Lynd Ward

Born June 26, 1905 in Chicago, Illinois
Died June 28, 1985


Lynd Ward was a US graphic artist active from the late 1920's onwards, a particularly pivotal period in both the fields of art as well as children's books. In the field of children's literature there were pioneers and innovators such as Wanda Gag (with whom Ward shared a proclivity for woodblock prints) beginning to carve out a path independent of the traditions of Europe. Other developments included the spread of comics and the first ventures into what we now call a graphic novel. Lynd Ward was not only in the forefront of these trends; he was one of the acknowledged masters.

Ward was born June 26, 1905 in Chicago, Illinois into a religious family. His father, Harry F. Ward, was a Methodist minister and professor. Due to his father's career they lived a number of places during Ward's childhood including Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Ward's childhood health was not all that great. His condition was helped by the summer place that the family maintained in Lonely Lake, Ontario. The freedom of roaming the woods and close interactions with nature and the wild were to show up in his later works.

Ward claimed that he early developed the desire to be an artist based on the realization that the palindrome of his family name was DRAW.

Ward attended Columbia University, graduating in 1926 with a major in fine arts. As so often happens, he left university not only with a degree but with a wife. May McNeer, a fellow student, and Lynd Ward married the week following their graduation. McNeer became a prolific author of some dozens of children's books, twenty-seven of which were illustrated by Lynd Ward. Their marriage and collaborations lasted five decades until his passing in 1985. Following graduation and marriage, the Wards moved to Germany for a year of study at the National Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig.

The late twenties were a period of turbulent change in the world at large and the art world in particular. The year the Wards were in Germany in 1926-27 was an interlude of some peace and prosperity; the period was marked by the disastrous hyperinflation at the beginning of the decade, and the increasing stridency and political instability at the end of the decade. During this delicate bubble period there was an effervescence of artistic, cultural and scientific development which would have permeated even to the staid town of Leipzig.

It was in Leipzig that he was first exposed to the ideas and work of Fran Masereel and Otto Nuckel, a Belgian and a German artist respectively, exploring the frontiers of communication and testing the ideas of wordless novels for story telling. For a talented artist at the beginning of a career, a new marriage (and with a return ticket to the US) it must have been an exciting year.

In the US, change was afoot as well. There was, of course, the context of the Great Depression and the New Deal years. But on the artistic frontier, you had artists such as John Held working in woodblocks with strong contrasts in their cartoons. By the thirties you had cartoonists like Charles Addams also working in stark blacks and whites, their humor distinctly morbid in nature. In the field of children's books, Wanda Gag's catalytic Millions of Cats (1929 Newberry Honor), done from woodblocks, appeared in 1929. The late twenties and thirties also saw the rise of a new genre of reading material: comic books. In those early years there was an excitement of possibility - were comic books a new art form? Something for adults or for children? Were comic books a form of subversion?

In 1928, the year after their return, Ward got right down to work and demonstrated the productivity that was to characterize his entire career and produced the first three books of an oeuvre that, over his career, would eventually total some 200 illustrated books; some that he wrote himself and many authored by others. These first three were illustrations of other people's works, including Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde. However, he was already working on his first major novel which was published in 1929, inspired by the ideas of Masereel and Nuckel.

1929, Ward published four more books saw the publication of four more books One of these, Prince Bantam, was the first collaboration between Ward and his wife May McNeer. However, the big event of the year (apart from the stock market crash in October) was the release in November of Gods' Man, a wordless novel illustrated with 139 prints from engraved woodblocks.

Gods' Man is a reasonably traditional variant of the Faustian bargain but its novelty of being entirely without words, breathed a life into it and a positive critical reception, which marked Ward as a new force in the field of art. Five additional wordless novels followed over the next few years. With serious art and the novelty of wordlessness Gods' Man was clearly an event in both the art world and the publishing world. But was it an event in children's literature?

Not really except in hindsight where Wards later work and focus on children's book illustrations make Gods' Man possibly pertinent. It was not published as a child's book and the theme of a Faustian bargain is certainly more of a Young Adult narrative than one for younger children. The wordlessness of the narrative, though, does force us back to first principles. If it is reading that we want to encourage (rather than storytelling), how do wordless stories contribute to the development of reading?

I can see where an argument could be made that wordless stories do in fact help lay the foundations of skills that are in turn critical for the development of good reading capabilities. It is a story with a structured flow that requires sustained attention - one critical capacity. It requires attention to visual detail to support the interpretation of available information to fill in the unstated story - a second critical capacity. It requires an extra dose of imagination over a text-based narrative in that you are creating the narrative yourself with the prompting of the artist/author - a third and especially critical capability.

So are these wordless novels children's stories? No, not really but if you have an older reluctant reader who is challenged by sustaining focus on the narrative flow, is not engaging their imagination in creating the narrative, and who is easily distracted, then these novels can actually be used usefully to those ends.

Outside of the art and publishing worlds though, Ward is really best known for his children's books illustrations; of both his own stories as well as those of many others. He illustrated the works of many classic literary lights (Oscar Wilde, Goethe, Frederick Marryat, Alec Waugh, Thomas Mann, Antoine de Saint Exupery, Wary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Ernest Hemingway, R.L. Stevenson, Daniel Defoe, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Johann David Wyss, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, William Shakespeare, and Voltaire) as well as contemporary children's authors who were to become classics in their turn (Hildegard Hoyt Swift, Padraic Colum, Esther Forbes, Ann N. Clark, Marguerite Henry, Jean Fritz, and Scott O'Dell).

While his early work was substantially focused on woodblocks, Ward was an extremely versatile artist and worked with techniques and media far beyond woodblocks including, watercolors, oil, lithography, etc. In fact most his children's works are in watercolors and inks rather than woodblocks.

There are three landmark Ward classics that anchor his position amongst children's illustrators 1) The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge , 2) The Biggest Bear, and 3) The Silver Pony. After his wife May McNeer, the next author with whom Ward most frequently collaborated was Hildegard Hoyt Swift. Their first effort was Little Blacknose at the very beginning of Ward's career in 1929 and was followed by five further books over the course of thirty some years. 1942 saw the release of The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge which is the story for which Swift is best known and was the first major pylon on which Ward's reputation in children's books has rested. Done in ink washes and colors, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge is a tale of what happens when one technology (an old brick lighthouse in this instance) is apparently supplanted by another (a high bridge with its own light). It is a charming story in itself and engagingly illustrated by Ward and has proved enduringly popular over the years. The fact that the lighthouse was saved and still can be seen in New York adds an element of satisfying veracity to the tale.

It is interesting to note that Lynd Ward was a contemporary of Virginia Lee Burton and their respective careers have elements of tangency. She also started her career in the late 1920's with her first book being published in 1929. Her themes of technological displacement (Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel published in 1939), civic action to save a beloved municipal icon (Maybelle the Cable Car published in 1952) and recycling (The Little House published in 1942) are all joined together in Swift and Ward's The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge (1942). Ward and Burton both approached their work by creating the visual story first and only then writing the text to bring the story together, with an objective to use as little text as possible and having the visual illustration carry as much of the story as possible.

The second classic children's story is one which Ward wrote himself, The Biggest Bear, which was published in 1952 and received the 1953 Caldecott Medal. Drawing on his love of the outdoors and his childhood experiences in Lonely Lake, Ontario, Ward tells the tale of a young boy setting out to bag himself a bear skin and ending up with a bigger handful of bear than he anticipated. Part of the strength of this tale, beyond Ward's illustrations, is the sense of pending traumatic disaster with which he imbues the tale and from which he rescues the protagonist and his friend, the bear, at the end. This is a great story for introducing to young children the idea of planning ahead as well as taking responsibility for the consequences of one's own actions. From a narrative and illustration perspective, I highly recommend this story. If you have philosophical grounds for opposing the thought of hunting, the depiction of children with guns, etc. this would not be the book for you.

There is a lesser known third book, The Silver Pony, which achieved critical and popular reception when it was released in 1973. In this story for children, Ward returns to the experiments of his early career when he was writing for adults. The Silver Pony is another wordless book but this time focused on the child as "reader". As with the comments above about his wordless books for adults, The Silver Pony can be an excellent exercise for engaging a child in an unusual exercise and putting them in control of the story. I personally enjoy wordless stories for the opportunity they provide for elaboration of themes, diversions into detail and other acts of customization. That being said, as a parent reading to a child, it is more work. Be prepared.

After a long and hugely productive life, and leaving a number of masterpieces of children's literature still enjoyed by children today, Lynd Ward passed away on June 28, 1985.

Picture Books

The Biggest Bear by Lynd Ward Highly Recommended

The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth and illustrated by Lynd Ward Suggested

The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge by Hildegarde Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward Highly Recommended

The Silver Pony by Lynd Ward Recommended

Independent Reader

Early Thunder by Jean Fritz and illustrated by Lynd Ward Suggested

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes and illustrated by Lynd Ward Recommended

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss and illustrated by Lynd Ward Suggested

Young Adult

Gods' Man by Lynd Ward Suggested

Mad Man's Drum by Lynd Ward Suggested

Bibliography

Lola the Bear by Henry Milner Rideout and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1928
The Begging Deer and Other Stories of Japanese Children by Dorothy Rowe and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1928
Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1928
God's Man: A Novel in Woodcuts by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1929
Prince Bantam by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1929
Traveling Shops: Stories of Chinese Children by Dorothy Rowe and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1929
Little Blacknose: The Story of a Pioneer by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1929
Madman's Drum: A Novel in Woodcuts by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Wonder Flights of Long Ago by Mary Elizabeth Barry and P. R. Hanna and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Sir Bob by Salvadore Madariaga and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Midsummer Night by Carl Wilhelmson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Waif Maid by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Faust (limited edition) by Johann W. von Goethe and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Children of the New Forest by Frederick Marryat and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Jockeys, Crooks, and Kings by Winfield Scott O'Connor and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Spice and the Devil's Cave by Agnes D. Hewes and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Stop Tim! The Tale of a Car by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Hot Countries by Alec Waugh and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1930
Ching Li and the Dragons by Alice W. Howard and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1931
The Story of Siegfried by Richard Wagner and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1931
"Most Women . . ." by Alec Waugh and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1931
Impassioned Clay by Lleyelyn Powys and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1931
Wild Pilgrimage: A Novel in Woodcuts by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1932
Now That the Gods Are Dead by Llewelyn Powys and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1932
The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1932
A Christmas Poem by Thomas Mann and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1932
Prelude to a Million Years by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1933
The White Sparrow by Padraic Colum and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1933
Southern Mail by Antoine de Saint Exupery and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1933
In Place of Profit: Social Incentive in the Soviet Union by Harry F. Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1933
The Flutter of an Eyelid by Myron Brinig and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1933
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1934
Nocturnes by Thomas Mann and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1934
The Man with Four Lives by William J. Cowen and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1934
An Almanac for Moderns by Donald Culross Peattie and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1935
Topgallant: A Herring Gull by Marjorie Medary and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1935
One of Us: The Story of John Reed by Granville Hicks and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1935
Song without Words by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1936
The Haunted Omnibus by Alexander Kinnan Laing and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1936
Vertigo by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1937
Bright Island by Mabel L. Robinson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1937
A Book of Hours by Donald Culross Peattie and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1937
Story of Odysseus by W. H. D. Rouse and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1937
Birds against Men by Louis J. Halle and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1938
Porpoise of Pirate Bay by F. Martin Howard and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1938
House by the Sea by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1938
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1938
Runner of the Mountain Tops: The Life of Louis Agassiz by Mabel L. Robinson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1939
Beowulf by William Ellery Leonard and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1939
Last Hunt by Maurice Genevoix and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1940
Le Comte de Monte-Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1941
Primer of Economics by Stuart Chase and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1941
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1942
The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1942
The Sangamon by Edgar Lee Masters and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1942
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1942
Fog Magic by Julia L. Sauer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1943
Johnny Tremain: A Novel for Old and Young by Esther Forbes and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1943
Journey into America by Donald Culross Peattie and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1943
Moriae Encomium; or, In Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1943
The Innocent Voyage by Richard Arthur Warren Hughes and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1944
The Gold Rush by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1944
The Covered Wagon by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1944
Reunion in Poland by Jean Karsavina and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1945
America's Paul Revere by Esther Forbes and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1946
Many Mansions, from the Bible by Jessie Mae Orton Jones and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1947
The Golden Flash by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1947
North Star Shining: A Pictorial History of the American Negro by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1947
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1948
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1948
Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss (With Lee Gregori) and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1949
America's Ethan Allen by Stewart Hall Holbrook and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1949
The California Gold Rush by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1950
America's Robert E. Lee by Henry Steele Commager and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1951
Strong Wings by Mabel L. Robinson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1951
John Wesley by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1951
The Biggest Bear by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1952
Up a Crooked River by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1952
Mrs. Wicker's Window by Carley Dawson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1952
The Story of Ulysses S. Grant by Jeannette Covert Nolan and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1952
Conquest of the North and South Poles by Russel Owen and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1952
The Black Sombrero by Nanda Weedon Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1952
Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1952
The Mexican Story by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1953
Arabian Nights by Padraic Colum and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1953
Martin Luther by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1953
God's Story Book: A First Book of Bible Stories for Little Catholics by and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1953
War Chief of the Seminoles by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1954
The Horn That Stopped the Band by Arthur Hudson Parsons and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1954
Little Baptiste by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1954
Sign of the Seven Seas by Carley Dawson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1954
Santiago by Ann N. Clark and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1955
Dragon Run by Carley Dawson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1955
Explorer's Digest by Leonard F. Clark and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1955
High Flying Hat by Nanda Weedon Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1956
America's Abraham Lincoln by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1957
Armed with Courage by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1957
The Edge of April: A Biography of John Burroughs by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1957
The Canadian Story by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1958
Bible Readings for Boys and Girls by Anonymous and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1959
Gaudenzia: Pride of the Palio by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1960
Brady by Jean Fritz and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1960
The Alaska Gold Rush by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1960
My Friend Mac: The Story of Little Baptiste and the Moose by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1960
The Wildest Horse Race in the World by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1960
Lord Jim: A Tale by Joseph Conrad and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1960
The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1961
Hi Tom by Nanda Weedon Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1962
From the Eagle's Wing: A Biography of John Muir by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1962
America's Mark Twain by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1962
The American Indian Story by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1963
Give Me Freedom by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1964
Five Plays from Shakespeare by William Shakespeare and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1964
Profile of American History by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1964
Nic of the Woods by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1965
A Peculiar Magic by Annabel Johnson and Edgar Johnson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1965
The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1965
Dream of the Blue Heron by Victor Barnouw and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1966
The Wolf of Lambs Lane by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1967
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson by Thomas Jefferson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1967
Early Thunder by Jean Fritz and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1967
Go, Tim, Go! by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1967
The Secret Journey of the Silver Reindeer by Lee Kingman and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1968
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1970
Stranger in the Pines by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1971
Stories from the Bible by Alvin Presselt and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1971
The Treasure of Topo-el-Bampo by Scott O'Dell and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1972
The Silver Pony: A Story in Pictures by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1973
The Story of George Washington by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1973
Storyteller without Words: The Wood Engravings of Lynd Ward by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1974
Bloomsday for Maggie by May McNeer and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1976
A Relevant Memoir: The Story of the Equinox Cooperative Press by Henry Hart and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1977
Poem upon the Lisbon Disaster by François Marie Arouet de Voltaire and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1977
Inner Room by Lynd Ward and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1988

Favorite Children's Books - UK and USA

I am an inveterate collector of lists. With something as contextual and subtle as favorite children's books, it is really mostly an indulgence but sometimes there are glimmerings of insight that you can discern in the sludge.

In the past year, two major papers in the US and UK (The New York Times in the US and The Daily Telegraph in the UK) have run a question soliciting their readers feedback on favorite children's books. I recognize that there are all sorts of drawbacks to using this information - 1) they were run six months apart, 2) the questions were slightly different (Telegraph - Which books should every child read? versus the New York Times' - What was Your Harry Potter?), 3) the population of respondents was self-selected, 4) the number of commenters differed (Telegraph, 189 and NYT 1031) before being cut off, 5) there were no formats or standards for commenting so that some commenters might mention a single book, others a couple of dozen, some commenters would also suggest "All of author X", etc. and 6) often the commenters comments need interpreting (title not quite right, or a right title and wrong author, or an unidentifiable title), and so on.

Still, it is kind of interesting to compare the results. 189 commenters made suggestions in the UK and 1,031 in the US. The UK list had a total of 430 books mentioned, 110 of those being mentioned by at least two or more commenters. The corresponding numbers for the US list were 977 and 352. I documented all titles and authors in the commenters sections, making corrections as necessary. Here is what I found.

Top Twenty Titles

UK	USA
The Chronicles of Narnia	Nancy Drew
Swallows and Amazons	Lord of the Rings
Alice in Wonderland	The Chronicles of Narnia
Peter Rabbit	The Little House on the Prairie
Treasure Island	The Hardy Boys
The Hobbit	A Wrinkle in Time
Lord of the Rings	Anne of Green Gables
Wind in the Willows	Little Women
Black Beauty	Tom Swift
Winnie The Pooh	The Hobbit
The Magic Faraway Tree	The Wizard of Oz
Robinson Crusoe	The Phantom Tollbooth
Famous Five	Charlotte's Web
The Silver Sword	The Bobbsey Twins
Harry Potter	Black Stallion
Biggles	The Secret Garden
Lord of the Flies	The Dark is Rising
Aesop's Fables	The Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler
The Diary of a Young Girl	The Boxcar Children
>Charlotte's Web	Dr. Dolittle

Top Twenty Authors

UK	USA
Enid Blyton	Judy Blume
C.S. Lewis	Roald Dahl
Arthur Ransome	Beverly Cleary
Beatrix Potter	Robert Heinlein
Roald Dahl	Isaac Asimov
Aesop	Jules Verne
Rudyard Kipling	Dr. Seuss
Willard Price	Ray Bradbury
William Shakespeare	Enid Blyton
Charles Dickens	Jack London
E. Nesbit	Louisa May Alcott
Hans Christian Anderson	Mark Twain
Malcolm Saville	Albert Payson Terhune
R.L. Stevenson	Madeline L'Engle
Captain Marryat	Edward Eager
Dr. Seuss	Lucy Maude Montgomery
G.A. Henty	A.A. Milne
H. Rider Haggard	Agatha Christie
Isaac Asimov	Edgar Allan Poe
Jacqueline Wilson	John Bellairs

Only four titles were common across the top twenty from each country, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, Lord of The Rings and Charlotte's Web.

Despite the top twenty list having only four in common, the total list of titles were relatively well known to the two different groups of commenters.

All the top twenty titles from the UK list were mentioned among the US commenters at least once, except for one with which I was also not familiar, The Silver Sword by Ian Serrailier. Even the very distinctly British series, Biggles, received a couple of votes from the NYT commenters (perhaps some Canadian readers commenting in the NYTs?).

However, among the US top twenty, including the top scoring US book, the Nancy Drew series, fully 25% of the titles were not mentioned at all in the UK. These US favorites not recognized in the UK were; Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, the Bobbsey Twins, The Black Stallion, and The Boxcar Children.

A more widely read US group perhaps, or maybe simply a function of a larger commenting population.

Classes of favorites differed between the two countries, with series making up 65% of the titles in the US list versus only 40% in the UK. In fact it is even a little more differentiated than that if you distinguish between formulaic series (UK - Faraway Tree series, Famous Five, and Biggles; US - Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, the Boxcar Children) from literary series (UK - Chronicles of Narnia, Swallows and Amazons, Peter Rabbit, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter; US - Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, A Wrinkle in Time, Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, Black Stallion). The formulaic series represent only 15% of the top twenty in the UK whereas they are 35% of the US list.

If we turn to the top twenty authors, the differences become more pronounced. In part this is possibly due to lack of guidelines in commenting. I am focusing here on those authors where multiple commenters explicitly indicated that the entire body of the author's work was read or ought to be read.

Four authors make both lists, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Dr. Seuss, and Isaac Assimov.

The British list is much more explicitly classical canon with most the usual suspects including Charles Dickens, C.S. Lewis, Arthur Ransome, Rudyard Kipling, Hans Christian Andersn, E. Nesbit, etc. In fact there are only four authors that would probably not fall into the classical canon: Willard Price, Jacqueline Wilson, Malcolm Saville (another one that I have never come across but was mentioned several times in the UK list) and possibly G.A. Henty.

The US top twenty list was much more heterogeneous with mystery writers (Agatha Christy), science fiction authors (Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury), early independent reader authors (Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume) and a couple of niche authors (John Bellairs and Albert Payson Terhune) leavening the classics (Mark Twain, Jack London, Louisa May Alcott, Edgar Allan Poe, Madeleine L'Engle, Jules Verne and L.M. Montgomery).

So - Any conclusions? No, not really. Still, pretty interesting to mull it over.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Colossi of Memnon, Luxor, Egypt

Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

'If children are to become readers for life, they must first love stories' from Britain

The Telegraph has a listing of Childrens Books as well as suggestions from their readers. I love book lists and am happy to see this one. Especially note the readers comments for all the favorite books that any list inevitably omits.

You might recall that we prepared a British Expatriates and Immigrants book list. I will compare what the Telegraph readers think to the list we created and see what gaps exist.

The Moral Instinct

Steven Pinker had an essay, The Moral Instinct, in the New York Times a week ago which I have just got around to reading.

It is good reading for prompting questions and discussion. If you have a young adult in the household, with their finally attuned instincts for questioning the order of things and particularly the iniquity of parentally imposed moral structures, this is a nice essay for neutral common discussion.

I was also interested to see how some of the points he makes tie into a number of the axioms articulated in last weeks' Pigeon Post essay In Praise of Bad Books.

And how does this relate to children's books? Between this essay on The Moral Instinct, Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and a couple of other books I am reading at the moment, I am becoming more and more intrigued by the idea of the importance of imagination as a root capability. The ability to sympathize with others is in part dependant upon our capacity to put (imagine) ourselves in the circumstances of another. Our ability to plan ahead is just another mask of imagination, for what is planning but the imagination of what is likely to happen (both necessary actions and possible consequences)?

In children's literature we often think of imagination in its manifestation as creativity. But I wonder if children's stories, in their capacity of nurturing imagination, don't play an even more important role by building up those other attributes that are so critical such as empathy, anticipation, comprehension of consequences, etc.

Chinese New Year

If you were to take Christmas (gift exchanges), Easter (new life and spring), July 4th (parades and fireworks), the tradition of Spring Cleaning (throw out the old, clean up and get ready for the new) and Memorial Day (remembrance of those that have gone before) and were to wrap it all into a single package, you begin to get an idea of the importance of a traditional Chinese New Year celebration.

It is in the language, the traditions, and the folktales of other countries that we discover a window into other views of the world. And the pathway into understanding these things is through the paving stones of questions. The most basic questions open up all sorts of unexpected doors. When is the Chinese New Year? Well it isn't a fixed date. Instead of using a solar calendar, the Chinese New Year is calculated based on the lunar calendar and therefore can occur anywhere between January 20th and February 19th. The new year begins on the first night of the new moon after the sun enters Aquarius.

What on earth is a lunar calendar? Well there are two calendar traditions. Solar calendars were usually used by agricultural societies because the central activity of their lives, growing food, was completely tied to the sun and the seasons. Maritime peoples, however, primarily those whose livelihoods depended on farming the sea, tended to develop calendars based on the moon because the moon drives the tides which govern all the considerations related to fishing. The problem with the lunar calendar is that there are thirteen months of 28 days in the year and therefore it is a day (and a quarter) short of a solar year. This shortfall is what causes the lunar calendar to drift out of alignment with the solar calendar and the seasons.

Who on earth would use a lunar calendar? Well most everyone else outside the West. The lunar calendar is the basis for the Chinese, Hebrew, Hindu and Islamic calendars among others. Even in the West there is a heritage of lunar calendars which shows up in unexpected places. Britain remained on a lunar calendar until the 1500s or so. The Christian calendar is a mish-mash of the solar year and the lunar year. Christmas is a fixed date in a fixed season. Easter Sunday is like the Chinese New Year in that is a lunar calculation and varies between March 22 and April 25th. The technical calculation is that the date for Easter Sunday is the Sunday after the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox. It is actually even a little bit more complicated than that but let's let it be. Suffice to say that something as apparently straightforward as measuring the year is done radically differently among different people.

What about this business of marching around in parades? In January? Well, the bulk of China is located much closer to the equator than is Europe and, therefore, the climate is much more temperate, the seasons less sharply contrasted with one another, and the weather consistently warmer than almost anywhere in Europe or North America. The rains vary much more significantly across the year than do the temperatures.

Calendars and holidays are just one window into the fascinating history of this amazing culture. China, so long isolated and hidden behind the iron curtain, has begun to engage with the world in the past thirty years. If this engagement is sustained into the next thirty years, our children will want, and possibly need, to be much more informed about her traditions, culture and stories.

The West's engagement with China is in a transitional phase similar to the situation of Japan in the early 1980's. There is much angst and consternation concerning the apparent inexorable rise of a foreign nation, China in particular. As is always our tendency (use of natural resources, weather trends, population trends) we tend to ignore all the history that tells us that no trends continue unchanged for long and we project existing trends far into the future and work ourselves into a frenzy of concern and fear about perceived future threats.

After Japan's enormous rebuilding and creation of a powerful new economy (second only to the US) after WWII, we became enormously concerned for a half a decade or so about what it all meant when the Japanese appeared to be in the US buying up all our cultural icons such as Rockefeller Center, various movie studios, etc. and when a square foot of space in downtown Tokyo was worth more than an entire upscale house in the US. And then the bubble burst, the Japanese economy went on to life support for a long time, and our frantic concerns about Japan evaporated without comment.

And so it is now with China. People are fairly concerned about what the increasing involvement of China will mean for their jobs, for their children's future etc. We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that, from a humanitarian perspective, the development and engagement of China with the world economy, as disruptive as it might be to individuals and to particular industries, is a blessing. With the sustained development and increasing engagement of China (and India) with the rest of the world over the past quarter century we have seen the single largest global economic transformation ever with a huge drop in global poverty from close to 50% of the world population to around 18% based on the most recent numbers I have seen. We would, in other circumstances regard any governmental project that achieved so much in such comparatively little time as an enormous success.

But we have been here before. You read accounts of world travelers from the 1910's and the 1920's and you get a strong sense of déjà vu. China, its merchants, industrialists and economy, its artists and intellectuals were very much part of the global economy back then. The fledgling American multinational, Coca-Cola opened its first bottling plant in China in the 1920's. But then civil war followed by invasion by Japan, then communist rule slammed the door closed on China for the better part of the century. The future is not a straight line projection from the present. Let us hope that we achieve a better outcome this time around than last, but we can only dimly discern that rosier future.

As an aside, it is fascinating what happens when a country or society becomes closed off to everyone else, what material and sociological artifacts you come across. If you want to see 1950's American cars still on the road, you go to Cuba because that was what was there before their Revolution in 1959. In the 1980's, as China began to open up, I read an article with a surprising fact. They indicated that China had the largest population of Esperanto speakers in the world. Supposedly the enthusiasm and support for Esperanto as a universal language was at its highest among universities just before the doors began to shut in China in the 1920's and 1930's. Consequently there was a large population of intellectuals that carried the faith of Esperanto through the years of isolation. When finally China began to open up again, imagine everyone's surprise. The Chinese Esperanto speakers discovered that instead of becoming a universal language, Esperanto was an obscure linguistic specialty. For the Esperanto faithful in the global community, there was the surprise discovery of a reservoir of Esperanto speakers in China. By the way, as yet a further digression, did you know that the international financier, George Soros, is one of the few native speakers of Esperanto, his father having been an Esperanto speaker and enthusiast and having raised his sons speaking Esperanto?

In 2008, Chinese New Year launches on February 7th. It might serve as a good opportunity to introduce your children to China, Chinese traditions, history, etc. If we are lucky, China will continue a peaceful path towards further development and prosperity and will be a significant part of their future rather than some walled off or isolated country and the more they know about China's history and traditions, the better.

Below are some books that cover Chinese New Year as a particular event.

Let us know in the comments section whether there are additional books that you think do a good job of introducing children to China.

Picture Books

The Dragon New Year by David Bouchard and illustrated by Zhong-Yang Huang Suggested

Sam and the Lucky Money by Karen Chinn and illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu Suggested

The Runaway Rice Cake by Ying Chang Compestine and illustrated by Tungwai Chau Suggested

Happy, Happy Chinese New Year! by Demi Suggested

Chinese New Year by Alice K. Flanagan and illustrated by Svetlana Zhurkina and Linda D. Labbo Recommended

D Is For Dragon Dance by Ying Chang Compestine and illustrated by Yongsheng Xuan Suggested

Celebrating Chinese New Year by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith and illustrated by Lawrence Migdale Recommended

Chinatown by William Low Suggested

Chinese New Year's Dragon by Rachel Sing and illustrated by Chao Wei Liu Suggested

Moonbeams, Dumplings & Dragon Boats by Nina Simonds and Leslie Swartz and illustrated by Meilo So Suggested

Lion Dancer by Kate Waters and Madeline Slovenz-Low and illustrated by Martha Cooper Recommended

This Next New Year by Janet S. Wong and illustrated by Yangsook Choi Suggested

Independent Readers

The Chinese New Year Mystery by Carolyn Keene and illustrated by Jan Naimo Jones Suggested

When the Circus Came to Town by Laurence Yep and illustrated by Suling Wang Recommended

Alvin Tresselt

Born September 30, 1916 in Passaic, New Jersey
Died July 24, 2000 in Burlington, Vermont


Alvin Tresselt's life and work was a living embodiment of the land of second chances. Born in 1916 in Passaic, New Jersey, he became a leader in a particular style of children's writing as well as sustaining a career as an editor and publisher.

Growing up in New Jersey at a time when the basis of the state motto, "The Garden State" was more obvious, he spent a number of summers on a farm as a child. His love of the land led to daydreaming about becoming a farmer with a herd of cattle.

However, graduating high-school in 1934 in the midst of the Great Depression, opportunities were constrained. He headed across the river to New York, working a variety of jobs up to the beginning of World War II. He was rejected for military service for health reasons and,, instead spent the war years working in defense plants.

It was really only in 1946, twelve years after finishing school, that his career began to take a discernable direction. The first event of the year was his landing a job at one of the old New York department store icons, B. Altman & Co., working on interior displays.

Also in 1946, Tresselt wrote his first children's book, Rain Drop Splash, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. Tresselt was familiar with the work of Margaret Wise Brown and Leonard Weisgard and the whole Bank Street College movement. There was a new effort from these folks to create children's stories that were not the traditional morality tale but rather stories that seized on and amplified some aspect of a child's world and related it in a fashion comprehensible to a young child.

This style of writing, frequently referred to as "mood" writing, exults in the rhythm and cadences of language. The stories are often not even stories as traditionally understood. Sometimes there is no protagonist as the focus of the story. Frequently there is little narrative structure or even directionality to the story. They often are more characterized by a cycle of sound and rhythm than by having a beginning, middle and end. In most instances, it is expository writing without a narrative structure.

If this sounds like academic gibberish, it often is in the hands of lesser talents. However, with a Margaret Wise Brown or an Alvin Tresselt, it can produce something more akin to an extended westernized haiku; a little mysterious and out of the ordinary but soothing and relaxing. These are often wonderfully calming stories, excellent for bedtime or calming an overly excited child.

The forward to Tresselt's Caldecott Medal winner, White Snow, Bright Snow, gives you a sense of the melody of his writing. The prologue is in verse form but the main text is in prose though it nudges into poetry territory every now and then.

Softly, gently in the secret night,
Down from the North came the quiet white.
Drifting, sifting, silent flight,
Softly, gently in the secret night.

White snow, bright snow, smooth and deep.
Light snow, night snow, quiet as sleep.
Down, down, without a sound;
Down, down to the frozen ground.

Covering roads and hiding fences,
Sifting in cracks and filling up trenches.
Millions of snowflakes, tiny and light,
Softly, gently, in the secret night.

You can get a sense of his prose style from this excerpt from How Far is Far?

"How far is far?" asked the little boy.

"As far as the end of your nose," said his mother, and she kissed the end of his nose.

"As far as you can walk until you get tired. As far away as the other side of the world. Even as far away as the first star that shines when the sky grows dark."

"That's a lot to think about," said the little boy, and he went out to dig a hole.

In the case of Tresselt, this sense of mood is supplemented with a dose of information - it isn't all fluff. While Tresselt was inspired by the work of Brown and Weisgard, he drew upon his own experiences and enthusiasms to inform his stories. In the case of Rain Drop Splash and for many of the books that were to follow, this meant writing stories related to nature, the cycle of life and ecology. In his first book, Tresselt follows a single rain drop from a mud puddle through the water cycle, ultimately to the ocean.

As an aside, it is interesting to note just how many ecology/conservation stories were being produced in these years, not as a movement, and not even as message books. In fact, that is part of what makes them so wonderful. You are not clunkingly hit over the head with a "Nature is Good" message, but rather, you enjoy a story in which that is the inescapable conclusion without it ever being presented as such. Just in this period, way before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring for adults, you have Janice May Udry with A Tree is Nice, Bill Peet with Farewell to Shady Glade, Virginia Lee Burton with The Little House and I am sure there are others. I wonder how many conservationists of the sixties were inspired by exposure to these tales.

Following the popular and critical reception of Rain Drop Splash, Tresselt worked with Roger Duvoisin to produce White Snow, Bright Snow in 1947 winning that year's Caldecott Medal for the illustrations. This was the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration with Duvoisin. Of the fifty-three books Tresselt wrote over his lifetime, Duvoisin illustrated eighteen of them.

With his critical and popular reputation founded on these two books, Tresselt continued writing primarily nature based "mood" books over the next fifteen years including Sun Up, Follow the Wind, Autumn Harvest and Wake Up, Farm!

As trend-setting as his books were, they became widely, and often less adeptly, emulated. One consequence was that by the sixties, some began to comment on a surfeit of these type of books and to criticize his continuing focus on nature and "mood" books. In 1964, Tresselt began a second chapter of his writing with a long series of retellings of folktales, primarily stories from Japan. However the first in this sequence, and ever since one of the most popular, was the retelling of an old Ukrainian folktale, The Mitten recounting the adventures and misadventures of an increasing crowd of forest animals seeking refuge from the winter cold in the ever expanding mitten dropped by one small boy. This folktale has proven to be enduringly popular in the US with numerous subsequent author/illustrators trying their hand at the retelling; most recently Jan Brett's beautifully illustrated version.

All during the period that he was writing children's stories, Tresselt also held a regular job, first at B. Altman, ultimately moving into their in-house advertising, and then leaving B. Altman and moving into publishing. In 1952 he became the managing editor of the Parent's Institute's children's magazine, Humpty Dumpty. In 1965 he became the editor and then executive editor of Parent's Magazine Press. After leaving the Press in 1974 he became dean of faculty at the Institute of Children's Literature in Redding Ridge, Connecticut and was involved in an officer capacity in a variety of children's literature organizations.

In 1978, Tresselt and Duvoisin teamed up for a final book, What Did You Leave Behind? a story for children emphasizing the importance of observation. While this was Tresselt's final original book, in the eighties and nineties, he revisited nine of his earlier books, revising the text in some cases and in others also releasing them with new illustrations.

After a long and accomplished life, a series of professional roles, a fruitful and abundant career as a children's author with two distinct bodies of work, Tresselt, man of second chances, passed away July 24, 2000.

Picture Books

Hide and Seek Fog by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin Recommended

The Mitten by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Yaroslava Mills Suggested

The Gift of the Tree by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Henri Sorensen Recommendation

White Snow, Bright Snow by Alvin R. Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin Recommended

Bibliography

Rain Drop Splash by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard 1946
White Snow, Bright Snow by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1947
Johnny Maple-Leaf by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1948
The Wind and Peter by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Gary MacKenzie 1948
Bonnie Bess, the Weathervane Horse by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Marylin Hafner 1949
Sun Up by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1949
The Little Lost Squirrel by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard 1950
Follow the Wind by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1950
Hi, Mister Robin! by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1950
Autumn Harvest by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1951
The Rabbit Story by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard 1952
Follow the Road by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1953
A Day with Daddy by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Helen Heller 1953
I Saw the Sea Come In by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1954
Wake up, Farm! by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1955
Wake up, City! by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1957
The Frog in the Well by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1958
The Smallest Elephant in the World by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Milton Glaser 1959
Timothy Robbins Climbs the Mountain by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1960
(With Wilbur Wheaton) An Elephant Is Not a Cat by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Tom Vroman 1962
Under the Trees and through the Grass by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1962
How Far Is Far? by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Ward Brackett 1964
The Mitten: An Old Ukrainian Folktale by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Yaroslava Mills 1964
A Thousand Lights and Fireflies by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by John Moodie 1965
Hide and Seek Fog by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1965
The World in the Candy Egg by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1967
The Old Man and the Tiger by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Albert Aquino 1967
The Tears of the Dragon by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Chihiro Iwasaki 1967
The Fox Who Traveled by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Nancy Sears 1968
(With Nancy Cleaver) The Legend of the Willow Plate by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Joseph Low 1968
The Crane Maiden by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Chihiro Iwasaki 1968
Helpful Mr. Bear by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Kozo Kakimoto 1968
Ma Lien and the Magic Brush by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Kei Wakana 1968
It's Time Now! by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1969
The Witch's Magic Cloth by Alvin Tresselt 1969
How Rabbit Tricked His Friends by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Yasuo Segawa 1969
The Rolling Rice Ball by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Saburo Watanabe 1969
The Fisherman under the Sea by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Chihiro Iwasaki 1969
The Beaver Pond by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1970
Eleven Hungry Cats by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Noboru Baba 1970
A Sparrow's Magic by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Fuyuji Yamanaka 1970
Gengoroh and the Thunder God by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Yasuo Segawa 1970
The Land of Lost Buttons by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Kayako Nishimaki 1970
The Hare and the Bear and Other Stories by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Yoshiharu Suzuki 1971
Ogre and His Bride by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Shosuke Fukuda 1971
Lum Fu and the Golden Mountain by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Daihacki Ohta 1971
The Little Mouse Who Tarried by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Kozo Kakimoto 1971
Wonder-Fish from the Sea by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Irmgard Lucht 1971
Stories from the Bible by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1971
The Dead Tree by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Charles Robinson 1972
The Little Green Man by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Maurice Kenelski 1972
The Nutcracker by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Seiichi Horiuchi 1974
What Did You Leave Behind? by Alvin Tresselt and illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1978

Those Icelanders

The other day I was poking around a used books store and came across an intriguing little book narrating the history of Icelandic immigration to Canada from the 1880's to the 1910's. Who knew. I love the complex weave of humanity's stories with all its hidden strands.

Part of what makes this such an interesting story is simply the numbers. The population of Iceland in this period was about 70,000. 15-20,000 departed for Canada.

Even I couldn't warrant purchasing the book; limitations of space have forced me to ever higher standards of self-restraint. Even writing that sentence, I can feel Sally raising a skeptical eyebrow. But be it noted that there is no book on Icelandic immigration in the house.

Instead here are a couple of sites sketching out this intriguing story.

The Icelandic Immigration

Samkoma - History, Western Icelandic A veritable buffet of links to all things related to Icelandic immigration.

And here is the general Samkoma site, "The Meeting Place" for Icelandic & Western-Icelandic connections.

Early Icelandic Settlement in Canada

Icelandic Immigration to Alberta

New Iceland - A Forgotten Nordic Colony In Canada - This site, strange maps, by the way, is a great place to spend time for anyone with an interest in history and geography.


Well, enough about Icelandic immigration. I sure do enjoy coming across new information about something of which I was never even aware. You don't know what you don't know.

In Praise of Bad Books

I did not intend to start out the year with this particular essay but there is a wonderful discussion going on in one of the children's literature listservs to which I belong that touches on a set of issues which often arise in children's literature and which will be relevant to a number of essays and book lists we will be creating this year. Perhaps best to grab the bull by the horns early and set the issue to the side.

Unfortunately, the issue is neither easily stated nor easily addressed.

Part of the challenge is lack of specificity. The general charge is that authors and illustrators should be more sensitive and respectful of all cultures, particularly those that are in some context deemed minority cultures. The charge is usually in the context of race or ethnicity, though occasionally extending to culture and religion. However, the nature of the charge often shifts in debate as does the claimed damage done. Even more ambiguous are the appropriate actions proposed to be taken which range from a general admonition to be nice, all the way to strong statements to the effect that outsiders have no rights to tell stories and with almost every imaginable permutation in between

Fundamentally the discussion comes down to this - what rights do self-identified groups of people have to control access to and dissemination of "their" stories. The discussion though, is often broadened into who is allowed to discuss other people's stories. A common complaint is when a non-member of a group presents a tale as if it were part of another's folklore when in fact it is not. To give a specific example - Is there anything wrong with a non-Native American writing a story in the form of a Native American folktale which is not in fact a traditional folktale at all.

I think most people would agree that in this scenario at least, a deceit has been committed by the author on his audience. But what is the obligation of the author to his audience? If he simply indicates that the tale was inspired by Native American myths, which it very well might have been, does that rectify the impression that it is in fact a Native American story? When does a retelling become a completely new story? And what is the damage, if any, to an undefined Native American community?

You can start playing with the variables in this scenario to see how tangled it quickly becomes. What happens if a member of the community (rather than a non-Native American) writes a story in a folktale format which is "inspired" by the traditional tales?

Being a keen First Amendment fan my instinct is, outside the legal context of copyright ownership, to say that anything goes, short of direct and targeted calls for violent action. I viscerally reject the position that any group "controls" a story and yet there are elements of their position with which I empathize. The discussion has been going on in the listserv for two or three weeks now and I at first pretty much ignored it as I get fairly riled by self-appointed commissars of taste and values.

However, the issue is not just about the First Amendment, and when you reflect on it there are many valid concerns. I cannot ignore the fact that I sympathize with some of the issues raised, but I need to reconcile that sympathy with that visceral commitment to free speech. Many of the discussions go around and around with people speaking at cross purposes to one another and not ever really communicating. This essay is an attempt to answer two questions; "Can stories be owned and controlled by a people?" and "What obligation does the author of a story have to anybody?", and to answer them in a way that breaks the wall of confusion down into manageable pieces.

I will frame this around a central metaphor, illuminated by four analogies and underpinned by a long list of axioms.

The metaphor is that of a bridge. Whenever self-identified groups of people interact, there will be a greater or lesser exchange of a variety of things - genes, language, religion, trade goods, services, customs, stories, etc. The nature of that exchange may differ dramatically depending upon the intentions of the parties, the cohesiveness of those groups, the relative power of the groups one to the other and the duration of interaction.

The exchange, to the extent that it happens, happens on a metaphorical bridge. It might be a wide bridge or narrow one; much may go on there or little, people might pass freely back and forth or simply meet to exchange at the bridge, exchanges might occur individually or between groups, individuals on the bridge might be appointed ambassadors of their people, simple traders, charlatans or self-designated representatives, interaction may be frequent and voluminous or infrequent and niggardly. And of course some of the transaction on the bridge is of a non-voluntary sort. The Mongol hordes had a pretty straight-forward approach to exchanges - You give, we take, (and maybe you live.)

If there is a bridge, there is always a context that also needs to be taken into account. Is this a bridge between two large singular entities (think the US and China), is it one large to one small (think the US and Liberia), is it one large to many small (the US and the many distinctive Native American groups), is it many small to many small (the Balkans)?

Each of these scenarios carries different implications. After following the discussions for a while and noting the points made by the protectionists, one of the conclusions I have reached is that often the resentment and anger on the part of the advocates of the small group is really not an anger at some specific action or book (what someone said that was accurate or not, how they are represented, etc.) but rather at the fact of being the small group and the change arising from interaction with a large neighbor.

The analogies I will use are four-fold; with food, with language, with movie adaptations and with the market-place. I will call them into play as I go along.

Ownership of stories is an emotive issue analogous to the issue of language death. There are literally thousands of distinct languages around the world with a large number in imminent danger of extinction. Each such death of a language usually also represents the death of a distinctive culture, history and body of stories. While we may all be the poorer with each extinction of a language, who is responsible for maintaining a language? It can only, in the end, be the collective decision of some functioning minimum number of people that they are willing to invest the time and resources on their part to sustain a language. This is not an inconsequential investment. It has to be made at the individual level because the benefits are diffuse, philosophical and scarcely quantifiable which makes it a hard sell to people outside the community. While simply documenting existing languages is a huge effort, it is interesting to note that there have been a number of linguistic rescue operations in the past fifty years which have revivified a number of languages: Hebrew, Gaelic, Welsh, etc.

The analogy with food is extensive. Some would argue that, like food to the body, stories are critical for cultural survival. Like food, there are some stories which have their adherents and fans but have little healthy substance - the twinkies of the story world. Like food, a well read mind is fed by a variety of stories in some sort of balance, not the gorging on a single type of story. And like food, there is no accounting for taste in stories. Everyone has their preferences based on their unique experiences and context (all food is sumptuous to the starving man).

Movie adaptations are analogous to books in this context as well from the perspective of how to judge them. A movie adaptation is a translation from one medium to another, the respective media requiring different capabilities on the part of the audience, imposing a different experience and eliciting a different response. Movies are effectively a downhill skiing medium; everything rushes at you, you respond instinctively and without conscious consideration and the outcome is an emotional thrill on one extreme or another ("Wow, I made it", or, "Ouch, I think I broke my leg!") Books on the other hand are a cross-country skiing experience; it requires focus and endurance, there is the opportunity to stop and examine things or even take a digression, and the final response to the experience tends to be a longer lasting charge whether positive (physical exhilaration) or negative ("Oh, my aching muscles").

When a favorite book has been translated from its native medium to that of a movie you will encounter long impassioned discussions. These often do not have an outcome but are enjoyed as a process. What scenes were left out? What was added? How closely did the screen character match your imagination of the character? Was the director effective in catching the spirit of the book? and on and on. Since everyone created their own unique experience when they read the book in the first-place, their critique of the adaptation of the movie will be similarly unique - you have ended up with everyone praising or criticizing an experience that none of them share. This is similar to the process that goes on with adaptations of a story from one culture to another.

Is there a difference between what goes on in the storytelling interaction between large/cohesive groups and smaller less cohesive groups and that which occurs between two large cohesive groups? I don't think so. Each tells stories of the other. Members from one group attempt to interpret their people to the other group. No one agrees on how to define the quality of the storytelling. Some people tell stories for personal gain. Others do it for a variety of other, perhaps more altruistic reasons (often by intention but not necessarily by outcome).

The dynamic is not particularly different as to what happens on the bridge. That does not really change depending on relative sizes, strength, etc. It is not the action that differs. It is the feeling and response. If I am a member of the larger, stronger more cohesive group and I visit another large, strong cohesive group and study their stories and come back and tell those stories to my own community, does anyone from the other group care? Usually not. In fact, most often, it is not even noticed. And when it is noticed, and if there is controversy, it is usually on many other grounds rather than the right to tell the story.

For example, when Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson produced their wonderful The Story of Ferdinand in 1936, no one complained that they had no right to tell a story since they weren't Spanish or that they were factually mis-representing the cultural integrity of Spain. The controversy was whether they were making a political point. Interestingly, both the Right (Franco's Nationalists) and the Left (the Republicans) saw the story as an attack upon themselves.

Similarly, no one (credibly) attacks The Story About Ping's cultural sensitivity even though it is written by a Westerner. Many would hold that it is a useful story for introducing China (or a particular element of China at a particular time in history) to children. The Five Chinese Brothers, however, is more often critiqued. Sometimes the issue is whether it really is based on a Chinese folktale or whether Bishop just made it up. Sometimes the issue is about cultural stereotypes, but I don't believe anyone has questioned whether it should have been written at all or whether Bishop had a right to tell the tale as she did.

So why is it different when the interaction is between large and small? The interaction is not different at all but the potential consequences of that interaction could very well be. See Axiom 9.

Following are a series of axioms or maxims through which I am attempting to break out the various ideas inherent in this topic and frame them in a way that allows one to navigate through the debate to an end conclusion.

Axiom 1 - There is no singular entity such as a "people". There are of course governments representing nations to which people belong. Different governments may be representative of a more or less homogenous people. Below the governmental level though, people organize their lives along many vectors including religion, education, income, ethnicity, employment, cultural background, political beliefs, etc. Only as a citizen of a nation or some other polity do all those vectors come together. Very typically a single individual might self-identify with any one or more of these vectors. It is the fragmentation of identification which obviates the idea of "people".

Any individual at any point in time may self-identify more with one vector than with another and we often do not realize what our own priority of identification is. This shifting sense of what constitutes self is captured well in James Baldwin's essay The Discovery of What it Means To Be an American. On the one hand he states "I left America because I doubted my ability to survive the fury of the color problem here." To his surprise he later found:

In my necessity to find the terms on which my experience could be related to that of others, Negroes and whites, writers and non-writers, I proved, to my astonishment, to be as American as any Texas G.I. And I found my experience was shared by every American writer I knew in Paris. Like me, they had been divorced from their origins and it turned out to make very little difference that the origins of white Americans were European and mine were African - they were no more at home in Europe than I was.

Context becomes critical for our own self-identification - Baldwin was both an excluded and dissociated Negro in America and yet still an American in Europe. Which took precedence? It depends on the circumstances and the context.

Axiom 2 - There is no legal position to this discussion of who owns a story. By which I mean that most countries grant copyright to individuals or companies. I am unaware of any country that grants ownership of an idea or story to a group by right of precedent or original habitation. In these discussions the term "cultural copyright" sometimes comes up and is thrown around. There is no cultural copyright. Cultural copyright is a made up term representing a wish on the part of some people for a power which does not exist. Until such time as a government that actually represents its citizens creates such a thing, this idea is a red herring.

Axiom 3 - Good intentions are sometimes our worst enemies. The desire to prevent hurt feelings and misrepresentation is not inherently a bad desire. It is the translation of that desire into some sort of action that becomes the problem.

There are plenty of governments and countries which have elected to restrict the free flow of ideas (by restricting the articulation of those ideas). In fact, it usually can be assumed that the self-serving nature of most governmental interests are predisposed to protect their privileges by restricting the information available to its governed population and the capacity of that population to discuss, evaluate and synthesize information (free speech). That is not intended to be an accusation or pejorative statement but rather simply a matter of observation and logic.

Germany and Austria, for example, have made it illegal to deny the Holocaust. That is a comprehensible law given their particular history. Understanding the reasons why they have chosen to impose that law on themselves does not necessarily make it right though.

Every inch of ground given up on the freedom of speech seems to immediately translate into miles of encroachment on liberty as evidenced by the travesty going on north of our borders where, despite freedom of speech being in their constitution as well as in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19, to which they are a signatory (and which reads "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers"), Canada has implemented a series of unaccountable Human Rights Commissions entitled to levy fines and restorative actions on anyone deemed to have said something insulting to specified protected groups.

To be fair to governments, it is not only governments that elect to restrict free speech. It is also uniformly customary for societies to create their own, non-legislative restrictions on speech, usually under the auspices of politeness and reducing conflict. In traditional Southern society, one does not discuss among strangers and acquaintances; religion, sex, money, politics, or anything else that might make a guest uncomfortable. Whether these are appropriate, useful, or desirable restrictions (and the goal of making people feel welcome and reducing conflict is a good one), is a value judgment many people might dispute and which any one person might agree or disagree with depending on the time and the circumstances.

Axiom 4 - All people, most of the time, desire predictability and the absence of change. Change represents a risk and a threat. When two cultures intersect, one is likely to be more affected than the other depending on circumstances of history, social cohesiveness, intention, power, etc. It is inherent, then, that one group will bear a greater burden of change or effort to resist change and, will therefore, be more vocal about the nature of the interaction.

Axiom 5 - Often-times our desire to protect the status-quo of the past and present blinds us to the beneficial future. Progress is a function which is only poorly defined and even less well understood. There have been many societies in which material progress took a back seat to cultural progress or intellectual progress. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, The Lever of Riches, etc. are wonderful books exploring how we might define and measure progress and the mechanisms by which it occurs, but we are still merely scratching the surface.

Since all progress involves the changing of material circumstances or cultural norms, someone will always be inconvenienced by change, not to say disappointed or even disadvantaged. King John, I am sure, was not well-pleased to accept restrictions on his powers from the barons at Runnymede, but it would be usually accepted by most that this was one step in a long path of beneficial progress.

Axiom 6 - No one wants to expend the effort or suffer the consequences of change, but everyone wants to enjoy the benefits that that change might bring.

Axiom 7 - For any smaller culture interacting with a large one, they are typically more affected by the exchange, and being more affected, will likely have more people more vocally resisting that change.

Axiom 8 - The smaller the community, the more likely there are to be multiple and irreconcilable views about the propriety of sharing stories and other items which shape a culture's identity and the more likely that each position will be held with great intensity. There are no wars as brutal as civil wars and this is the fate of many encounters between large and/or powerful cultures with small and/or weak cultures. Some people wish to assimilate, some wish to strike a position where they can wrest the best of both worlds, and some wish to isolate themselves, to burn the bridge. Without internal cohesion or agreement, individuals end up presenting themselves to the dominant culture as the voice of the people, as representative, as the conscience, etc. The members of the dominant culture are left trying to determine just who speaks for whom. Regardless of the passion and fine intentions of those individuals, they can only speak for themselves.

Axiom 9 - Purity (racial, religious, ethnic, etc.) cannot be the basis for making decisions. In its extreme, a position is often taken that only approved members from within a minority culture are allowed to tell the stories of the group. This position is undermined by Axiom 1. Who is ethnically pure enough to serve as a teller of stories? Even if they are ethnically pure, are they culturally pure? I find this line of questions to be abhorrent, divisive and self-destructive.

As an extreme example, in Australia, there is a whole continuum of ethnic and cultural purity which includes Aborigines who elect to live in reserves held solely for them (to which other citizens are prohibited from entry withour permission), effectively leading lives relatively close to those of their ancestors. There are those that live a half-way life, usually in the cities, between the traditional norms and those of the majority culture. Finally there are those that have chosen to integrate completely into the majority culture; often proud of their heritage but determined to be successful in a new environment. All might be ethnically of one people, but usually each has rather different views as to whether and how to present their heritage. Which person can speak for the whole?

Axiom 10 - While the dynamics between large and small cultures may not differ at all from those between two large cultures, I think it is fair to say that there is an element of the bull in the china shop. The small culture may introduce ideas into the larger culture but as a function of size, cohesiveness, and strength those ideas may take longer to assimilate into the larger culture and may be modified in a way that makes the assimilation easier.

This series of events would be in contradistinction to the experience of the smaller, weaker, less cohesive culture where they may be exposed to a greater range of unfamiliar knowledge and where the impact and change, though unintentional, can be far more consequential.

Many years ago I read an interesting account of this process occurring entirely unintentionally. I do not recollect the anthropology text I was reading, but the circumstances were something along the following lines.

Sometime around the late 1800's a group of anthropologists and linguists, interested in trying to parse out the migratory patterns of the settlement of the Pacific by the Micronesians and Melanesians, mounted an expedition to study the languages of the region (and how they were related) as well as the myths and folklore. The anthropologists were convinced that migration had occurred from northwest to southeast. They had some evidence from some of the main island chains of folktales that related tales of people coming from the west.

As they explored the further reaches of the Pacific and among minor and more isolated island chains, they asked not only about local folktales but specifically about any tales speaking of people coming from the West. They were disappointed to find a complete absence of such tales but dutifully returned to their universities and wrote up all the tales and languages they had collected.

A couple or three decades on, a later anthropologist decided to spend time doing field studies on one of the remote island chains that had been earlier visited by the other group. Residing on the island, he also collected information about their language and folktales. Among these stories were ones concerning ancestors coming from the west. Being familiar with the earlier reports he was puzzled about the discrepancy. What he discovered was that the direct questions from the earlier expedition and the sample stories they had related, had osmotically been absorbed and local folktales had morphed to incorporate the assumption of the outsiders that ancestors had come from the west.

Axiom 11 - Time is limited and you can't know everything. This is obvious but undermines an often central position of those who want to protect stories from the depredations of unqualified interlopers. The position taken is that only those very sympathetic to and well versed in a particular culture should be permitted to tell stories of that culture. What they are doing though, is imposing a further burden on parents, teachers and librarians to invest time and effort to investigate the "validity" of such folktales.

If I am a parent committed to exposing my child to folktales from a dozen or so cultures, I already have my work cut out for me in finding good, representative folktales from each culture. If I am then asked to explore the minutiae of who is authentic, the barrier to cultural entry can become inordinate. I only have so much time. Navigating the ethnic validity swamp is akin to that scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian where Brian is trying to figure out whether he has joined Judean People's Front, the People's Front of Judea, the Judean Popular People's Front, or the People's Front.

Surely it is better for a child to be exposed to a folktale outside of their ken (even if its rendering falls short of ideal), than for them not to be exposed at all.

Axiom 12 - Stories handed down are as subject to being hijacked generationally as they are to being hijacked culturally. A story that my grandparents told among themselves and handed down to my parents and then to me, may - by the time it reaches me - be completely different.

In fact, the appropriation and misappropriation of stories goes back at least to Homer and Herodotus. If there was ever a real Homer, the story which he told around some distant campfire will probably have taken many twists and turns through the mouths of subsequent story-tellers, each placing their mark. Once written down, we, as a collective global community, have been treated to telling and retellings innumerable. Which of these stories are true? None and all of them. Who owns them, no-one and all of us.

Were some better than others? Certainly there are those that have preferences. But all have probably served a purpose and been remembered fondly by someone. With each retelling though, the story will have drifted further from that which someone earlier was most attached to and will be roundly condemned as inferior.

Axiom 13 - Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, But Words Will Never Hurt Me - This childhood adage seems to have departed from its moorings among some adult critics. It is not a irreconcilable position to believe both that stories are very consequential and need to be judged appropriately and harshly and at the same time believe that words are simply words - it is the discussion and coaching from parent to child that surrounds those words that matter most.

Axiom 14 - Feelings are an inadequate basis for making decisions. Just because one or more people feel insulted by a particular portrayal is no basis for not writing or for believing the book is poorly written or that there is any intentional or unintentional malice. Everyone can feel insulted some of the time. A few people feel insulted all of the time. Regardless of individual sensitivities, and the desire for everyone to be happy and un-insulted, the cure of trying to restrict story-telling, well-motivated (and impractical) though it might be, is worse than the perceived injury.

Axiom 15 - Occam's Razor (often paraphrased as, all other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best) has a social corollary. The Social Occam's Razor would be: All other things being equal, always assume a hurtful statement is made in ignorance rather than malice. The cure for ignorance is more exposure, not less.

Axiom 16 - Some people are more interested in condemning than in creating. And as every revolution ends up devouring its own, often times those that work the hardest to adhere to some putative standards of sensitivity are those most condemned. This dynamic is particularly destructive; those that are in a position to create new works effectively allow themselves to be held hostage by self-appointed standards police.

I would advocate that those who are already capable and predisposed to create new works do so. Yes, mistakes will be made but better to try and tell the tales well and make a mistake than to not to try at all. Those who object are then free to create alternates themselves that meet the standards they have set. Whether the resulting work is appealing to others is then subject to determination.

Axiom 17 - If true, not beautiful. If beautiful, not true. So someone once said about translated poetry. And really it could be said for any translation.

Axiom 18 - Every experience of a book is necessarily unique. The response to any story is a function of three inputs; those of the author and illustrator as the creators of the story, the context in which the story is being read, and the entire weltanschauung of the person reading the story.

We can critique the author and illustrator on a whole laundry list of criteria ranging from technical versatility, to plot structure, to character development etc. However, and fortunately for the employment of editors and publishers, there is no formula to predict which books will be well received by whom because context and weltanschauung are unpredictable variables.

Axiom 19 - No one agrees on what constitutes a great book, a good book or even a bad book. There are books critically assessed as poorly written and/or illustrated that sell in the millions and there are beautifully illustrated and well written books that do not sell enough to even recoup the costs of printing. There are books that have many factual errors, misrepresent groups, mischaracterize history, use archaic and potentially demeaning language and/or ethnic terms, and yet have held the attention, wonder and love of book readers over many generations. Where would we be without Doctor Dolittle, Little Black Sambo, Uncle Remus, TinTin, etc. And I would be willing to wager that those that love these books, grow up better informed despite the factual errors, more open despite the stereotyping, more constructively critical despite the historical characterizations, and less disposed to linguistic insults than the general population.

Virtually every book has a friend and who is to know where that friendship will lead. One of the books criticized from a Native American perspective was How the Moon Regained Her Shape. The criticism is that it seems to present itself as a Native American legend when in fact it is made up from whole-cloth. In our TTMD review, I also criticized the text of the book but more from a gender stereotype perspective. Despite being written by a professor of women's studies, the book reinforces a stereotype of females being pathetically dependent upon nice words from others to bolster their own self-esteem. So the text is open to pretty stark criticism.

The illustrations, however, are very distinctive, unusual and attention grabbing. Is it possible that some young child might be so fascinated by the illustrations that it sparks her interest sufficiently to want another book involving Native Americans? I think there is every chance of that happening. So on the one hand I consider this a bad book (the message of the text). I would not give it to my children to read on their own. But I would consider reading it to them as the basis to discuss unintentional stereotypes. On the other hand, I consider this a reasonable book for discussing its illustrations and the techniques used by the artist.

So, is it a "good" book? I would answer, No!
Is it possibly a useful book? Yes!
Would I recommend it to a general audience? No, not really.
Could it lead a child on to other books about Native Americans? Certainly!

Axiom 20 - Restricting people to write about that which they know would mean that much of our literary heritage would never have been created. It is the process of imagining, thinking and experiencing beyond the boundaries of own direct experience that adds to our cultural treasure and ultimately expands our fellow-feeling with those whom we might not at first see any connection.

Axiom 21 - Just as in a commercial marketplace, so it is in the marketplace of ideas; no-one gets everything they want but everyone gets more than they had. Any restriction on the free flow of knowledge and ideas (other than the proverbial "Fire" in a crowded theater examples), represents a diminution of intellectual health and benefit.

Axiom 22 - The act of designating or qualifying who might write what about whom is effectively a restraint in trade of ideas.

Axiom 23 - Any restraint in trade impoverishes all parties.

Axiom 24 - For all the charges of malicious bigotry or prejudice, (as justification for restricting the free flow of ideas), there is little evidence of that actually being a problem. It can be theoretically, but in practice, in most OECD countries you would be hard pressed to find, other than grubby self-published or photo-copied screeds and wretched anonymous comments in blogs, any sort of materials, particularly those targeted towards children, which demonstrate much in the way of directed maliciousness.

Rather, more commonly, the issue is an accusation of unintended bigotry and prejudice that might potentially, in the future, possibly have some detrimental effect on the thought processes of children.

Axiom 25 - Any relating of a story from one context to another (from one culture to another, from one language to another, from one social group to another) is both an act of linguistic translation and an act of cultural translation.

When we lived in Australia and traveled in the Outback we often visited Aboriginal communities. We purchased many children's books of Aboriginal folktales, most written in conjunction with someone from the Aboriginal community or illustrated by the same. The first step of translation had already occurred, i.e. all the stories were in English and not the native language (of which there are some hundreds). What was particularly notable was the impact of cultural adaptation. In some stories, the translation was almost literal which would not normally be much of an issue except that the various Aboriginal belief systems are so dramatically different than those of northwestern Europe that the embedded assumptions and background knowledge almost made the stories incomprehensible. In other instances, the authors had made some clear effort to either explain the hidden assumptions or to retell it in a fashion that that knowledge was not required. So the more comprehensible stories tended to be those least adherent to the original; those hewing the closest to the original had the least impact on us as outsiders because they were the most incomprehensible.

Which approach was the more true? You might as well debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. For our children, at that time, at their ages, with their upbringing and life experiences, the modified stories were what they responded to and remembered best. Change any one of the variables though and the answer might have been different.

Axiom 26 - The act of linguistic translation is, in itself, rife with land mines and the potential for offense. Language is such an integral part of cultural self-identity that it can hardly avoid being a source of potential sensitivity.

In fact, you don't even need to go to the extent of translation. Accent on its own can be a barrier. Our first few months in Sydney, Australia were a source of immense frustration to Sally, this being her first assignment abroad. Sydney is your quintessential emigrant city - it seems every next person is from somewhere else. Sally was trying to acclimate her ear to the Australian accent and yet every second person with whom she spoke in those first few months seemed to have an accent designed to confuse her. Was that an Australian accent? No, they're from New Zealand. How about that one? No, South African. And that one? Birmingham. Etc.

Being from the South, Sally was perfectly aware of her own accent which to her ear is pretty clearly and unmistakably Southern. Imagine her surprise when new Australian acquaintances would ask, Are you Canadian? Now what was happening was that the Australians were recognizing a North American accent but were not familiar with the cadences of a Southern accent and their best guess was Canadian. Sally's surprise that they did not recognize a Southern accent was compounded by her amazement that anybody, anybody could confuse a Southern accent with a Canadian accent. Could she have been insulted? Well, we do have some red-blooded Southern friends that I suspect might take offense at being confused with a Canadian. But not Sally. No malice was intended and, in fact, the mere inquiry was evidence of those small micro-steps toward relationship building which should always be viewed in the most positive light possible.

Axiom 27 - A story told poorly is better than a story untold. As an enthusiastic amateur historian, I can guarantee that I never regret having a fragmentary record of things past or even having badly opinionated or factually wrong stories from the past. My only regret is that we have too little. I can make allowances for errors and opinions and hedge my conclusions appropriately; I can do nothing when I have no information at all.

Take the contrast between the Egyptians and the Carthaginians. We have lots of material for the Egyptian period, much of which they produced themselves, some of which was produced by others. The Greek historian Herodotus traveled through Egypt collecting stories that intrigued him, some of which matched those that we have from the Egyptians, some of which took the mickey out of the Egyptians' own tales, some of which were local gossip dressed up as history, and some of which it is clear either Herodotus was not understanding what he was hearing or his local guides were pulling his gullible leg.

In contrast, we have virtually no historical record for the Carthaginians other than the little the Romans wrote of them and the material record of buildings, temples, etc. that they left behind. The footprint of their history is large and momentous and yet we have scarcely any detail by which to understand them. The absence of their own record and stories makes them not just an historical enigma, but a tragedy.


So at the end of this long discussion - and I apologize for its length - I am in the debt of those who have made the case for some special treatment of stories from other cultures particularly small communities. It has forced me to think through some of the many elements at play in this issue and to re-examine my own assumptions. In doing so, I think I have sorted out a few of my own inconsistencies, though I may not have articulated them particularly well.

My conclusion is that, like Churchill's observation on democracy (the worst form of government except for all the others), I still come down on the side of an unfettered freedom of speech. It may be damaging, there may be people whose feelings are hurt, there may be misperceptions created and factual errors made. But unfettered speech, while the worst form of communication except for all the others, is also the fastest way to rectify the problems that it does create. It is a self-healing process, and while uncontrollable and prone to error, it will, in the long run, most likely lead to an outcome most acceptable to the largest group possible.

So, moving away from some of the fields of contention, and despite TTMD being premised on identifying great books for children, I am forced to conclude that we should praise bad books. If we want more children to experience the pleasure of reading, it is not for us to tell them which books they ought to enjoy, but rather release to them the full flowering of story-telling from the good to the bad. Let us now praise bad books.

Picture Books

The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf and illustrated by Robert Lawson Highly Recommended

The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack Highly Recommended

The Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Huchet Bishop and illustrated by Kurt Wiese Highly Recommended

The Story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman Recommended

How The Moon Regained Her Shape by Janet Ruth Heller and illustrated by Ben Hodson

Independent Reader

The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting and illustrated by Michael Hague Highly Recommended

Favorite Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris Recommended

Adventures of Tintin by Herge Recommended

Young Adult

Collected Essays by James Baldwin Suggested

The Histories by Herodotus Suggested