The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Posted by

0

the-tale-of-peter-rabbit-13

The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter

1902

Illustrated by Beatrix Potter

With characters named Jemima Puddle-duck and Mrs. Tiggy-winkle, you might think that Beatrix Potter’s tales are fluff and whimsy. But if you read the 23 little volumes in the boxed set, you will find surprising sophistication and subtle wit. There is a dense richness – of language, of nuance, of humor. Beatrix Potter wrote with a no-nonsense matter-of-fact edge, for she was familiar enough with the natural world to realize that lyrical romanticism is hardly the apposite tone. The animals in her world are very aware of their position in the food chain. Peter Rabbit’s father ended up in Mr. McGregor’s meat pie. The foxhounds, after saving the clueless Jemima Puddle-duck from the wily fox, proceed to gobble down her eggs. Squirrel Nutkin lays three dead mice (a shocking image) at the foot of the old owl as a propitiatory offering in exchange for nuts. The stories are rich because Beatrix Potter, like the best of children’s authors, understood that children are not really as sentimental as some might hope.peter57

The Tale of Peter Rabbit, her masterpiece, is a perfect story. It is an allegorical tale of the explorations of childhood, with Mr. McGregor’s garden being the delicious and dangerous world that any spirited bunny would want to experience. The story is beautifully balanced with its rise and fall structure, beginning and ending with the quiet comfort of home and mother. In between, Peter Rabbit experiences the pleasures of the forbidden feast, the fright of the chase, the despair of isolation. There is beautiful pairing of text and illustration, as can only happen when writer and artist are one and the same. What could better convey Peter Rabbit’s aloneness than the delicate image of a forlorn shoe lost among the cabbages? Where has a child’s desolation been better portrayed than in the picture of Peter Rabbit leaning against the locked garden door, one foot resting on the other, a single tear falling?peter44

Beatrix Potter’s exquisite watercolor illustrations convey the artist’s deep understanding of the natural world. Her appreciation began as a child – raised by governesses, sheltered from other children, she observed and sketched her menagerie of animals who would peter08later people her stories. As a young adult, she developed a passionate interest in mycology and her botanical illustrations of fungi and lichens were highly regarded by other naturalists. In her children’s books, her illustrations of animal characters have become iconic, but her tree trunks, leaves, rocks, and dirt are as beautifully rendered as her velvety soft bunnies.

Aside: The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, one of several image015-thumbnailstories set in Mr. McGregor’s garden, begins with an imaginative premise: “It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is ‘soporific’”.

 

image030-thumbnail

Now We Were Very Young & Now We Are Six

Posted by

0

 

9780525444459__99779.1581323107

When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne

1924, 1926

Illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard

 

James James

Morrison Morrison

Weatherby George Dupree

Took great

Care of his Mother,

Though he was only three.

James James

Said to his Mother,

“Mother,” he said, said he:

“You must never go down to the end of the town,

if you don’t go down with me.”

 

The mother, alas, ignores her son’s injunction and vanishes, irretrievably: “LAST SEEN/WANDERING VAGUELY/QUITE OF HER OWN ACCORD”. In Ernest Shepard’s accompanying illustration, the young James is madly pedaling his tricycle in desperate pursuit of his flighty mother as she disappears around a corner. download-3Disobedience is one of A.A. Milne’s most memorizable poems, and one of his best. He portrays the wonderful independence of a child’s mind and the natural audacity – James James goes immediately to the royals for help, in this case King John. Children reading the poem delight in the conceit – for children who are rarely in charge, it is a welcome relief to enter a world in which the mother is leashed to the tricycle rather than vice versa, and the mother is guilty of disobedience and suffers the consequences. It is a sign of Milne’s respect for children that there is no happy resolution – the mother is gone, for good. James James is not particularly sad about his loss, but simply disappointed that his mother failed to listen to him.DdFwIR9X0AENVXB

Milne published his two volumes of poetry when his only child, Christopher Robin, was four and six. The world portrayed was that of his son, one of Nurses and Nannies, beetles and bears and the great outdoors, and the occasional royalty. These latter were whimsical and flawed. Take the ruler in The King’s Breakfast, for instance, who is thwarted in his desire for some butter for his bread. The Queen, the Dairymaid, and the cow all try to persuade him that marmalade would be preferable. The King takes to his bed, whimpering with dismay, until he finally gets his desire fulfilled. Or Bad Sir Brian Botany, an old obstreperous knight who uses his battle axe to blip the villagers on their heads – until they rise up and dunk him in the duck pond, and more.   It is a world in which children can be wonderfully entertained by not much, as when a child watches spellbound as two raindrops (James and John) race, with many starts and stops, down a window-pane.

d156ca1e-7ac8-11e6-8c1a-bdb5e24e0ed7

 

The Travels of Babar

Posted by

0

DSC02883

The Travels of Babar by Jean de Brunhoff

1932

Illustrated by Jean de Brunhoff

More than any other children’s picture books, the original format Babar books are objects of wonder. Grandly sized, they provide the double-spread illustrations the room they need to breath. The cream colored paper gives depth and warmth to the beautifully rendered watercolor and black line drawings. The text is in cursive, uniquely mysterious for the young reader still struggling with print. These are books that demand to be read aloud, ensuring that the child’s eyes stay focused on the rich illustrations where they belong. The original editions were reproduced directly from the author’s notebooks with his own handwritten cursive – hence the unusual format. To read Babar in anything other than their original renditions is to miss the transcendent experience. The facsimile reproductions have been reprinted from time to time and can be found with some searching. Settle for nothing less.

The saga begins with the birth of Babar, whose idyllic childhood is abruptly shattered by the death of his mother at the hands of a hunter. Jean de Brunhoff did not shrink from tragedy, but he presented tribulations matter-of-factly. After a few tears, Babar quickly moves on, in this case to a French town where his first order of business is to get outfitted – in a green suit, derby hat, and spats, no less – a transformation that causes him to rise from four legs to two. Clothes figure prominently in the Babar books. Eventually, he returns to the forest where he is crowned king and marries his cousin, Celeste. After the wedding and coronation, the couple stands alone together, their backs to us, staring out at the starry sky – the only black and white illustration in the series – a moving tribute to love.

DSC02884

The Story of Babar sets the stage. In The Travels of Babar, Jean de Brunhoff was able to give full rein to his inventive imagination. What begins as a honeymoon in a hot air balloon leads to a capsizing on an island, an attack by cannibals, a ride on a distractible whale, a rescue by a passing ship, and a stint as captives in a circus. When Babar and Celeste return to their native land, they find the decimation of war. In a delightfully bizarre piece of performance art, Babar transforms the backsides of the elephants with huge painted eyes, carrot tail noses, and green and orange wigs. Alarmed by such monsters, the rhinoceroses flee in panic.

DSC02885

Jean de Brunhoff wrote The Story of Babar in 1931 for his own sons, basing it on a sickroom tale told by his wife. He wrote six more books over the next six short years before he died of tuberculosis. His son, Laurent, took up the Babar mantle and created a relentless stream of books. Best to stick to the pere, whose inspired brilliance and originality of style were one-of-a-kind. His books have a charming simplicity and freshness which have no equal. It is the small imaginative details which delight with each reencounter – the flying machine drawn by a flock of white doves, Zephir’s thatch-roofed rondeval on a treehouse platform, the children’s swing suspended between Cornelius’s tusks, Father Christmas riding on a zebra.

DSC02878

The seven Babar books by Jean de Brunhoff: The Story of Babar, The Travels of Babar, Babar the King, The A.B.C. of Babar, Babar and Zephir, Babar and His Children, Babar and Father Christmas.

Anne of Green Gables

Posted by

0

 

annegreengables1945

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

1908

Anne of Green Gables. There is no other character remotely like her. She is irrepressible, dramatic, talkative, imaginative, high-spirited, headstrong, passionate, ebullient, lively, impulsive, heedless. She is also sensitive, self-conscious, insecure, loving, generous, well-intentioned.

She first appears, waiting expectantly in a train station, as a skinny, freckled, green-eyed, redhead – a homely child. She enters the lives of Matthew and Marilla, an elderly brother and sister who had sent away for an orphan boy to help with the chores and haplessly ended up with an unlikely girl instead. She is a dreamer, bursting with imagination, exhilarated by the world. Matthew, a quiet shy gentle unpretentious and altogether good man, is quietly delighted by her. Anne recognizes immediately that though they could not be outwardly more different, they are really kindred spirits. Marilla is slower to warm. But over the course of five years, she responds to Anne’s hunger for love and eagerness to please, and comes to value Anne’s fundamental goodness and creative spirit. Anne is transformed by the undemonstrative love of Matthew and Marilla and their lives, in turn, are transformed by their act of selflessness.

4228001040_f2488bf00a_b

Lucy Maud Montgomery came from Prince Edward Island and her love of place is evidenced in the Anne books. She had an emotionally charged communion with nature that she bestows upon her fictional creation. Anne does not simply appreciate the natural world, she is intoxicated by it. The plot points are set pieces (Anne inadvertently dies her hair green instead of black, she unintentionally serves her bosom friend currant wine instead of raspberry cordial), but the descriptions of the Avonlea farmstead in the twilight, the apple tree allee in full blossom, the woodland flowers by the brook, as seen through Anne’s enraptured eyes, are always genuine. The setting is beautifully rendered, by author and character alike.

Screen-Shot-2015-04-27-at-9.09.35-AM

 

Aside:

“Do you never imagine things different from what they really are?” asked Anne wide-eyed.

“No.”

“Oh!” Anne drew a long breath. “Oh, Miss – Marilla, how much you miss!”

 

The Cow Who Fell In the Canal

Posted by

1

the-cow-who-fell-in-the-canal-cover

The Cow Who Fell in the Canal by Phyllis Krasilovsky

1957

Illustrated by Peter Spier

The Cow Who Fell in the Canal is a quintessentially Dutch book, but like Hans Brinker, its quintessentially Dutch predecessor, it was not written by a Hollander. It was illustrated by one, and that is what confers its authentically Dutch flavor.

c5649366d10d2cb3153f4227a14727b8

The protagonist is Hendrika, a cow who grows restless, bored by her bucolic life with its monotonous cycle of chewing grass and making milk. The perpetual turning of the windmill makes her dizzy. She has the wanderlust – relieved one day when she falls into the canal, mounts an old raft, and floats her way to the city. Disembarking to the wonder of the inhabitants, she runs through the streets, savoring the novelties, until she happens upon the cheese market. There she encounters Mr. Hofstra, her farmer, who takes her back home. She returns to her pasture wearing a straw hat with streamers as a souvenir and is now content, enriched by her memories. It is a day-in-the-life story, albeit an unusual day, and it is delightfully free of morals.

the-cow-who-fell-in-the-canal-floating-down

Peter Spier’s illustrations are what make this tale come alive. Like Richard Scarry, he fabricates richly detailed drawings that create a visual chorus to enliven the simple text. He conveys essence of Netherlands with a herring cart, bicycles leaning against a wall, wooden shoes, canals, and stair-cased roofs. For a child, there is much to absorb on every page.

the-cow-who-fell-in-the-canal-market-cheese-e1390742742123

Spier has illustrated over 150 books and was honored with both the Caldecott Medal and the National Book Award for Noah’s Ark, a textless story perfectly suited to his delicate pen and ink watercolors. His most ambitious undertaking was People, an encyclopedic celebration of human diversity. The cover illustration includes some 500 humans and each one, even the tiny figures in the back row who are conveyed with only a few strokes, is an individual with a recognizable culture. He has a playful sense of humor, evident in the display of noses or hairstyles. He touches briefly on intolerance, inequality, and bullying and he shows a shanty town as well as a suburban neighborhood with the mansion on the hill, but the overwhelming sense is one of wonder at the splendorous variety of it all. On a single spread, he imagines how deadly life would be with soulless uniformity – army green buses, brown clothed humans, and identical boxy buildings. What a relief to turn the page and return to the colorful and exhilarating confusion of humanity. Here is a generous spirited artist who shares through his drawings his belief in the fundamental goodness of people, a characteristically Dutch attribute. All the more remarkable since Peter Spier spent several of his teenage years in Theresienstadt concentration camp.

 

A1Nq-ApShJL

Rabbit Hill

Posted by

1

Rabbit_Hill

Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson

1944

Illustrated by Robert Lawson

New Folks coming. New Folks coming. This refrain is passed from animal to animal, from Little Georgie to his Father and Mother, to Pokey the Woodchuck, Willie Fieldmouse, the Mole, Phewie the Skunk. After a period of privation, the animals are excited that the Big House on Rabbit Hill will be occupied once again. They watch as the Man, the Lady, and their old Cat, Mr. Muldoon, take up residence, plant a lush vegetable garden, and generate a bounty of kitchen scraps. (“’You will find, Phewie,’ said Father with some heat, ‘that good breeding and good garbage go hand in hand.’”) The Man and Lady celebrate the first harvest with a feast for the animals, with the words “There is Enough For All”.

DSC01139

The plot does not seem like much, but this book has staying power. Robert Lawson created, largely through humorous dialogue, a distinct assortment of animal characters, beginning with the oratorical Father, variously viewed as eloquent or insufferably verbose (“He always continued until something stopped him.”), who constantly harkens back to his Kentucky bluegrass roots. There is the highstrung Mother in a perennial nervous state, the cheerful and enthusiastic Little Georgie, the folksy and curmudgeonly Uncle Analdas whose speech is peppered with “dingblasted” and “gumdinged”, and the loyal, courageous Willie Fieldmouse whose role it is to discover that Mr. Muldoon is just a harmless puffball.

DSC01140

Robert Lawson is the only creator of children’s books to have been awarded both the Newberry Award (for Rabbit Hill in 1945) and the Caldecott Medal (for They Were Strong and Good, a chronicle of his forebears, in 1941). His preferred medium was pen and ink, but for Rabbit Hill, he created soft-washed pencil drawings with his meticulous hand, quite different from the bold thick-lined caricatures of The Story of Ferdinand or Wee Gillis.

After graduating from art school, Lawson joined a group of artists and designers in the Camouflage Corps in France. The military value of concealing patterning and coloration took hold during WWI and a large group of artists (including such talents as Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, and Arshile Gorky) were recruited to design and paint camouflage disguises for war equipment and installations. There were no mass produced camouflage uniforms at the time, and it is remarkable that all such clothes, usually reserved for snipers, were individually hand-painted.

When the war was over, Lawson married and settled in Westport, Connecticut. He and his artist wife committed to each designing one Christmas card a day until the mortgage was paid off. It took three years. Their home, Rabbit Hill, was the inspiration for the book.

86b95b795fd304e8d58f4082bed0633b

Aside: “The warm sun had loosened his muscles: the air was invigorating; Little Georgie’s leaps grew longer and longer. Never had he felt so young and strong. His legs were like coiled springs of steel that released themselves of their own accord. He was hardly conscious of any effort, only of his hind feet pounding the ground, and each time they hit, those wonderful springs released and shot him through the air. He sailed over fences and stone walls as though they were mole runs. Why, this was almost like flying!”

Freight Train

Posted by

0

 

9781907912108

Freight Train by Donald Crews

1978

Illustrated by Donald Crews

There is something irresistible about trains: whether it be counting the cars on a long Santa Fe freight, or standing on an overpass and feeling the whoosh as a locomotive passes below, or taking an overnight with the pull-down bunks in the sleepers, or listening to a whistle in the quiet of a summer night. Unlike the obsession many 2 and 3 year olds have with backhoes and caterpillars, the fascination with trains is lifelong.

Donald Crews is an author/illustrator who has explored this fascination repeatedly, beginning with the elegant Freight Train. Born and raised in Newark, NJ, he had a father who worked on the railroad. During the summers, his mother took the children by train to Florida (it took 3 days and 2 nights) to visit their grandparents. In his dedication, Crews refers to “the countless freight trains passed and passing the big house in Cottondale”.

DSC01595

Freight Train begins with a double page spread that is blank save for a track traversing the bottom and a simple introduction. On the following pages, the cars are introduced, one by one, each a different color. We see the stationary train in its entirety, and then it begins moving, the image becoming blurred as it picks up speed. The train passes through a tunnel (glimpsed through a rock window), over a trestle, past city skyscrapers, through the blackness of night and the whiteness of day, until it is gone, with only a trail of smoke marking its passage. Through its journey, the track is continuous on every page.

The text is spare and simple, yet remarkably elegant.

   “A train runs across this track.

     Red caboose at the back

     Orange tank car next

     Yellow hopper car

     Green cattle car

     Blue gondola car

     Purple box car

     A Black tender and

     A Black steam engine.

     Freight train.”

As the train begins moving, the words change rhythm to evoke the klakity-klak of locomotion. There are only 55 words, but each is perfectly placed.

DSC01594

Big Tiger and Christian

Posted by

2

Big Tiger and Christian by Fritz Muhlenweg

1950

Illustrated by Rafaello Busoni

 

Out of print for many years, this is a book that happens into hands by chance. It is read in appreciation and amazement and continues to haunt the reader for decades more. It is a book that has inspired travels and changed lives. Yet it is almost completely unknown.

 

The story begins, in part, with Sven Hedin, a renowned Swedish explorer in the grand tradition, who did much to fill in the white patches on the map of Central Asia. In the 20’s and 30’s, he lead the Sino-Swedish Expedition to Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, and Xinjiang, accompanied by an international bevy of archeologists, geologists, meteorologists, geographers, astronomers, botanists, zoologists. He was honored along the way by having a glacier, a lunar crater, and a butterfly (among other things) named after him.  My Life as an Explorer is a riveting travelogue.

The story continues, in part, with Fritz Muhlenweg. He was working as a young accountant with the new German airline, Lufthansa, when he was posted to Hedin’s expedition (Lufthansa’s interest was a proposed Peking-Berlin air route). He made three trips to Mongolia before settling into a career as a painter and writer.

Muhlenweg’s reverence for Mongolian culture is palpable in the tale that was inspired by his travels, and few books provide a deeper sense of place.  There are yurts, camel caravans, dunes, tamarisk trees, roasted barley, and language (try “zook, zook” if you want your camel to kneel). This is the backdrop that gives texture and depth to an adventure story that quietly enthralls. Two 12-year old boys, one European and one Chinese, go kite-flying in Peking and end up as secret couriers for General Wu. They embark on a 1,500 mile mission to Urumchi, on the far side of the Gobi Desert, by train, truck, horse, camel, and foot.  They encounter lamas, honorable bandits, dishonorable thieves, shepherds, traders, soldiers, warlords, wild monks, a nomadic girl, and a black poodle who have names like Dog, Sevenstars, Good Fortune, Affliction, Moonlight, and Thunderbolt. There is an evil villain named Greencoat and his nemesis, an outlaw king referred to as The Venerable Chief, a kind of Mongolian Robin Hood, and there is a hidden treasure in an abandoned desert city. Apart from the villain, who is irredeemably wicked, the characters are nuanced. Muhlenweg is sympathetic to even the roughest scallywags and in his hands they tend to rise to the occasion to reveal a hidden goodness.

 

 

 

 

Amos & Boris

Posted by

0

 

9780374403607

Amos & Boris by William Steig

1971

Illustrated by William Steig

For seven decades, William Steig was instrumental in defining the visual landscape of The New Yorker. At the age of 23, during the Depression, he sold his first cartoon to The New Yorker for $40. By the time of his death at 96, he had contributed over 1,600 cartoons and 200 covers to the magazine. At an age when most people are winding down, he launched his second career. He was around 60 when he published his first children’s book. His fortieth was published several months before his death. For productive longevity, he was unparalleled. He was also unmatched for his combined brilliance as an illustrator and writer.

IdyfDAWIRxynLZenU+wclA_thumb_16a5

The most lyrical and poetic of his books is Amos & Boris, an ode to the transcendent friendship between a mouse and a whale. Amos, enterprising and adventurous, builds a boat and takes to the sea (fulfilling a boyhood longing that Steig harbored). One night, feeling at one with the universe, he rolls off his boat and it goes sailing on without him. After a night of loneliness and despair, alone in the vast ocean, he is rescued by Boris, and in their ensuing week together, an abiding friendship grows. Years later, Boris is beached during a violent storm and Amos is able to effect his rescue in turn.

WfMxtG93SuqB4MWsClzfzA_thumb_16a9

In this book, as in many of his, Steig quietly alludes to the ineffable questions that perplex us all. What are we doing here? What is it all about? What is our role in the scheme of things? And in Amos’s case, would there be other mice in heaven? Steig’s worldview is not angst-ridden, far from it. His tonal palette is playful, humorous, life-affirming, passionate and mysterious. His answers revolve around friendship, love, and family.

images

Steig’s illustrations, supple India ink lines and watercolor washes, were created with a childlike spontaneity and pleasure. His prose is startling in its complexity, elegance, and sheer joy. Steig delighted in word play (“’Pheasant, peasant? What a pleasant present!’”) and archaic vocabulary (“churlish knave”, “fusty fens”). He had a precise verbal eye, as when Boris is rolled “breaded with sand” into the sea or when Amos listens to the surf sounds, “the bursting breakers, the backwashes with rolling pebbles”. Who else has ever written like this for children?

download

Aside: “One night, in a phosphorescent sea, he marveled at the sight of some whales spouting luminous water; and later, lying on the deck of his boat gazing at the immense, starry sky, the tiny mouse Amos, a little speck of a living thing in the vast living universe, felt thoroughly akin to it all. Overwhelmed by the beauty and mystery of everything, he rolled over and over and right off the deck of his boat and into the sea.”

Great Expectations

Posted by

0

896853

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

1861

We first encounter Pip in a desolate churchyard in the marshes, visiting the tombstones of his parents and five infant brothers, grasping that he is truly an orphan and alone in the world. Out of the bleakness, he is violently accosted by Magwitch, the escaped convict, who demands a file for his shackles and wittles for his stomach. The marshlands – wild, mysterious, apocalyptic – their silence broken only, on occasion, by the mournful horn announcing the escape of a prisoner from a convict ship, are an apposite setting to join two figures, forever thereafter intertwined, each with a moral compass more nuanced than would be initially expected. Few books begin with a first chapter as haunting as this.

7c

Dickens was a master at creating memorable characters, many of whom have become household fixtures – Ebenezer Scrooge, Oliver Twist, Little Nell. And then there were others, less well-known, whose names alone should buy them immortality – Wackford Squeers, the Reverand Septimus Crisparkle, Uriah Heep, Uncle Pumblechook. Scoundrel and angel, miser and spendthrift, judge and beggar, orphan and whore – Dickens could paint them all, some as comic caricatures, some as nuanced characters of profound complexity. Arguably, his crowning creation was Miss Havisham, the reclusive spinster, jilted on her wedding day, whose life is a memorial to that betrayal, timepieces frozen to that moment. She wanders her cobwebbed mansion in her moldering bridal gown, past the desiccated wedding cake on the dusty banquet table, plotting her misandristic revenge by grooming the icy Estella, her beautiful ward, to break the hearts of men (beginning, most notably, with Pip’s).

Dickens was also a master story-teller. His books were serialized in weekly literary magazines, each installment being eagerly awaited by his enthusiastic audience. Great Expectations came towards the end of his illustrious career, by which time his craft was finely honed. Unlike some of his novels (“loose baggy monsters” according to the disdainful Henry James), Great Expectations is tightly structured. It melds all the Dickensian ingredients – gothic shadows and Victorian sentimentality, scathing satire and sympathy for the working poor, humorous parody and anguished tragedy, plot twists and social commentary, psychological depth and melodrama – into a really great story.

Given a chance, children love Dickens, a chapter at a time, ideally read before a blazing hearth. Great Expectations is a perfect place to start. A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield are good to follow.

9780735812598      ef7cb2d772f1c9eddefc27480ce5747a