Picture This

by Anne M Carley

 
My midcentury upbringing in Middle America's heartland may have been odd in some ways - no Barbie dolls, no soft white bread, rationed television - and those ways sure were noticeable at the time. But I think I knew, even then, I had a treasure not everyone shared - wonderful books that could take me anywhere.

In return, I took them all in - and they sponged their way into the deepest reaches of my brain where they remain to this day. It's that Proust-and-the-madeleines phenomenon: I look at an illustration from Now We Are Six, and the room changes, the smells change, my height changes -- I'm swept back to childhood.

The best book illustrations I can recall from childhood were maybe half real, and the other half figments of my imagination. Both kinds spoke volumes, as they say, and remained as vivid as the stories they accompanied. In fact, sometimes the stories depend on the image - I can only recall the story after I've remembered the image. Following are some written works for children, many of them illustrated, and all of them capable of eliciting vivid internal pictures.

Bibliography:

Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series features children in Britain between the wars, summering with their mother at a lake: sailing, going on imaginary expeditions, exploring a deserted island, getting to know the neighbors. Full of pre-postmodern self-aware commentary, they narrate their stories as their lives provide new material, moment by moment. These books (Swallows and Amazons is the first book of the series) are in print and available. Reader testimonials at one online bookstore are vivid raves about the stories, the characters, and the strong influence they have had on readers' lives.

It is important to remember that AA Milne's Pooh poems and stories really did exist before the Disney people found them. Ernest Shepard provides drawings and watercolors for some crucial moments - Kanga hanging towels to dry on Pooh's feet when he got stuck - things like that. For the rest of the time, you're on your own, in the care of those stories and poems. Excellent for reading aloud and learning by heart. In the right circumstances, I could probably still remember most of the contents of Now We Are Six. Widely available.

Two sisters in 1927, the year after
Winnie-the-Pooh debuted.

The CS Lewis Narnia series teaches Ethics and Values, but I didn't know that at the time. I just liked my general awareness that Aslan, the wise lion, could be relied on to discern the truth of a situation. The children under his tutelage learned courage and a bedrock sense of right and wrong, gradually learning to acknowledge that troublesome state of in-between as well. Widely available.

These happy siblings were immortalized around the time
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, the first of the
Narnia series, was published.

Patricia Travers had the driest, most non-cuddly approach to children. Her stories' central figure - you can't really call her a heroine - is vain, self-absorbed, peevish, hypocritical, undemonstrative, and almost humorless. Plus, it turns out she has direct ties to Organized Supernaturals and an Undesirable Element. And then she gets put in charge of a family of innocent children! Forget Julie Andrews (this is key), and check out books by PL Travers about Mary Poppins and her charges. The books are in print.

The traditional story of Anansi and How the Spider Got Its Waist sticks in my head so strongly, and yet I can no longer find my source of this story. A search for "Anansi" at online bookstores turns up numerous editions of stories about the famous spider, from a variety of authors and editors. More titles are listed at rare book sites.

Like many of these authors, Elizabeth Coatsworth wrote fiction for adults. She also wrote The Littlest House. The aromas of food on the table, the look of the plates and cups and saucers, the warmth of the sense of home there are unforgettable. Out of print. Two copies were on hand at one online rare book site. ISBN 7021254267 for one edition (there are others as well).

An ancestor gave my sister a copy of Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter, so she could understand what it had been like, that blizzard year in the 1880's on the Western American prairie in the Dakota Territory. Published in the 1950's, the book rang true to a contemporary of Ingalls, a fellow pioneer more than sixty years before. After I got my hands on that book, my relatives knew what to give for birthdays and Christmases thereafter: one book at a time, I got the whole series of eight. (A ninth was published later, in 1971.) Garth Williams illustrated with line drawings so evocative you might even be able to shut out memories of the television series. Things are a bit rougher, and sharper around the edges, in the books. Uncertainty, danger, and illness are longtime companions to the characters in this autobiographical series about life in a pioneer family. Widely available.

Getting your photograph taken was a lot
more time-consuming in those days. This
little boy was a cousin of LM Montgomery.

A distant relative from another branch of my family actually wrote the Anne of Green Gables books, a fact that nearly bowled me over with pride when I first learned of it. One time I got to see the actual house where the heroine came to live, in the actual Canadian town, Cavendish, British Columbia, that inspired the setting for Lucy Maud Montgomery's series of novels. Somehow the scrapes Anne got into, the trouble she caused, her impetuousness, high spirit, and unstoppable energy did not read like didactic plot devices. Instead of cueing the "oh, no -- now she's gone and done it" vague foreboding that so very many children's stories provide, the events in Anne's life seemed to stand for themselves, and not a moralizing whiff more. The books are in print.

The first of the Anne series was published in 1908, a year
before this aunt held her new nephew for the first time.

The ways of life of North American farmers and pioneers of the Nineteenth Century gradually faded away. Documenting a culture that was terminated abruptly is Children of a Vanished World, a stunning record of moments, frozen in amber, of children in the European ghettos of the 1930's, before their lives were destroyed. The book includes photographs, music, and poetry, in English and Yiddish. The book's author, Roman Vishniak, took the photos, some with his camera hidden, between 1935 and 1938 in Poland and Russia, Romania and Hungary. Published in 1999 by the University of California Press. ISBN 0520221877

John Verney's novels, Ismo and Friday's Tunnel, first introduced me to the paintings of Oskar Kokoshka, children trying too hard to be sophisticated grown-ups, actual international intrigue underlying childish fantasies, and a girl named February and a boy named Friday from the Callendar family. The author's own illustrations make a significant contribution to the books' overall effect. Out of print, but available from used book stores and can be requested at the online bookstores. Copies of Friday's Tunnel (ISBN 7041726311) and February's Road (ISBN 7036678097) turned up at one rare book site.

Its publisher is building an office tower that will block almost all the light to a friend's studio. JK Rowling, its understated British author, does not seem sufficiently enthusiastic and star-struck - by American standards - at her change in fortunes. No matter - the Harry Potter series really is wonderful. Characters suffer, triumph, or get by; outcomes are not always obvious; magical realism rules, matter-of-factly; nobody's perfect; some plot threads are left untied - in short, these books share many of the same elements as the other books and stories mentioned here. Ubiquitous.

Compilations and anthologies are just the ticket for more bite-sized writing for children and young adults. Those listed here are now out of print (but available from used book dealers). The variety collected between each book's two covers enables them to continue to surprise and delight, year after year.

Castles and Dragons is a compilation of eighteen stories for children, some reworkings of traditional tales from around the world, some newly created. Its most outstanding feature: the black-and-white illustrations, all by William Pène du Bois. Compiled by Child Study Association of America. Out of print, can be ordered from online bookstores. One online rare book site had four copies available. ISBN 7032957518

A Child's Treasury of Fairy Tales and Legends collects stories from every continent but Antarctica and presents them with cultural trappings intact and universal truths evident. Alice Schneider, Editor. Out of print. Two copies were available from one rare book search site. ISBN 7041141023

The massive Anthology of Children's Literature provides encyclopedic coverage, spanning thousands of years, of poetry, biography, myths, fables, nonsense, counting-out-rhymes, and more from around the globe. Edna Johnson, Evelyn R. Sickels and Frances Clarke Sayers, Editors. Out of print. Five copies were listed by an online rare book site. ISBN 7029102353

Clifton Fadiman assembled a wonderful three-volume compendium in The World Treasury of Children's Literature. Its first two volumes are directed at younger children, while the third is for children into their teens. The books are beautifully prepared, with poems, stories, and excerpts from longer works, many with their original illustrations. In his commentary Fadiman lists more source materials, noting that not all longer works lend themselves to excerpting. Out of print. Available online from rare book sites. ISBN 0316273023 (vol.s 1&2); 0316273031 (vol. 3)

The Looking-Glass Book of Stories includes short stories by Anton Chekhov, Oscar Wilde, Shirley Jackson and Mark Twain. Its editor, Hart Day Leavitt, explains in his preface that he wanted young teenagers to realize good fiction can inhabit a place between the "wildly fantastic and the utterly mundane." Out of print.

As I review this short list, I realize many more stories and poems could belong here. I also realize I would probably enjoy them now, as an adult, even if I were reading them for the first time. In other words they are written well, with respect for children as readers and thinkers. Generally speaking, books that have been turned into movies, dolls, television series, and/or videos are still in print, while those that aren't, aren't. It can require conscious effort to put aside the "multimedia" memories, if they are your first exposure to these stories. If you are lucky enough to approach them fresh, you will very likely have generated your own unshakable visual and aural memories by the time you are through.

Resources:

Interesting books can be located online from the usual suspects, and also at these sites:
Alibris - for rare and out of print books: http://www.alibris.com
Powell's Books - Portland, Oregon's famous new and used bookstore is online with a full catalogue: http://www.powells.com
A Common Reader has begun republishing out-of-print books under its own imprint. http://www.commonreader.com

And don't forget the public libraries. Children's sections at the library can be rich sources of ideas and inspiration. Many out-of-print books make their homes there as well.

About the Author:

Anne Carley edits this Newsletter. Pictured below, she is the second from the left. Since the time this photograph was taken, she has gotten taller. Her email address is editor@arts4all.com She would love to hear from Newsletter readers who recommend other literature for children; results to be summarized in a future Newsletter.