From: William Zame <zame>
Date: Fri, 06 Aug 1999 14:44:14 -0700

Tomi Ungerer is one of those children's authors/illustrators that led me back to grad school and eventually into a career as a psychoanalyst. No Kisses for Mother, The Beast of Monsieur Racine and The Three Robbers were books that consistently raised the hackles of mothers and that at least on two occasions we had to prepare justifications for including them in the collection. One mother was especially outraged by the the three towers the orphans built to honor their foster fathers, too overtly phallic.

I have used The Three Robbers when teaching analytic candidates for the past five years, as a wonderful representation of a beating fanatsy along with a wonderful illustrated version of The Highwayman. Ungerer manages to reach deep and within his simple stories depict the depths of underlying fantasies in the complexity of his illustrations. His books which reside in my consulting room are always very attractive to my young patients and they often see and describe things in them that go unoticed by my eye.

I love Ungerer for his complexity and courage in getting under the skin so to speak.

Linda Goettina
Received on Fri 06 Aug 1999 04:44:14 PM CDT