adult Rob's memories of his dead wife as well as his dead father. Illustrator Mark Buehner was inspired to illustrate the story after his own children woke up in the middle of the night one Christmas Eve to clean the entire downstairs floor of his house after hearing Buck's story at church, a testament to how touching Buck's work remains decades after her death.<br />
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THESE THREE STORIES are really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Pearl S. Buck's Christmas stories for children. That's an understatement when it comes to Pearl S. Buck's children's books on whole, one reason that I have waited so long to tackle her on the blog. I had hoped to have more editions of these stories and some others before Christmas this year, but I waited a bit too long to secure them in time, so there will be some follow up posts possibly into the new year. As a result, I made a very rare exception to one of my rules, which is to have borrowed some scans, from <a href="http://learning2share.blogspot.com/2008/12/pearl-s-bucks-christmas-miniature.html"><i>I'm Learning to Share!</i></a> for the "Christmas Miniature" <i>Family Circle</i> cover, and from <a href="http://estatesalechronicles.blogspot.com/2013/12/another-ghost-of-christmas-past.html"><i>The Estate Sale Chronicles</i></a> for the "Christmas Ghost" cover. In both cases, the original blogs have the entire stories scanned and available to read, so please do click through. The rest of the scans are my own.<br />
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If you are looking for more Christmas fun, check out previous year's posts:<br />
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<a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2012/12/jrr-tolkien-father-christmas-letters.html">J.R.R. Tolkien's "Father Christmas Letters"</a><br />
<a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2011/12/eleanor-roosevelt-christmas.html">Eleanor Roosevelt's <i>Christmas</i></a><br />
<a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2010/12/merry-christmas.html">Warren Chappell's <i>The Nutcracker</i></a><br />
<a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2010/06/ilonka-karasz-wrap-up-twelve-days-of.html">Ilonka Karasz's <i>The Twelve Days of Christmas</i></a><br />
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.<br />
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<br />Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-81173597805739161512013-10-21T12:18:00.000-04:002013-10-21T12:18:40.812-04:00WENDY WASSERSTEIN IN THANKS & GIVING<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2013/10/wendy-wasserstein-pamelas-first-musical.html"><i>PAMELA'S FIRST MUSICAL</i></a> was Wendy Wasserstein's only children's book<i>,</i> but it wasn't the only thing she published with children as the intended audience. She contributed to Marlo Thomas's 2004 book <i>Thanks & Giving All Year Long</i>.<br />
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Thomas is most famous as the creator of the 1972 classic book and album <i>Free to Be...You and Me</i>, an anthology of songs and stories by celebrities meant to teach that it is okay to break normal gender stereotypes. Thomas has since used the format in several other books, the most recent of which is <i>Thanks & Giving</i>. The title really says it all with regards to this book's message, although some of the entries seem a stretch. (Matt Groening's <i>Life in Hell</i> bunny finds a dollar on the sidewalk and buys a banana split?)<br />
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Wasserstein shares a bedtime conversation she had with her daughter Lucy Jane, who was four at the time. In "The Rotten Tomato," Lucy Jane asks for a bedtime story about a rotten tomato. Wasserstein wants to tell a story about a good tomato. Lucy Jane is willing to allow a good tomato to be in the story, but the rotten tomato has to win. They go back and forth with Wasserstein spelling out why being a "good" tomato is better than being a "rotten" one. As you would expect from Wasserstein, the scene is quite funny. (Click on the scans below to read.) Lucy Jane illustrated the story.<br />
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Wasserstein did have work included in one other anthology intended for young people, <i>33 Things Every Girl Should Know</i>, but the essay comes from one of her collection <i>Bachelor Girls</i>, and was not conceived of as a children's story. <br />
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-58537326724209277692013-10-17T21:01:00.000-04:002013-10-17T21:01:24.173-04:00WENDY WASSERSTEIN: PAMELA'S FIRST MUSICAL<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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WENDY WASSERSTEIN IS BEST KNOWN as a playwright. Her 1988 play <i>The Heidi Chronicles</i> won the Pulitzer Prize, the Tony Award, the Drama Desk Award, and the New York Drama Critics Circle. The Tony was the first ever awarded to a female playwright. Her subsequent play <i>The Sisters Rosensweig</i> was then nominated or won almost all of the same prizes. Over her career, she had at least ten plays appear on and off Broadway.<br />
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But despite theater being her home, Wasserstein also wrote in almost every other form available. She wrote a movie, a novel, essays, memoirs, books of non-fiction, teleplays, and, of course, a children's book. <i>Pamela's First Musical</i> is, no surprise, about theater. Illustrated by Andrew Jackness, the set designer for Wasserstein's play <i>Isn't It Romantic?</i><i>, </i>Wasserstein wrote <i>Pamela</i> in the hope that "[my] book would inspire children to fall in love with musicals in the same way [I] had." Dedicated to her niece Pamela (who was in high school at the time the book was published), it tells the story of Pamela's whirlwind ninth birthday, when her Aunt Louise takes her into New York to see her first musical.<br />
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AUNT LOUISE MIGHT just as well be called Auntie Mame. She is a clothing designer who goes around saying "Ooooooo, dahling." "(You can tell whether Aunt Louise designed your blue jeans because they are all signed Oooooooh, Dahling on the back pocket.)" While "all of Pamela's friends at school knew grown-ups who went into the city every day to work...Pamela's aunt Louise actually <i>lived</i> there." She also seems to know everybody who is anybody.<br />
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After a stop back at her apartment to change "out of her driving clothes into her theater clothes," Aunt Louise drags Pamela to the Russian Tea Room. "'The Tea Room is simply <i>the</i> place to have lunch before your first musical.'"<br />
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There they run into the world-famous dancer Bearish Nureyjinsky, who is the first in a list of theatrical celebrities with oddly familiar names that Pamela meets. At the theater, there are the stars Nathan Hines Klines and Mary Ethel Bernadette, the producer Mr. Bernie S. Gerry, choreographer Miss La Tuna, composer Mr. Finnsical, book writers Betty and Cy Songheim (with dogs Roger and Heart), set designer Candita Ivey Zippers, and Jules Gels, the light designer. (Pamela also gets the usher Gladys's autograph on her Playbill.)<br />
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Of course, Pamela is entranced with the play. It tells the generic love story, of Billy and Ginger falling in love just before World War II, divided by the war, but reuniting in the South Pacific where Ginger's friend rescues Billy from pirates. Okay, so maybe that last part isn't so generic. The whole thing ends with "a reprise of Pamela's favorite song," and a standing ovation.<br />
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After meeting the stars, "the old stage door man waved to Pamela to come stand onstage in the empty house. 'This is the ghost light,' he explained. 'This means the theater always stays lit for all the people who ever performed here. It also means you can come back anytime.'"<br />
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That night Pamela recreates the play at home with her dolls before falling asleep and dreaming of "producing, writing, choreographing, designing, and directing hundreds of dancing girls, parades of tapping men...and a cast of thousands, maybe millions."<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ce/Wendy_Wasserstein.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ce/Wendy_Wasserstein.jpg" width="320" /></a>LIKE AUNT LOUISE, Wendy Wasserstein knew everybody. The back cover of <i>Pamela's First Musical</i> is blurbed by Meryl Streep, Angela Lansbury, Kevin Kline, Glen Close, Cy Coleman, Chita Rivera, Carol Channing, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Gregory Hines, Bernadette Peters and others. But despite knowing theater, and knowing everybody, Wasserstein found she didn't know children's books. In an essay for <i>The New York Times</i> about the book tour for <i>Pamela's First Musical</i>, she wrote, "When I look back on my first foray into children's literature, it seems an act of complete naivete and hubris at once." First, she is surprised how similar the children's book business is to theater "in all its ambition, difficulty and quirkiness":<br />
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"The boffo book chains of the Barnes & Noble and Borders variety
appear to be the Broadway of children's books departments, complete with
sets, lights and sizable audiences. There are even over-the-title stars
like "Eloise," "Madeline," "Clifford"; and of course the proven
box-office talents of Maurice Sendak, Faith Ringgold and Lane Smith."</blockquote>
As she continues to tour she learns that "touring with a
children's book required acting, teaching and stand-up skills beyond my
playwright's training." It didn't help that, out of town, when she asked audiences of children if they had seen any musicals, only about a quarter of them had if she was lucky. It wasn't until she was back in New York, where "even the boys like musicals [and] the stars of "Pamela's First Musical,"
Nathan Hines Klines and Mary Ethel Bernadette, are immediately
recognizable," that she felt comfortable with the crowd.<br />
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<a href="http://archive.broadwaycares.org/images/events/pamela-08-002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://archive.broadwaycares.org/images/events/pamela-08-002.jpg" /></a>WITH MODERN PICTURE BOOKS like <i>Pinkalicious</i> and <i>Fancy Nancy</i> getting adapted into musicals, it is only natural that a picture book about musicals got the musical treatment. Sometime around the book's 1996 release, lyricist David Zippel (who wrote the lyrics for Disney's <i>Hercules</i> and <i>Mulan</i>) “called [Wasserstein] up and
said, ‘let’s do a television movie of it.'" Wasserstein liked the idea, and they enlisted Cy Coleman, the three-time Tony winning composer of <i>Sweet Charity</i>, <i>City of Angels</i> and <i>The Will Rogers Follies</i>, who had blurbed the picture book. In 1998, Playbill announced that the piece would be an ABC Sunday night movie.<br />
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In 2002, the first public offering of material related to the work was released when Cy Coleman included the main theme from <i>Pamela's First Musical</i> <a href="http://www.broadwayworld.com/vermont/videoplay.php?colid=27240">"It Started With a Dream" </a>on his album of the same name. By that time, the musical had transformed into a stage show, a work-in-progress version of which was shown to industry people through Lincoln Center Theater in 2003. Pamela's age was changed, new subplots about prospective stepmothers and stepsisters were added, but at base it was still about going to see a musical with Aunt Louise. In October 2004 it was announced that Goodspeed Musicals would stage a version in 2005, but Cy Coleman died in November 2004, and the Goodspeed performance was cancelled. The team picked themselves up, and prepared for another performance at California Theaterworks in 2005, but Wasserstein's battle with lymphoma forced that production to be cancelled as well. Wasserstein died in early 2006 at the age of fifty-five.<br />
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<a href="http://archive.broadwaycares.org/images/events/pamela-08-014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="http://archive.broadwaycares.org/images/events/pamela-08-014.jpg" width="320" /></a>David Zippel was not going to let that be the end of Wasserstein's last play. <i>Pamela's First Musical</i> was virtually complete when Coleman died. All it needed was a venue. At last, on May 18, 2008, Broadway Cares staged a concert of <i>Pamela's First Musical</i> at Town Hall. Kathy Lee Gifford, Joel Grey, Tommy Tune and many others made cameos. Proceeds benefited Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Wendy Wasserstein's own charity, Theater Development Fund's Open Doors Program. You can see <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKMvlPV1wZM">a performance from that afternoon here</a>.<br />
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The real Pamela Wasserstein was in attendance. She told Broadway Cares, “Really it’s Wendy, Cy and David’s tribute to Broadway...I
know Wendy and Cy would be so happy. In fact, I just know they’re
here!” <br />
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I CONSULTED Julie Salamon's biography <i>Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein</i>, Wasserstein's essay "Way Off Broadway With Pamela" from the June 30, 1996 edition of <i>The New York Times</i>, and <i>Playbill</i>'s website. Much of the information regarding the musical <i>Pamela's First Musical</i>, as well as the photos from the Town Hall performance come from <a href="http://www.broadwaycares.org/page.aspx?pid=359">Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS own website</a>. The photo of Wendy Wasserstein is from Wikipedia.<br />
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-90108010652153948842013-10-08T20:08:00.000-04:002013-11-08T12:14:19.124-05:00THE WORLD IS ROUND BACK IN PRINT<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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LONG TIME READERS might remember a series <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2011/05/gertrude-stein-world-is-round.html">I did almost two and a half years ago on Gertrude Stein's children's book <i>The World Is Round</i></a>. There have been many editions over the years, in many different formats, with different illustrations, all of which I examined then, all of which were out of print. But now thanks to Harper Design, <i>The World is Round</i> is back in print in a 75th Anniversary Edition that features the original illustrations, complete with pink paper and blue text, on nice, heavy paper stock. Illustrator Clement Hurd's son Thacher Hurd, who is also a children's book writer and illustrator, provides a new foreword detailing the publication history of the book along with reminiscences of his father at work. But more importantly, Edith Thacher Hurd's afterword, which originally appeared in a limited collector's edition in 1986 is included, containing correspondence between Hurd and Stein during the creation of the book. The only thing I would have liked to see in addition are samples of Hurd's redrawn illustrations for the 1966 edition, but that criticism is extremely nitpicky. In DVD terms, this is really the Special Edition with Bonus Features, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Stein's children's book.<br />
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.<br />
<br />Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-77283127683355053152013-08-16T16:10:00.000-04:002013-08-16T16:10:01.777-04:00PATRICK EATS HIS PEAS BY GEOFFREY HAYES<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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REVIEWING NEW BOOKS is a little off topic for <i>We Too Were Children</i>, but I've been so negligent in my blogging that when my friends over at TOON Books asked if I would review one of their newest releases, I said yes. Better something on the blog than nothing, I figured. And it didn't hurt that it was the new Geoffrey Hayes book, because I love Geoffrey Hayes. So I hope you don't mind taking a look with me at his latest, <i>Patrick Eats His Peas and Other Stories</i>.<br />
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Geoffrey Hayes has been making children's books since 1976, and has over forty titles to his credit. His first book, a picture book entitled <i>Bear By Himself</i>, introduced the appropriately-named character Bear, as he enjoyed a quiet day alone. When Bear appeared again two years later, it was in a book that was over one hundred pages and contained five stories, only now Bear had a name: Patrick. This sudden shift in format was one Patrick would undergo several times as Hayes moved the character from publisher to publisher over the years. Patrick sometimes appeared in a picture book, sometimes in a 8x8 book formatted for a spinner rack, other times as a board book, and most recently in comics. Through each of these incarnations, Hayes often reused stories that had appeared in earlier incarnations, sometimes redrawing the stories from scratch. (See the 1976 and the 1998 editions of <i>Bear By Himself</i>, and the 1989 book <i>Patrick Eats His Dinner</i> below.) With the success of his <i>Benny and Penny</i> comics for TOON Books, it was no surprise that Patrick again followed Hayes to a new publisher and a new format, in a mix of redrawn stories and new ones.<br />
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But before Patrick ventured into comics, Hayes garnered critical acclaim (including a Theodor Seuss Geisel Award) for his first foray into the form, his series for young readers <i>Benny and Penny</i>. The <i>Benny and Penny</i> books are masterpieces. Hayes's ability to capture the anxieties, the travails of socialization, and the tribulations of very young children is mind-blowing. Benny and Penny are brother and sister, and their stories take place for the most part in their backyard. They must negotiate playing with each other, meeting new neighbors, playing with friends they don't really like, and braving the dark, all of which they do without adult supervision. Mom is always nearby, and sometimes calls to them from off panel, but really Benny and Penny need to figure things out for themselves. By creating an adult-free world, Hayes allows for his characters and his readers to engage with these social anxieties at an emotional level, the way a child would, and so Benny and Penny and the reader must work through the problem, and find a moral solution. There's none of the heavy-handed guiding message that underpins so many children's picture books. Instead, we get children and situations that ring so true that both children and adults can identify with Benny and Penny, find comfort in recognizing their own insecurities, and learn the lesson by experience rather than by being taught.<br />
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The <i>Patrick</i> TOON books have the same verisimilitude as the <i>Benny and Penny</i> books, but for Patrick, his parents are an ever-present source of security. As a result, Patrick reads as a younger character (even though he gets sent to the store by himself in one of the stories), and his relationship with his parents--his mother in particular--is in some ways the main topic of the books. Yes, Patrick must contend with the childhood annoyances of taking a nap, taking a bath, eating his peas, and many other typical, "Aw, ma, do I have to..." scenarios, but with the exception of a bullying story in <i>Patrick in A Teddy Bear's Picnic</i>, the books are about the interactions between parent and child. The trick then becomes the balance between Patrick's perspective and his parents' perspective.<br />
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<a href="http://www.toon-books.com/uploads/1/2/5/6/12564774/7980521.jpg?270" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.toon-books.com/uploads/1/2/5/6/12564774/7980521.jpg?270" width="213" /></a>In <i>Patrick in the Teddy Bear's Picnic</i>, Hayes manages to tip the balance in Patrick's favor. Mom is there, and a parent reader can recognize her amusement and annoyance at some of Patrick's foibles, but Patrick's experience is the one that both the adult and child reader identifies with. This is in part because Patrick is alone in more of the book than he is in <i>Patrick Eats His Peas</i>. He retrieves a balloon at the park, endures nap time, and takes the aforementioned trip to the store. But it is mainly because Mom's actions are the way in which a child would experience them. She is on the sidelines, almost always placid, happy, and comforting, except for rare, and brief, bursts of annoyance. The focus is on what Patrick is feeling, and Mom, as far as he sees it, is just there as a source of support.<br />
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<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51rSuX7qOCL._SL500_SY300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51rSuX7qOCL._SL500_SY300_.jpg" /></a>In <i>Patrick Eats His Peas</i>, however, the balance tips in the parents' favor, and the book is less satisfying. Here Patrick makes a mess of the leaves his father has just raked, offers similar "help" to his mother in the kitchen, trashes the bathroom during his bath, and insists on making fudge at bedtime. At each of these points, Mom and Dad's expression is highlighted, usually given a full panel to the parent alone, and often in classic cartoon style, with shock lines radiating from her head. This makes the moments feel more like parental observations, than children's conflict. The point seems to be, "Isn't it frustrating (or amusing) when your kid does this?" instead of tackling what Patrick is feeling. In the case of Patrick offering help in the yard and in the kitchen, for example, we don't get the loneliness and boredom of an only child whose parents are both busy. We get the parents' frustration at having their tasks hampered by Patrick's "help." In the end, it makes <i>Patrick Eats His Peas</i> a disappointment. Instead of the insightful parsing of the conflicts of childhood that Hayes is so good at, we get something closer to anecdotes. Is it a bad book? No. It's still Hayes, and therefore better than most children's books. It's just not in the same league as his other TOON books.<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-53134109701139949482013-07-30T20:15:00.000-04:002013-07-30T20:15:33.288-04:00THE LITTLE WOMAN WANTED NOISE BACK IN PRINT<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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ALMOST EXACTLY ONE YEAR AGO, I contributed <a href="http://www.vintagechildrensbooksmykidloves.com/2012/08/guest-post-little-woman-wanted-noise.html">a guest post to <i>Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves</i></a> on the book <i>The Little Woman Wanted Noise</i> by Val Teal with pictures by Robert Lawson. The people over at New York Review Books, who bring wonderful out-of-print books back into print, saw the post and loved what they saw, so they tracked down a copy for themselves. Then they got in touch with me and asked if I had any way of getting in touch with Val Teal's family. At the time, I didn't, but thanks to some internet sleuthing, I managed to actually get in touch with Val Teal's daughter, and to put <i>her </i>in touch with NYRB, and so now, <i>today</i>, a brand new, back-in-print copy of <i>The Little Woman Wanted Noise</i> arrived in the mail. Which means that all of you readers who have spent the last year pining after the book in my post (and those of you who haven't) can buy a new copy now! Well, in a few weeks, when the book is officially released on September 24, 2013. So pre-order! And enjoy.<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-67142333184825350692013-05-07T11:52:00.001-04:002013-05-07T11:52:54.173-04:00SYLVIA PLATH: "THE BULL OF BENDYLAW"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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NONE OF SYLVIA PLATH'S children's books were published in her lifetime, but she did see one children's poem in print: "The Bull of Bendylaw," which appeared in the April 1959 issue of <i>The Horn Book Magazine</i>.<br />
<i><br />The Horn Book</i> is a bimonthly magazine devoted to the discussion of children's literature, along with reviews of children's books, acceptance speeches for major literary awards for children's writers and artists, and occasional poems and stories. The readership includes children's librarians, teachers, children's booksellers, and parents, all of whom use it as a guide for what to read and recommend to children. What that means is, any poem or story published in <i>The Horn Book</i> is likely to reach children through one of these authorities.<br />
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As I've discussed in my previous entries on Sylvia Plath, both Plath and her husband Ted Hughes were actively writing for children in the late 1950s. One of their interests was in folktales and ballads, and they each wrote poems drawn from those influences. When <i>Horn Book</i> editor Ruth Hill Viguers approached the couple, asking each to submit poems for consideration, they were able to send several animal poems, which drew on those traditional sources.<br />
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Viguers had heard of Plath through a neighbor, but it was when her own children came home from school to say that their English teacher, Mr. Crockett (who had also been Plath's high school teacher) had read Plath's work in class that she chose to reach out to the poet. Not long after meeting with Viguers, Plath sent her husband and her own submissions: "Both of us enjoy writing poems about birds, beasts, and fish, so we are enclosing one from each of us, about an otter and a goatsucker..." In a postscript, she adds "We're adding to the zoo a bull and a field of horses." Only the bull was accepted.<br />
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"The Bull of Bendylaw" draws on one of F. J. Child's ballads, and opens with the epigraph:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The great bull of Bendylaw<br />
Has broken his band and run awa,<br />
And the king and a' his court<br />
Canna turn that bull about."</blockquote>
Plath, however, associates the bull with the sea, and in her poem "The black bull bellowed before the sea," and the sea breaks forth and floods the kingdom. Not only can the king's men not turn the bull or sea back, but in the end<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"O the king's tidy acre is under the sea,<br />
And the royal rose in the bull's belly,<br />
And the bull on the king's highway."</blockquote>
The poem was later included in Plath's <i>Collected Poems</i> as the first poem in the 1959 section, where the epigraph is relegated to the notes at the back of the book, and so in the long run, the readership for the poem ended up being adults, but Plath and editor Viguers obviously saw the poem as one that could be shared with children, making it a footnote to any discussion of Plath's writing for children.<br />
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I owe this entire post to the article in the <i>Horn Book</i> from 2005 by Lissa Paul, <i>"Writing Poetry for Children is a Curious Occupation": Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath</i>, which I have cited for all of my Plath entries. And while I did go and see the <i>Horn Book</i> in the library, I was not allowed to take it out, and so the image of the cover comes from the excellent Sylvia Plath website http://www.sylviaplath.info/.<br />
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-79427830503883320262013-05-01T11:39:00.000-04:002013-05-01T11:39:21.219-04:00SYLVIA PLATH: MRS CHERRY'S KITCHEN<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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IN 2000, FABER & FABER launched Faber Children's Classics, a series of books with uniform trade dressings that included works such as <i>The Complete Nonesense</i> by Edward Lear, <i>Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats</i> by T. S. Eliot, and <i>Peacock Pie</i> by Walter de la Mare. In order to round out the list with some exclusive titles, Faber took advantage of the fact that some of its most well known writers had little known children's books. One of the first books in the series was Sylvia Plath's <i>Collected Children's Stories</i>, released in 2001.<br />
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The book is comprised of Plath's two previously released children's books, <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2013/04/sylvia-plath-bed-book.html"><i>The Bed Book</i></a> and <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2013/04/sylvia-plath-it-doesnt-matter-suit.html"><i>The It-Doesn't-Matter Suit</i></a>, along with a new story, <i>Mrs. Cherry's Kitchen</i>.<br />
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<i>Mrs. Cherry's Kitchen</i> was first sketched out in one of Plath's journal entries from either 1957 or 1958 (I have found conflicting dates, and can't find the quote in the 1982 release of Plath's published journals). As quoted by Lissa Paul in her 1995 <i>Horn Book</i> article on Plath's children's work:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgctXrjVxL9gAPXDeW5McFSketAWs1O3esPBlSB2f88NVYIT6uMm8nMAahRBcq0GJY9zRXEeWbWxQYGgt7qgdxI0QiYHlFC6uklAft_ZRJgoXVvyH2ElyazyWT8kdNuw4JbInR3O6XFxW8/s1600/Plath+-+Collected+Children%27s++Stories+-+025.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgctXrjVxL9gAPXDeW5McFSketAWs1O3esPBlSB2f88NVYIT6uMm8nMAahRBcq0GJY9zRXEeWbWxQYGgt7qgdxI0QiYHlFC6uklAft_ZRJgoXVvyH2ElyazyWT8kdNuw4JbInR3O6XFxW8/s320/Plath+-+Collected+Children%27s++Stories+-+025.jpg" width="203" /></a>"Suddenly, Ted & I looked at things from our unborn children's point of view. Take gadgets: a modern pot & kettle story. Shiny modern gadgets are overspecialized--long to do others tasks. Toaster, iron, waffle-maker, refrigerator, egg beater, electric fry-pan, blender. One midnight fairies or equivalent grant wish to change-about. Iron wants to make waffles, dips point for dents; refrigerator tired of foods, decides to freeze clothes, toaster tired of toast, wants to bake fancy cake..."</blockquote>
Plath submitted the story to the children's magazine <i>Jack and Jill</i>, which had previously published one of her husband Ted Hughes's stories, but she didn't have much faith in it. It was with disappointment, but not surprise that she recorded in her journal on January 26, 1958 that the magazine had rejected the story.<br />
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MRS. CHERRY IS A DOMESTIC GODDESS, who has a great appreciation for her modern appliances. She says things like, "'Thanks to our fine, shiny toaster...It's made us golden-bown toast each day without fail all these years.'" These kind of statements make her appliances proud, but it turns out it's not enough to keep them content. Each wants to do a job that another appliance does.<br />
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Unbeknownst to Mrs. Cherry, her kitchen is helped along in its daily tasks by two kitchen pixies with "long, unpronounceable names," who call themselves Salt and Pepper.<br />
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When the appliances come to Salt and Pepper and tell them of their dream to trade jobs, the pixies don't think it's such a great idea. "'It <i>would</i> mean a lot of extra work for us,'" they say to each other, but "'If we don't satisfy the kitchen folk, they may go on strike and stop work altogether. And then where would Mrs. Cherry be.'"<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAjSLpwIrcbxGeCmWHBWRJbRvvm4l4MsWHDyN_7Uc_h9fIR84FqL3Djo27GnmutvmE8oX4d3dKQ6NbanwDmaE_SBq_FieQrgxZcKp6VSxfGvo9UTHqlXpr2f0TuYJBWJjvy_sZmoeTHrY/s1600/Coffee+Pot.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAjSLpwIrcbxGeCmWHBWRJbRvvm4l4MsWHDyN_7Uc_h9fIR84FqL3Djo27GnmutvmE8oX4d3dKQ6NbanwDmaE_SBq_FieQrgxZcKp6VSxfGvo9UTHqlXpr2f0TuYJBWJjvy_sZmoeTHrY/s200/Coffee+Pot.JPG" width="200" /></a>So they give their consent. Of course, they have to wait for Mrs. Cherry to leave the kitchen, which she does rarely. At last, a little before lunch time on the day set for the change-about, Sunny and Bunny, the twins from next door, come to tell Mrs. Cherry that their cat Fudge Ripple has had kittens. Mrs. Cherry goes to see them.<br />
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"And Whizz! Whirr! Bang! Clang!" The shirts go into the oven, unbaked plum tarts go into the icebox, the coffee percolator swallows ice cream, the iron tries making waffles. Unsurprisingly, they all fail miserably. What's worse, Mr. Cherry comes home for lunch unexpectedly, and sees all of the appliances going haywire. He runs out in a fright.<br />
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Salt and Pepper set to work making everything right, and by the time Mrs. Cherry has returned with Mr. Cherry, the mess is cleaned up and everything is as it should be.<br />
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DAVID ROBERTS'S ILLUSTRATIONS throughout the <i>Collected Stories</i> are excellent, as can be seen by the examples here. Unfortunately <i>Mrs. Cherry's Kitchen</i> is the weakest of the stories in the book, and it makes sense that it has never warranted a separate book on its own.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJO3HwveUScte5sWdCwz8640QRVio9IYG-7pPW0JCTN3y08cpvd2Ui-SDlDbh1axSV1gbLvclNEKT4ySo4mkyFd4lf8TGqyofKtvAaE6kJTukI6pDCPZ5s5Zac0ed4Ony2QK9YDBcJBqw/s1600/Oven.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJO3HwveUScte5sWdCwz8640QRVio9IYG-7pPW0JCTN3y08cpvd2Ui-SDlDbh1axSV1gbLvclNEKT4ySo4mkyFd4lf8TGqyofKtvAaE6kJTukI6pDCPZ5s5Zac0ed4Ony2QK9YDBcJBqw/s320/Oven.JPG" width="320" /></a>The background information for this post came primarily from the Lissa Paul article, but also from the book <i>Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking: Motherhood in Sylvia Plath's Works</i> by <span class="addmd">Nephie Christodoulides. This post and yesterday's also owes much to http://www.sylviaplath.info/.</span><br />
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<span class="addmd">COMING SOON: Sylvia Plath's "The Bull of Bendylaw"</span><br />
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<br />All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-1481989883214662902013-04-30T12:25:00.000-04:002013-04-30T12:25:43.737-04:00SYLVIA PLATH: THE IT-DOESN'T-MATTER SUIT<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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THE THING ABOUT POSTHUMOUS WORKS is that it can be difficult to asses a "newly discovered" story in the appropriate context in a writer's career. A little over two weeks ago, I wrote about Sylvia Plath's "first" children's book, <a href="http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2013/04/sylvia-plath-bed-book.html"><i>The Bed Book</i></a>, which was written in 1959 but published in 1976. It was twenty years before Plath's second children's book, <i>The It-Doesn't-Matter Suit</i> was released in 1996, but that book was also written in 1959 in the few months that constitute Plath's "career" as a children's writer.<br />
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At that time, Plath did not yet have children of her own, although becoming a mother was very much on her mind. Her husband Ted Hughes had taken to writing for children on their honeymoon in 1956, and had started to publish children's stories in periodicals in 1958, which is what inspired Plath to try her hand at children's work as well. But while Plath tried to publish <i>The Bed Book</i> in her lifetime, her other stories were mostly tucked away.<br />
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It was not until a German publisher delved into Plath's papers at the Lilly Library at Indiana University in the hopes of putting together a new short story collection that <i>The It-Doesn't-Matter Suit</i> came to light. Plath's sister-in-law Olwyn Hughes brought the book to Plath's publisher Faber who immediately announced that they would bring it out as a book illustrated by Rotraut Susanne Berner.<br />
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<i>THE IT-DOESN'T-MATTER SUIT</i> TELLS THE STORY of seven year old Max Nix, the youngest of seven brothers, and his deepest wish: to own his own suit.<br />
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Max and his large family live in the mountain town of Winkleburg, and everyone has a suit except Max. "Now Max did not want a suit <i>just</i> for work (that would be too plain) or <i>just</i> for weddings (that would be too fancy) or <i>just</i> for skiing (that would be too hot) or <i>just</i> for summer (that would be too cool). He wanted a suit for All-Year-Round."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivuwK_EqVBEK4uF_axC3le0WI6ACeARxueY8XhfLhOmjhpB4XA0Mv2YZSNKAXITKjk3J6Znklpcw_Hbo955nXDWRtYNovqBLVm8FpcRtwOpLP04ddTVIHgmwSVUamaCn0ypPL7rvYZdc4/s1600/Plath+-+The+It-Doesn%27t-Matter+Suit+-+010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivuwK_EqVBEK4uF_axC3le0WI6ACeARxueY8XhfLhOmjhpB4XA0Mv2YZSNKAXITKjk3J6Znklpcw_Hbo955nXDWRtYNovqBLVm8FpcRtwOpLP04ddTVIHgmwSVUamaCn0ypPL7rvYZdc4/s320/Plath+-+The+It-Doesn%27t-Matter+Suit+-+010.jpg" width="201" /></a>As the youngest of seven, however, Max is last in line for everything, and it doesn't look like his chances of acquiring a suit are all that good. Then one day, the postman delivers a box whose label has gotten wet, so that the only name legible was Nix. No one knows who the box is for, nor can they imagine what it contains. When at last it is opened, "there in the grey box with a wreath of white tissue paper around it lay a wooly whiskery brand-new mustard-yellow suit with three brass buttons."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhambdu_xN_O2TBp_PD-qwsJZDnz7s-ukVx_98shz2gJmgaEQSKprYXZvpmcIKKf0bNp734PxsYiPgXL4vZRuV83sCacmkIZxvSUZCZLiAPwB31w48D35FDOkrCDredbcDJxR5ag8sjGy4/s1600/Plath+-+Collected+Children%27s++Stories+-+019.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhambdu_xN_O2TBp_PD-qwsJZDnz7s-ukVx_98shz2gJmgaEQSKprYXZvpmcIKKf0bNp734PxsYiPgXL4vZRuV83sCacmkIZxvSUZCZLiAPwB31w48D35FDOkrCDredbcDJxR5ag8sjGy4/s320/Plath+-+Collected+Children%27s++Stories+-+019.jpg" width="200" /></a>As per usual, Papa Nix gets first dibs. He is very excited, determined to wear the suit the next day to his job at the bank. "He thought how it would be to wear the woolly, whiskery, brand-new, mustard-yellow suit to work. Such a suit had never been seen before in all Winkleburg." However, as he thinks more about it, he decides it might not be professional to wear such a bright suit, and announces, "'I am too big to wear a mustard-yellow suit.'"<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_s1CzKFe9iDW2-2W2NW8r3WsAeuAkNUN5j8ZLmLPywKPYx496HuWpw5EIEJG00hbGqAPZRvMlzLK5q8xtX6bGHJDtq96hNd41S6DfmEzGjfprVpm2jsKmN0-zPIJmXM2jUgDj7hBHdNk/s1600/Max's+Turn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_s1CzKFe9iDW2-2W2NW8r3WsAeuAkNUN5j8ZLmLPywKPYx496HuWpw5EIEJG00hbGqAPZRvMlzLK5q8xtX6bGHJDtq96hNd41S6DfmEzGjfprVpm2jsKmN0-zPIJmXM2jUgDj7hBHdNk/s320/Max's+Turn.JPG" width="320" /></a>So it passes on to Paul. Mama Nix has to make some alterations, but "when she was through, the suit fitted Paul to a T. He decides to wear it the next day for skiing. "Such a suit had never been seen before in all Winkleburg." But none of his friends where a suit like that, and he decides, "I am too big to wear a mustard-yellow suit.<br />
<br />
So it passes on to Emil who is going to sled in it, but thinks of his friends, and decides he is "too big to wear a mustard-yellow suit," as does Otto, and then Walter, and Hugo, and finally Johann. And so, at last, it passes to Max.<br />
<br />
Max wears the suit the next day, and he doesn't care that no one in Winkleburg has ever seen a suit like it: IT DIDN'T MATTER. He goes on to wear the suit while doing a lot of the things his brother's felt they couldn't do in the suit: skiing, riding his bike in the rain, ice-fishing, sledding, fox-hunting. And as for the potential difficulties wearing the suit in those situations could create: IT DIDN'T MATTER.<br />
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In the end, all of the people in the town, even all of the animals in the town, admire Max's marvelous suit.<br />
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<br />
OUTSIDE OF THE UNBELIEVABLE PREMISE, that a seven year old boy would want a suit more than anything in the world, <i>The It-Doesn't-Matter Suit</i> is a delightful book. It contains many repetitious refrains, like "Such a suit had never been seen before in all Winkleburg, and "I am too big to wear a mustard-yellow suit," which I'm sure young children would enjoy.<br />
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The book is included in 2001's <i>Collected Children's Stories</i> with illustrations by David Roberts, the black and white illustrations in this post.<br />
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The little background material I found came from a 2005 <i>Horn Book</i> article by Lissa Paul, a 1995 article from the <i>Daily Mail (London)</i>, and a 1995 announcement in <i>The New York Times</i>.<br />
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COMING SOON: Sylvia Plath's <i>Mrs. Cherry's Kitchen</i>. <br />
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.<br />
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<br />Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-52299120391244722672013-04-19T19:19:00.001-04:002013-04-19T19:19:34.239-04:00THREE YEARS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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TODAY MARKS THE THREE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of <i>We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie</i>. The number of posts has gone down each year, but my commitment to the blog has never wavered. I'll be back with more Sylvia Plath in the next week or two. Today, I am in Los Angeles for the LA Times Book Awards, so keep your fingers crossed for me. If you are in the LA area, I will be at the LA Times Festival of the Books tomorrow, so come and say hi. Thanks for reading all this time.Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-62388589958013061532013-04-11T12:28:00.001-04:002013-04-11T12:28:39.670-04:00SYLVIA PLATH: THE BED BOOK<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPCeOBgrSVnCBZTVM6W6fL4oOI62frNT-BdIIb8QBluaSNl22ACvccnWdX_An-NUpwSdymwDkF8zdNkImUTy8VPOOJiW3AgyhHa5OlGEJaROHI5C3dp1DmvgKO5-wERqZS-KcQx14gvpE/s1600/Plath+-+The+Bed+Book+-+001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPCeOBgrSVnCBZTVM6W6fL4oOI62frNT-BdIIb8QBluaSNl22ACvccnWdX_An-NUpwSdymwDkF8zdNkImUTy8VPOOJiW3AgyhHa5OlGEJaROHI5C3dp1DmvgKO5-wERqZS-KcQx14gvpE/s200/Plath+-+The+Bed+Book+-+001.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>
IT MAY BE HARD TO RECONCILE the idea of Sylvia Plath, the patron saint of suicide, the confessional chronicler of depression, with her children's books. That a woman who expressed so little happiness in all her other works had hidden away light, silly verses and stories is jarring. Perhaps that is why it was not until over a decade after her death that any of them appeared.<br />
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Written in 1959, but published in 1976, <i>The Bed Book</i> was the first of Plath's children's books to see print. Encouraged by Atlantic Monthly Press editor Emilie McLeod, Plath took the idea of fantastical beds, and composed an almost Seussian poem of imagination.<br />
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She wrote in her journal for May 3, 1959:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPmNq7PiY4Zjg4k9t6pyROi30OL3jJAH2VeJWoXlo9lSq6MUaYxh7dWKoKBJSSql3kzZq4NchkzDExN72XL3Z4oaetjl_b9CceEzpp2R-jOhL_E9cCIUaLNLrSxBUPJKsfKk6N5S_C1nk/s1600/Plath+-+The+Bed+Book+-+007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPmNq7PiY4Zjg4k9t6pyROi30OL3jJAH2VeJWoXlo9lSq6MUaYxh7dWKoKBJSSql3kzZq4NchkzDExN72XL3Z4oaetjl_b9CceEzpp2R-jOhL_E9cCIUaLNLrSxBUPJKsfKk6N5S_C1nk/s320/Plath+-+The+Bed+Book+-+007.jpg" width="234" /></a>"I wrote a book yesterday. Maybe I'll write a postscript on top of this in the next month and say I've sold it. Yes, after half a year of procrastinating, bad feeling and paralysis, I got to it yesterday morning, having lines in my head here and there, and Wide-Awake Will and Stay-Uppity Sue very real, and bang. I chose ten beds out of the long list of too fancy and ingenious and abstract a list of beds, and once I'd begun I was away and didn't stop till I typed out and mailed it (8 double-spaced pages only!) to the Atlantic Press. <i>The Bed Book</i>, by Sylvia Plath. Funny how doing it freed me. It was a bat, a bad-conscience bat brooding in my head...A ready-made good idea and an editor writing to say she couldn't get the idea of it out of her head."</blockquote>
Emilie McLeod loved it, but she suggested removing the two children, Wide-Awake Will and Stay-Uppity Sue who had acted as a framing narrative. Plath rewrote the book within a week of receiving McLeod's edits, and was very optimistic that it would soon be accepted for publication. She dedicated it to her friend Marcia Plumer's adopted twins.<br />
<br />
That Plath herself still had no children of her own (despite <i>The New York Times</i>'s erroneous claim that <i>The Bed Book</i> had been written for Plath's children) was still a source of much anguish to the young poet. Her husband Ted Hughes had turned to writing children's books at the same time. (He went on to have a long successful career as a children's writer, a subject for a future <i>We Too Were Children</i>.) Writing in her journal of both his and her books, Plath mourned, "And no child, not even the beginnings or the hopes of one, to dedicate it to...My god. This is the one thing in the world I can't face. It is worse than a horrible disease."<br />
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Plath had to wait until the middle of August until she got back definitive word about the fate of her book. Little, Brown, then the publisher of Atlantic Monthly Press books, felt "that the book is not simple and basic enough, that some of the beds are too farfetched, and that it has more appeal to adults than to children." At the time, while Plath had published many poems and stories in magazines, she had not yet published a book, and so could not rely on her name to carry the book through. Emilie McLeod was genuinely sorrowful that she had to pass on the bad news.<br />
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<i>THE BED BOOK</i> THAT EVENTUALLY DID APPEAR deserves none of Little, Brown's criticisms. It begins:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2GeBtMnq5GT8jDhFrWAEVrAg6ziMyoxt2XZqPG09H4gqbzBVkxaPzyNzMPq-KlcdcbcxtcrUQ8V43DOpj-NDWQlhl-wIrCHjMQk_FskWTVLQhmig4RtgNgDcvfUHKUvfdbK6PiUKRl8w/s1600/Plath+-+Collected+Children%27s++Stories+-+006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2GeBtMnq5GT8jDhFrWAEVrAg6ziMyoxt2XZqPG09H4gqbzBVkxaPzyNzMPq-KlcdcbcxtcrUQ8V43DOpj-NDWQlhl-wIrCHjMQk_FskWTVLQhmig4RtgNgDcvfUHKUvfdbK6PiUKRl8w/s320/Plath+-+Collected+Children%27s++Stories+-+006.jpg" width="203" /></a>Beds come in all sizes--<br />
single or double,<br />
cot-size or cradle,<br />
king-size or trundle.<br />
<br />
Most Beds are Beds<br />
for sleeping or resting,<br />
but the <i>best</i> Beds are much<br />
more interesting!</blockquote>
Plath said in her journal that she had chosen ten beds, but in the final book there seem to be a few more than that. Of course, she may have intended some of these beds to be the same bed. They are: a bed for fishing, a bed for cats, a bed for acrobats, a submarine bed, a jet-propelled bed, a snack bed, a spottable bed, a tank bed, a bird-watchers bed, a pocket-size bed, an elephant bed, and a North-Pole bed.<br />
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<i>The Bed Book</i> was later included in Plath's <i>Collected Children's Stories</i> with different illustrations. In the original book, illustrator Emily Arnold McCully infuses her pictures with warmth, depicting a sort of nostalgic idyll.<br />
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But the later pictures by David Roberts come closer to the zaniness the book intends.<br />
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The collected version also retains additional verses that had been cut from the book's first appearance. Why those particular lines had been removed is unclear.<br />
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Jack Prelutsky included an excerpt from <i>The Bed Book</i> in <i>The Random House Book of Poetry for Children</i>, but the book itself fell out of print. It would be twenty years more before another one of Plath's children's works was published<br />
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In addition to Plath's own published journals, background information for this post came from <i>Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath</i> by Anne Stevenson, and <i>Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath</i> by Paul Alexander.<br />
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COMING SOON: <i>The It-Doesn't-Matter Suit</i> by Sylvia Plath<br />
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All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142893990164468673.post-39104983661939967052013-04-05T11:36:00.004-04:002013-04-05T11:36:59.791-04:00GUEST POST ON VKBMKL: SINNICKSON'S WIZARD OF OZ<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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IN HONOR OF THE NEW <i>OZ</i> MOVIE, I've contributed this beautiful Wonder Books edition to the greatest kids' book blog there is, <a href="http://www.vintagechildrensbooksmykidloves.com/2013/04/guest-post-wizard-of-oz.html">Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves</a>. Click the link to check it out. Head on over to my Flickr to see <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/40423298@N08/sets/72157632968868602/">the whole book</a>.<br />
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Ariel S. Winterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13510674316933828500noreply@blogger.com0