Urban Living

The human race passed a significant milestone this past year (or maybe in the past five years, because of difficulties in measurement and definition it is challenging to say exactly when). More than half of the world's six billion people now live in cities. This is pretty momentous.



Despite an idealization of the bucolic countryside with shaded glades and an easier pace of life, cities, since their inception some five thousand years ago, have exercised an inexorable pull of people from the country to urban life. The frank truth is that the myth of the noble savage and the free-loving native in a natural Eden are precisely that; a myth. Over the long haul, and usually even the short haul, city living, despite the sacrifices and the adjustments to personal habits that it requires, has been by far the better bargain for most people. People live longer in the city, enjoy better health, are richer, have greater gender equity, enjoy greater access to education and cultural resources, have lower infant mortality, etc. Not every single person, to be sure, but overall, the lesson is just about iron clad. Forget about going west: go to the city to seek your fortune.



City living is a technological, cultural, economic and political outcome not a function of the size of your country. Australia, a continent sized country with 20 million people, is more urbanized (91%) than the Netherlands with 16 million people on a virtual sliver of land where urbanization is measured at 90%. This despite Australia having 465 times as much land.



Modern man exited Africa about 75-100,000 years ago. The first walled towns or villages showed up around ten thousand years ago (Jericho in Israel at nearly five thousand years is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world). Cities showed up first in the Middle East; Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Persia then began appearing in Asia and Europe.



So - a hundred thousand years for the emergence of modern man; ten thousand years for the first towns; and last year for most people to now be living in a city. Progress of a sort.



What's so special then about cities that everyone seems to want to live in one? Well, there are the obvious reasons mentioned above which might be best summarized as opportunity and development. With one or two occasional (and usually temporary), exceptions there is a high correlation between the basic measures of well-being and the degree of a country's urbanization.



Why is this? Cities exist because of a capacity to generate surplus wealth (whether measured in baskets of grain, gold, or credits in a ledger). For most of our history as humans, we have been prey to weather, natural disasters, disease, and endemic warfare at a tribal level. That endemic warfare was in turn a function of insufficient productivity, people did not have enough to eat and so they sought to take what they needed from others.



With the first surpluses, people needed for the first time to band together to protect those surpluses. They began to have the capacity to plan not just for the next season's harvest but for things longer term. Roads, irrigation, permanent dwellings, etc. Planning required greater social cooperation and coordination. Urban dwellers moved beyond egalitarian familial decision making or close communal decisions based on the extended tribe. They had to develop new and more efficient forms of collective decision making involving people beyond their immediate family or tribe.



At the same time, with greater surpluses, cities were not only able to create larger more efficient forms of decision making, planning, and execution, but they also created the environment for new and more ideas and skills (such as writing) to be transmitted between individuals and from one generation and the next. More ideas among more people inevitably led to new ideas, new inventions.



The process of urbanization is therefore tightly bound up with the development of new forms of government (and gracious knows we have tried a lot of those), new forms of economy (trade, manufacturing and now the knowledge economy), new forms of technological development and new forms of cultural expression.



The archaeological evidence of early cities shows that this was not an easy or inevitably virtuous cycle. Concentrated power (politics) with larger and more concentrated wealth (economy and technology) led to a greater capacity for both improvement but also disaster. Greater concentrations of wealth in towns and cities made them natural targets for quick programs of income redistribution by foragers, farmers and passing raiders. This is of course why most early cities are in part characterized by defensive walls. Members not of the community had to be kept out because they were not part of the communal miracle of productivity and were likely to want to take the fruits of that productivity without exerting the disciplines required to create it.



Cities have not had an easy time but they have a winning promise to those willing to adapt to the disciplines and regulations required to make communal living among strangers feasible. For all that cities have attracted violent attention and have created the capacity to inflict destruction (through larger armies and advanced technology), it is clear that, despite our assumptions of an earlier Eden, the rural existence of foragers and farmers was far more violent. Evidence from the historical record as well as contemporary anthropological studies indicate that mortality among forager and agricultural communities from inflicted violence seems to uniformly range from a low of 5% to levels of 30%, i.e. 30% of all people died from some form of inflicted violence (punishment, war, personal attack, etc.). In most OECD countries over the past one hundred years, despite world wars, regional conflicts and what often seem to us as excessive levels of criminal violence, the mortality rate from violence is in the very low single digits. Almost everyone can anticipate dying from old age or disease.



Cities are a marked level of improvement for virtually all people on virtually all measures. Yet we seem to have an exceptionally ambivalent view of urbanization. We romanticize the rural past. We often directly or indirectly demonize the city.



Partly this is an artifact of history. Writers of children's books of the 1930's and earlier and through the 1960's had mostly grown up in rural and small town America. (America's urbanization stands at 76% and the big transition from country to city occurred between the World Wars and shortly thereafter.) Though they practiced their craft in the cities, they took as their subjects the idyllic recollection of their youth. Think of Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Huck Finn in particular has attracted all sorts of dissertations as an emblem of the noble savage being suffocated by civilization and town living. Think of the works of Robert McCloskey (Lentil, Homer Price, Blueberries for Sal, One Morning in Maine, etc.) and Virginia Lee Burton (Katie and the Big Snow, The Little House, Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel) all of which idolize rural or small town living. Granted McCloskey did have a nice portrayal of Boston in Make Way for Ducklings and Burton to some extent of San Francisco with Maybelle the Cable Car. But the ratio sort of tells the story.



More contemporary authors deal with cities in a somewhat more favorable light but still often in a markedly ambivalent manner. Cities might be good but we aren't sure about that. If you look at a list of the most commonly cited children's books among librarians, teachers, parents, etc. among the top one hundred titles, about a third are set in the country or small towns and/or depict the countryside in a very positive fashion (e.g. The Secret Garden, The Little House, Little House on the Prairie, My Side of the Mountain, Pippi Longstocking, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Blueberries for Sal, etc.)



Slightly less than 15% depict cities in a positive light, even making a fairly generous allowance for what is positive or considered urban (e.g. Mr. Popper's Penguins, Madeline, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Cricket in Times Square, All-of-a-Kind Family, etc.)



Given how critical cities are and have been to our progress and well being, surely they deserve a better shake than this. This is not to undercut country and small town living by any means. But what are some of the books that are set in the city and that celebrate the advantages of city living? Below is a cut at some of those tales.



Enjoy these representations of city living and let us know of others that you and your children might have enjoyed.





This book list is divided into three sections:

(1) Picture Books

(2) Books for Independent Readers

(3) Young Adults



The list begins below with Picture Books, but you can use the following link to skip directly to the Independent Readers or the Young Adults sections.

Go to books for Independent Readers

Go to books for Young Adults




Picture Books

	Make Way for Ducklings written and illustrated by Robert McCloskey Highly Recommended
	The Gardener by Sarah Stewart and illustrated by David Small Highly Recommended
	Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile written and illustrated by Bernard Waber Highly Recommended
	House on East Eighty-Eighth Street written and illustrated by Bernard Waber Highly Recommended
	The Adventures of Taxi Dog by Debra Barracca and Sal Barracca and illustrated by Mark Buehner Recommended
	Peppe the Lamplighter by Elisa Bartone and illustrated by Ted Lewin Recommended
	Madeline written and illustrated by Ludwig Bemelmans Recommended
	C Is for City by Nikki Grimes and illustrated by Pat Cummings Recommended
	Alphabet City by Stephen Johnson Recommended
	The Journey by Sarah Stewart and illustrated by David Small Recommended
	City Mouse-Country Mouse and Two More Mouse Tales from Aesop by Aesop and illustrated by John Wallner Suggested
	Urban Roosts written and illustrated by Barbara Bash Suggested
	Madeline in London written and illustrated by Ludwig Bemelmans Suggested
	The Little House written and illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton Suggested
	Katy and the Big Snow written and illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton Suggested
	Abuela by Arthur Dorros and illustrated by Elisa Kleven Suggested
	Good Night New York City by Adam Gamble and illustrated by Joe Veno Suggested
	Sky Boys by Deborah Hopkinson and illustrated by James E. Ransome Suggested
	My New York Holiday written and illustrated by Kathy Jakobsen Suggested
	Taxi by Betsy Maestro and Giulio Maestro Suggested
	This Is London written and illustrated by Miroslav Sasek Suggested
	New York Is English, Chattanooga Is Creek written and illustrated by Christopher Raschka Suggested
	You Can't Take a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum by Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman and illustrated by Robin Preiss-Glasser Suggested
	Sky Scrape/City Scape edited by Jane Yolen and illustrated by Ken Condon Suggested
	The Wheels on the Bus illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky Suggested
	Trashy Town by Andrea Zimmerman and David Clemesha and illustrated by Dan Yaccarino Suggested

Independent Reader

	The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. (ILT) Denslow Highly Recommended
	A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett and illustrated by Tasha Tudor Highly Recommended
	Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake Highly Recommended
	The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended
	All-Of-A-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor Highly Recommended
	Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers and illustrated by Mary Shepard Highly Recommended
	Stuart Little by E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams Highly Recommended
	A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond and illustrated by Peggy Fortnum Recommended
	From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg Recommended
	Underground by David MacAulay Recommended
	Sahara Special by Esme Raji Codell Suggested
	The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright Suggested
	Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh Suggested
	Snow in August by Pete Hamill Suggested
	The Best of Nancy Drew Classic Collection by Carolyn Keene Suggested
	Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown by Maud Hart Lovelace Suggested
	145th Street by Walter Dean Myers Suggested
	Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer and illustrated by Valenti Angelo Suggested
	Child of the Owl by Laurence Yep Suggested
	Rats by Paul Zindel Suggested

Young Adult

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith Recommended

Tintin Turns 80

Though just mentioned in the prior post, I think it worth drawing particular attention to this article in the December 18th, 2008 Economist, A Very European Hero. Tintin is a boy adventurer from Europe (Belgium actually) who might be characterized as a comic book version of a European Hardy Boys. However, there is much more to the success of the series and the development of Tintin as a cultural and literary icon of Europe than just being a well drawn cartoon with a hero having interesting adventures. The article is an interesting meditation on the role of culture and history and context in the shaping of a childhood favorite.

Socializing the creature

Just a coincidental juxtaposition of three articles that interestingly all deal in different aspects of how children are socialized and the possible role that books and reading play in that process. While I don't believe children can learn manners from books, they have to see it expected, practised, and reinforced around them, and I do believe books can make that process easier or more difficult by being consistent or not in demonstrating that manners matter.



The first article is from today's New York Times, January 13, 2009 by Dr. Perri Klass, Making Room for Miss Manners is a Parenting Basic.



The second article is from the December 18th, 2008 Economist, A Very European Hero about Herge's Tintin who turns 90 this year and who in part was originally created to reinforce certain admired personal behavioral attributes.



And finally an article by Dr. Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal, lamenting the passing of an older generation's quintessential "Britishness" in an article, The Quivering Upper Lip.



Through each of these articles runs a quiet desire that we improve the means by which we inculcate in our children the positive behaviours that not only benefit them but also the community to which they belong. There is also the less than explicit message that books can play a role in reinforcing those desired behaviors.

Hugh Lofting

Born January 14,1886 in Maidenhead, Berkshire, UK

Died September 26, 1947 in Santa Monica, California



Hugh Lofting at times seems almost an amalgam of the life stories of a number of other famous writers. Like P.G. Wodehouse, P.L. Travers and Gerald Durrell, he was distinctively the son of a Victorian Imperial era. Like Lewis Carroll, the work for which he is best known has its origins in tales he wrote in letters to two children. Like Walter Brooks (Freddy the Pig and Mr. Ed) and E.B. White (Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and Trumpet of the Swan), his stories centered on anthropomorphized animals. Like Arthur Conan Doyle, the demand for more stories about his beloved protagonist began to weigh upon him, leading him ultimately to try and kill him off or abandon him; and like Doyle, later having to resurrect him. Like Roald Dahl (Boy and Going Solo), his early life took him to the far corners of the British Empire, then to war before establishing his career as a writer.



Hugh Lofting was born January 14, 1886 in Maidenhead, Berkshire to an Irish father and English mother. He was one of six children and had the abbreviated home life so typical of the British middle class of that era. He showed an early love of nature, animals and storytelling. He at one point raised the ire of his mother by establishing a miniature menagerie of mice and other natural exotica in his mother's linen closet. At the age of eight he was sent off to a Jesuit boarding school, effectively ending close contact with his family.



On completion of boarding school, he secured a scholarship for study in engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1904, completing his engineering studies at London Polytechnic in 1907. There followed a peripatetic few years as he travelled the empire exploring different careers. Starting as an architect, he soon took himself to Canada as a prospector and surveyor in 1908 and 1909. He then spent a couple of years in West Africa as civil engineer for the Lagos Railway. In early 1912 he found himself working as an engineer for the United Railways in Havana, Cuba.



At this point he moved to New York, met, fell in love with, and following a whirlwind romance, quickly married Flora Small in late 1912. Lofting had abandoned engineering as a profession and started to support himself by writing articles and short stories for magazines. Elizabeth and Colin, his first two children were born in the next couple of years.



Lofting's nascent writing career was set aside with the advent of the World War I. Still a British citizen, though resident in the USA and married to an American, Lofting joined the British Ministry of Information in the first couple of years of the war. In 1916 he volunteered and served as a Lieutenant in the Irish Guarders in northern France for two years until wounded in 1917. The war ended before he was fully recuperated.



It was the tragic and soiled battlefields of northern France that saw the birth of that long cherished character of children's literature, Dr. John Dolittle. As Lofting related in his autobiographical entry in The Junior Book of Authors:

It was during the Great War, and my children at home wanted letters from me - and they wanted them with illustrations rather than without. There seemed very little of interest to write to youngsters from the front; the news was either too horrible or too dull. And it was all censored. One thing, however, that kept forcing itself more and more on my attention was the very considerable part the animals were playing in the World War and that as time went on they, too, seemed to become Fatalists.



Oftentimes you would see a cat stalking along the ruins throughout a heavy bombardment, in a town that had been shelled more than once before in that same cat's recollection. She was taking her chances with the rest of us. And the horses, too, learned to accept resignedly and unperturbed the falling of high explosives in their immediate neighborhood. But their fate was different from the men's. However seriously a soldier was wounded, his life was not despaired of; all the resources of a surgery highly developed by the war were brought to his aid. A seriously wounded horse was put out by a timely bullet.



This did not seem quite fair. If we made the animals take the same chances as we did ourselves, why did we not give them similar attention when wounded? But obviously to develop a horse-surgery as good as that of our Casualty Clearing Stations would necessitate a knowledge of horse language.



That was the beginning of the idea: an eccentric country physician with a bent for natural history and a great love of pets, who finally decides to give up his human practice for the more difficult, more sincere, and for him, more attractive therapy of the animal kingdom. He is challenged by the difficulty of the work - for obviously it requires a much cleverer brain to become a good animal doctor (who must first acquire all animal languages and physiologies) than it does to take care of the mere human hypochondriac.

This was a new plot for my narrative letter for the children. It delighted them and at my wife's suggestion, I decided to put the letters in book form for other boys and girls.



When Lofting and family returned to New York from Britain in 1919, he met a friend aboard ship who was taken with the bound letters and offered to make an introduction to the publisher, F.A. Stokes. There the narratives were equally well received and publication of the first Dr. Dolittle story, written and illustrated by Lofting, followed in 1920, The Story of Doctor Dolittle: Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts.



The public, critical and commercial reception was very positive. There followed in 1922, the second in what was to eventually turn into a series of twelve Dr. Dolittle books, The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle. Winner of the recently established Newberry Medal for children's literature (first awarded the year before), The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle, was equally well received as its predecessor.



Dr. John Dolittle is a doctor living in that most English of towns, Puddleby-on-the-Marsh. Dolittle has a fondness for animals and his house is well populated by a large variety of pets, lorded over, in a fashion, by his African Grey parrot, Polynesia. In fact the intrusion of the many animals into his practice sees the diminution of numbers of his human patients. Through Polynesia, Dolittle discovers that animals have their own languages which he begins to learn. It is through this opening of communication that allows Dolittle to solve his increasingly dicey financial prospects. Instead of treating humans, he finds that, by being able to talk with them about their symptoms, he can treat animals far more effectively and thereby earn a different income. One of his first patients is a draught horse who appears to be losing his eyesight and is at risk of being put down. By being able to talk with him, Dolittle discovers that he is not going blind and that he just needs glasses.



And so the adventures begin. Dolittle and his immediate circle of animal friends such as Polyniesia, Gub-Gub the pig, and Dab-Dab the duck are regulars through the series but there are many great walk on characters as well such as the exotic Pushmi-Pullyu (a two-headed creature, one at either end). Tommy Stubbins, Dolittle's young assistant makes his appearance in the The Voyages, and is in most books of the series. Lofting takes Dolittle to many different places around the world, full of characterful animals and strange adventures. His imagination within the natural world rivals the antic creativity of L. Frank Baum in his created world of Oz.



Throughout Lofting's stories, there is an underlying theme of respect for the other, kindness, seeking to connect through communication. This is interesting because one of Lofting's strictures as an author was that his first duty should be to entertain and to entertain both the child and adult. He fulminated against the habit of publishers to classify his books as juvenilia.



Again from his The Junior Book of Authors entry, Lofting might be writing for the world of children's literature today in 2009 with our plethora of didacticism instead of in 1934:

I would like to make it quite clear that I make no claims to be an authority on writing or illustrating for children. The fact that I have been successful merely means that I can write and illustrate in my own way. Whereas, I have always maintained that there is no end to the variety of ways there should be. This would indicate that no one is a real authority, which I think is probably true.



There has always been a tendency to classify children almost as a distinct species. For many years it was a constant source of shock for me to find my writings amongst "Latest Juveniles" or "Leading Juveniles" or some such category.



It does not bother me any more now, but I still do feel that there should be a category of "Seniles" to offset the epithet.



There are two points which I wish to bring out as of primary importance in writing for children.



First, the writing must be entertaining and nothing may be allowed to interfere with or sacrifice that entertainment. There is never any excuse for "putting over" a preachment under the guise of entertainment. The main trouble with children's books is that many writers and many publishers feel that because they are catering to young minds that pretty much anything will do. They don't admit that, of course, but it's true just the same.



Another trouble with the average writing for children is that authors always seem to think they must "write down" to them. I have found that the intelligent children (and I am afraid that the intelligent children are the only kind I am interested in) resent nothing so much as being written down to. Which, of course, is very natural. We adults resent also, if we think a superior intellect is patronizing us. What the intelligent child likes is being "written up" to. He wants promotion; he wants to get into the adult world; he wants progress; and I have always maintained and always will maintain that there is no idea too subtle, no picture too difficult to be conveyed to a child's mind, if the author will but find the proper language to put it in.



Another thing I have always maintained is that there should be just as many kinds of stories and books for children as there are for grown-ups. I have often quoted my daughter's interest when at the age of five, she learned her mother had just returned from an employment bureau, where she had gone to hire a cook. Elizabeth wanted to know all about it. She was looking forward, no doubt, to the time when she would hire a cook (the poor child did not realize, of course, that by the time she would be grown up, there would not be any more cooks, but that's neither here nor there). Well, I have never seen a story for children about an employment agency, but after all, why not? It is really pathetic that the majority of writers for children feel that the only material children are interested in is pussy-cats and puppy-dogs. When really there is nothing in the whole wide world that they are not interested in.



This is proved by the fact that, when ever a book is a real success for children, it is also a success and an enjoyment for grown-ups. If writers would only get away from this classifying of children as a separate species, we would get very much better books for the younger generation. For who shall say where the dividing line lies, that separates the child from the adult? Practically all children want to be grown up and practically all grown-ups want to be children, and God help us, the adults, when we have no vestige of childhood in our hearts.

Lofting is a bundle of unresolved contradictions. He served his country(ies) in the Great War and emerged from that conflict with a profound desire for peace and revulsion at the destructiveness of war. He believed profoundly in the capacity to connect peoples through communication. He became a pacifist. In an article in the Nation, he expressed hope that the destruction of barriers between people would create peace and "getting the child to realize that the day of the old-fashioned military hero is gone." He attributed wars to "the sagas - with the folk-tales, the tribal legends that were purposely designed to keep alive race hatreds combined with a paramount respect for military prowess."



For all that though, Lofting was very proud of his military service. When war again confronted the civilized world in 1939, despite being in his fifties, having a family, and being a pacifist, Lofting tried to reenlist with the Irish Guards but was, to his disappointment, turned down.



Similarly, it is indisputable that Lofting was a progressive man deeply respectful of the "other". His characters and heroes are almost always the down-trodden and disrespected members at the margin of society. He can easily be characterized as one of the early environmentalists and animal rights advocates. He clearly believed in the capacity of all people to find a means of living together.



Yet, for all that, there are elements in his wonderful stories that are not only discordant but somewhat shocking. There is the African chief that wishes to be white. There is the characterization by Polynesia of Africans as lazy. The terms coon and nigger feature in a couple of sequences of dialogue. His illustrations of Africans are representative caricatures of the time. I am deeply resistant to the over-sensitized political correctness ninnies that want to condemn and ban books from the past based on their own ignorance (such as with the book Little Black Sambo) or on their incapacity to allow the past to be different and have different mores and norms than our "enlightened" present.



That said, were I an African American parent, I would probably have some marginal hesitation about the representations in the Dolittle books. They might be normal for their time and entirely consistent with late Victoriana attitudes. Indeed, there is even more to it than that. They might not reflect a white person's view of Africans but a genuine desire on the part of Africans at that time. I lived in West Africa as a young child for a year or so and recall the tale of our gardener. One day, while I tagged along behind him in the garden, watching what he did, nominally helping out, he pointed out to me a particular, large, furry caterpillar. He warned me to be careful of this particular insect (though in Nigeria it seemed as if you needed to be careful of practically everything that moved). He explained that this caterpillar, if it bit you, turned you from white to black. He said that he used to be white and had been bitten by this insect and was now, obviously, black. This was in Nigeria in the 1960's. I don't offer the story to make a particular point other than that it is easy to forget just how disparate the tales can be among all peoples at different times.



The Dolittle stories are a magical exercise in imagination, bridging the interests and humor of both adults and children. It would be a shame to omit them because we impute values of today to terms and actions from an age ago that were not intended in that fashion. With our children, we handled this by reading the Dolittle books to them when they were young. We made the decision about which terms to skip or render differently. It gave us the opportunity as well to later discuss changing ways of expressing one-self and of changing attitudes in general.



Lofting's books have always been praised for their creativity, freshness, style and ability to engage both adults and children. As with all series there is an unevenness in later books but no real agreement among critics about which of the later books were especially good or poor, each has its advocate. In the seventies and eighties, the Dolittle books fell from favor because of the assaults of the language police and only a fraction of the series (The Story of Dr. Dolittle and The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle), remains in print.



There are choices to be made among the different editions currently available. Lofting's original versions of the first two books with his original illustrations are in print but have been edited to omit the terms that so offend our ears. There are other editions which go yet further and re-illustrate the books as well (and sometimes more extensively re-edit them.) I am an advocate of the earliest books.



Lofting had a long run of success with the Dolittle books. His own later life and writing career were marked by challenges and tragedies. He struggled with alcoholism (attributed to his war-time experiences) through the rest of his life and which ultimately contributed to his demise. His first wife struggled with mental illness, eventually being confined to a series of asylums before her death in 1927.



Lofting remarried in 1928 to Katherine Harrower-Peters but tragically she succumbed to pneumonia later that same year.



It was in that same year Lofting published what he intended to be the last Dolittle story, Dr. Dolittle in the Moon. He had grown tired of the sustained popularity of his most noteworthy character. He had already written a story that did not involve Dolittle in 1923, The Story of Mrs. Tubbs, and eventually wrote four other books for children and a couple for adults, but none of them ever gained anything near the traction of the Dolittle books.



In 1933, bowing to sustained pressure from his readers and publishers, Lofting wrote Dr. Dolittles Return. Lofting remarried again in 1935 to Josephine Fricker and with whom he had a third child, a second son, Christopher.



Hugh Lofting passed away in Santa Monica, September, 26, 1947.



After his passing, Disney ensured a new life for Lofting's books with the release in 1967 of their movie version of Dr. Dolittle. Unlike some movie renditions of books, this one is actually pretty decent. As is always the case, it can't do justice to the book and should not be viewed as a substitute, but it does carry a whiff of the magic that infuses Lofting's writings.



There is a further adaption in 1997 with Eddie Murphie. As entertaining as Murphie often is, I think this version of Dr. Dolittle falls short. In the books there is an ever-present call to a better world through the language of communication. In the second movie version, perhaps in an attempt at contemporary "relevance", there is more of a call to a cheap laugh through the language of the bathroom.



Hugh Lofting lived an interesting life and gave the world a wonderful character who ought to be part of the childhood reading of all children. Enjoy!







Independent Reader

	The Story of Dr. Dolittle by Hugh Lofting Highly Recommended
	The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting Highly Recommended
	Porridge Poetry by Hugh Lofting Suggested

Hugh Lofting Bibliography



The Story of Doctor Dolittle: Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1920

The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1922

Doctor Dolittle's Post Office written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1923

The Story of Mrs. Tubbs written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1923

Doctor Dolittle's Circus written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1924

Porridge Poetry: Cooked, Ornamented, and Served by Hugh Lofting written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1924

Doctor Dolittle's Zoo written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1925

Doctor Dolittle's Caravan written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1926

Doctor Dolittle's Garden written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1927

Doctor Dolittle in the Moon written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1928

Noisy Nora: An Almost True Story written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1929

The Twilight of Magic written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1930

Gub-Gub's Book: An Encyclopedia of Food written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1932

Doctor Dolittle's Return written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1933

Tommy, Tilly, and Mrs. Tubbs written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1936

Victory for the Slain (poetry) written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1942

Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1948

Doctor Dolittle and the Green Canary written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1950

Doctor Dolittle's Puddleby Adventures written and illustrated by Hugh Lofting 1952

Doctor Dolittle: A Treasury written Hugh Lofting and illustrated by Olga Fricker 1967

TTMD Comunity Members forecast which 2007 books will endure

One of the things that fascinates all involved in the world of children's books is trying to figure out which books will endure (and why) and also to figure out why some well deserved books seem to fade from the scene. Through the Magic Door has had a shot at assessing the enduring popularity of past winners of major awards, (see Awards as Forecasts as well as Sic transit gloria mundi).



Through the Magic Door invites you to partake in a quick exercise in which you forecast which of the winners of recent awards will still be popular twenty-five and seventy-five years from now. You can vote on the titles that won major national awards in 2007 as well as log those books that you thought were great works published in 2007 but which may not have won a major award (or any award).



Use your own criteria for forecasting which ones will be around. I suspect your votes would be shaped by considerations of how universal is the message of the book, the nature of its emotional impact on a child, how much its current popularity is shaped by topical fads (e.g. vampires), how much is the language of the book colored by current styles, etc.



Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Sic transit gloria mundi

From Slightly Foxed Winter 2008. Umbrellas at Dawn by Richard Hughes.

'I don't think he'll be remembered at all.' The hugely successful novelist sat in his apartment at No. 90 Piccadilly confiding to his diary. 'His only fault', he continued, 'was his pomposity about himself and his works.' The year was 1937 and the man of letters, within weeks of being knighted for his services to literature, was musing on the passing away - prematurely at the age of 55 - of the poet and dramatist John Drinkwater.



From his desk overlooking Green Park, the richest novelist of his age was commenting on the foibles of a less successful colleague and competitor. At this moment he seemed master of all he surveyed - the purveyor of best-selling fiction with a literary gloss that placed him comfortably above the Howard Springs and Warwick Deepings of the world; recently returned from a profitable period in Hollywood writing screenplays for several directors, including George Cukor; a man whose vast wealth had allowed him to become a respected collector of books and paintings, and a well-known and generous patron and benefactor of the literary circle of the day. But four years later he too was to die prematurely, at 57, and, more shocking and difficult to credit, he was soon to be as forgotten as John Drinkwater. His name was Hugh Walpole.



It is hard today to appreciate the extent of Hugh Walpole's success. Not only did his novels - which had appeared annually since his first triumph, Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traidill, in 1911 - consistently head the best-seller lists, but he was also a well-known public figure on both sides of the Atlantic. At the time of his death in 1941, he was giving a series of wartime propaganda broadcasts to the USA called 'Hugh Walpole Talking'. His views were sought, his opinions respected. Hugh Walpole was master of his game. Yet there has always been a problem about the reputation of this seemingly dominant figure.

Humanities Indicator

If you have not already seen this, The Humanities Resource Center has released an excellent study, The Humanities Indicator Prototype, which attempts to measure, as the name suggests, the nature of and degree of engagement between the humanities and the general culture. Follow the link to the main page.



Part V, The Humanities in American Life, is the section particularly pertinent to those of us focusing on the role of reading and children's literature. In particular, Section A covers Adult Literacy, Family Literacy, and Book Reading.



This is an excellent collation of information from disparate sources and the general observations and conclusions map well to research we have been doing at Through the Magic Door which is more concentrated on these same trends but with particular focus on young people rather than the population at large.



The one element I do not see addressed is the degree of concentration of reading. Based on only two studies some years apart, it would appear to me that in the US, discretionary reading is highly concentrated. Approximately 50% of the population read nothing for pleasure in a given year, 40% of the population reads about 20% of the books consumed in a year and 10% of the population does approximately 80% of the discretionary reading. The closest the study comes to shedding light on this issue is measurement of levels of prose proficiency. The US comes ninth among twenty-two OECD countries (and ahead of all the big European countries such as UK and Germany) in terms of prose proficiency but it also has one of the most bi-polar distributions. 21% of the population reads at the highest level of proficiency and 21% reads at the lowest level. Three Scandinavian countries (four of the nine countries that are ahead of the US) have similarly high levels of the population reading at the most proficient level but are more effective at minimizing the percentage of the population reading at the lowest levels. For Sweden, Norway and Finland, 24% of the population reads at the highest literacy level (compared to the US's 21%) but only 9% read at the lowest level (compared to the US's 21%).

Other interesting findings in this report:

43% of the population read no books for pleasure in the prior 12 months. That figure is for 2002. More recent studies for the US that I have seen all hover around the 50% mark not having read a book in the prior 12 months. In Europe the corresponding figure tends to average 55% but with marked national and regional variations.



While overall voluntary reading has been declining for a number of years, the most marked declines are among the younger demographics. Between 1992 and 2002, voluntary reading declined from 59.8% to 51% for 18-24 year olds and from 63.8% to 58.4% for 25-34 year olds. Remember, this is a measure of people that read at least a single book.



All demographics showed an increase in the habit of daily reading to children in their household, increasing from 53% to 58% between 1993 and 2001. Households with the mother having a college degree education or higher (about 25% of the population) had the highest rates of daily reading to children at 73%.

Awards as forecasts

A while ago I conducted an exercise with some interesting results. I wanted to know how well awards reflected enduring enjoyment by the reading public. This was not an exercise in criticism of awards. I think they are a critical part of the annual cycle of events among the literate public and they play an important function of bringing attention to new works in a fashion somewhat separate from the marketing hoopla of publishers. But how good are they as forecasters of future popularity? Pretty good in the short term, so-so in the medium term, and not so much in the long term is the answer.



I decided to look at a couple of different aspects of this. First I made the assumption that the degree to which books are still in print some years after they were initially published, reflects, at least imperfectly, enduring popularity. Second I decided to compile a list of most cited books in terms of popularity. I compiled this from some 80 sources made up of library lists, academic texts (dealing with the teaching of children's literature), awards, and independent lists (informed amateurs, newspaper contests, etc.). I then looked at how often the most critically popular books had actually received awards.



In order to answer the first question (how have past winners fared?), I looked back 75 years, 50, 25, 10 and 5 years to see how many titles picked as winners or runners up by six national awards (Newberry, Caldecott, Horn Book Fanfare, Kate Greenaway, Carnegie and Bank Street awards, not all of which were in existence for the full duration) were still in print. I did this at the end of 2007 and looked back to 1932, 1957, 1982, 1997 and 2002. Up to ten years after they won an award, between 80 and 90% of the titles were still in print. There then was a plunge to 45% still in print for the periods twenty-five and fifty years after receiving an award. At the seventy-five year mark (only the Newberry was then in existence), only one of the seven (15%) Newberry Honor/Medal winners for 1932 was still in print. It wasn't the Medal winner, Waterless Mountain, but rather an Honor winner, Calico Bush by Rachel Field. In fact, among the authors represented and aside from Field, I suspect only Dorothy P. Lathrop would garner a glimmer of recognition outside the most rarefied of experts.



So only 15% of winners from seventy-five years ago were still in print.



How about the second question, (how many of the most popular books were award winners in the year of their publication?) This was an interesting exercise and I will publish the results in more detail shortly.



From an overall perspective, Awards lists were the least accurate pickers of the most enduringly favorite books compared to academics, libraries and independents. Roughly 30% of the top 100, 500 and 1000 books failed to receive a single award (recognizing that some of the favorite titles were published before the earliest awards were given).



Finally I looked, not exhaustively, for any other titles from way back to see what other books published in 1932 (but which did not receive an award), were still in print. Among the books I found were:

Freddy the Detective by Walter R. Brooks

Angus Lost by Marjorie Flack

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Little Family (now out of print) by Lois Lenski

So what does it all mean? Well, the sensationalist headline might be "Fewer than Half Award Winners Still in Print After 25 Years."



However, to an extent, it just quantifies what you might expect. Trying to sort through all the books of a particular year, to identify which are the most exciting or engaging works is a difficult task with incomplete lists of books, sharp deadlines, and all sorts of pressures, fads and influences. It is not quite the same as identifying at leisure which are likely to be the most loved books over time. If journalism is the first draft of history, then awards are the first draft of enduring popularity - somewhat hit or miss, but getting a reasonable number of the winners right and overlooking just enough to keep bibliophiles fussing and fuming.