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[CCBC-Net] Minders of Make-Believe: Taste Makers
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From: leonardsma at aol.com <leonardsma>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:28:01 -0400
I think there have been waves of interest in presenting a multi-racial picture of American society in children's books, and it has taken a long time for a large enough constituency and market to form for the books of that kind to make it in the market place. In the years just after World War II (at the end of which Truman belatedly integrated the US military), Elisabeth Hamilton, who headed the children's bk department at Morrow, published a few books of this kind--picture books by Jerold Beim and a nonfiction history of the "American Negro" by Hildegarde Swift. Hamilton felt strongly that such books were important but she could not sustain them. Not enough libraries and schools, presumably, were interested in buying them. Then came the 1960s wave, and the Caldecott Medal to Erza Jack Keats must have been taken by many as a validation of the goal of integrating the literature, but the fact that the book was the work of a white person became a point of controversy with Nancy Larrick and others, and I heard J ohn Steptoe say at a public event toward the end of his life that he had often felt like the token black illustrator in the field. Then there were the ups and downs of the 1980s, and I heard Jerry Pinkney say recently that he feels we're in more of an ebb period again now. So this has been and continues to be a struggle.
Leonard S. Marcus
54 Willow Street, #2A
Brooklyn, New York 11201
tel 718 596-1897
e-mai l leonardsma at aol.com
web www.leonardmarcus.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Fern Kory <fkory at eiu.edu>
To: leonardsma at aol.com
Cc: ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu
Sent: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 4:23 pm
Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make-Believe: Taste Makers
leonardsma at aol.com wrote: The Reys were German Jews who fled Nazi-occupied Paris, and were politically progressive; perhaps their political views found oblique expression in their books through the irreverent spirit of George their hero and the message it sent children about deference to authority. I just read? Margret Rey's picture book Spotty (Harper & Brothers 1945), illustrated by H.A. Rey, which is much less subtly political/ideological, from the very first page, in the vein of post-war American anti-racist (v internationalist) rhetoric, which is perhaps why it was re-issued in the 1970s and 1990s (by Houghton Mifflin, the publisher of the Curious George books, not by HarperCollins for some reason).? In that way it seems very American, which is interesting since Margret Rey was a relative newcomer in 1945.? It thus came out the same year as Jesse Jackson's Call Me Charley, a Harper book about racism by an African American writer introduced to Ursula Nordstrom by Margret Rey (Dear Genius xxxii).
On a related note...
I am really interested in the relationships of Afric an American authors and their white editors during the mid twentieth century? (Jesse Jackson is the focus of my research--as you know, Leonard!).? And I was struck by your quotation of the fictionalized retrospective reflections of a white editor-ess after reading "The All White World of Children's Books":
??? ??? ??? ?She began to try to find Black authors and artists; she also began, painfully, to examine herself and her WASPish-ness. ?Why were there no Black authors on the Dolphin list?? Did good Black writers not exist, or was she not recognizing them because they wrote in an idiom she did not understand and appreciate?? Should she publish a book that seemed to her poorly written just because the author was Black?? Maybe it was well written by other than middle-class, white standards? And if this were the case, how would she know?? How indeed?"? [Ann Durrell (from a 1982 Hornbook article) qtd. in Minders 237]
Presumably, before 1965 most editors were less or, at least, differently self-conscious about the authority they wielded over works by writers of color.? Do you have any anecdotes or impressions to add to those already in Dear Genius and Minders?? Nordstrom's rocky relationship with John Steptoe is intriguing, as is Massee's with Ellen Tarry.? ~ Fern?
-- Fern Kory Professor of English Eastern Illinois Universit y
Received on Mon 21 Jul 2008 04:28:01 PM CDT
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:28:01 -0400
I think there have been waves of interest in presenting a multi-racial picture of American society in children's books, and it has taken a long time for a large enough constituency and market to form for the books of that kind to make it in the market place. In the years just after World War II (at the end of which Truman belatedly integrated the US military), Elisabeth Hamilton, who headed the children's bk department at Morrow, published a few books of this kind--picture books by Jerold Beim and a nonfiction history of the "American Negro" by Hildegarde Swift. Hamilton felt strongly that such books were important but she could not sustain them. Not enough libraries and schools, presumably, were interested in buying them. Then came the 1960s wave, and the Caldecott Medal to Erza Jack Keats must have been taken by many as a validation of the goal of integrating the literature, but the fact that the book was the work of a white person became a point of controversy with Nancy Larrick and others, and I heard J ohn Steptoe say at a public event toward the end of his life that he had often felt like the token black illustrator in the field. Then there were the ups and downs of the 1980s, and I heard Jerry Pinkney say recently that he feels we're in more of an ebb period again now. So this has been and continues to be a struggle.
Leonard S. Marcus
54 Willow Street, #2A
Brooklyn, New York 11201
tel 718 596-1897
e-mai l leonardsma at aol.com
web www.leonardmarcus.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Fern Kory <fkory at eiu.edu>
To: leonardsma at aol.com
Cc: ccbc-net at lists.education.wisc.edu
Sent: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 4:23 pm
Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] Minders of Make-Believe: Taste Makers
leonardsma at aol.com wrote: The Reys were German Jews who fled Nazi-occupied Paris, and were politically progressive; perhaps their political views found oblique expression in their books through the irreverent spirit of George their hero and the message it sent children about deference to authority. I just read? Margret Rey's picture book Spotty (Harper & Brothers 1945), illustrated by H.A. Rey, which is much less subtly political/ideological, from the very first page, in the vein of post-war American anti-racist (v internationalist) rhetoric, which is perhaps why it was re-issued in the 1970s and 1990s (by Houghton Mifflin, the publisher of the Curious George books, not by HarperCollins for some reason).? In that way it seems very American, which is interesting since Margret Rey was a relative newcomer in 1945.? It thus came out the same year as Jesse Jackson's Call Me Charley, a Harper book about racism by an African American writer introduced to Ursula Nordstrom by Margret Rey (Dear Genius xxxii).
On a related note...
I am really interested in the relationships of Afric an American authors and their white editors during the mid twentieth century? (Jesse Jackson is the focus of my research--as you know, Leonard!).? And I was struck by your quotation of the fictionalized retrospective reflections of a white editor-ess after reading "The All White World of Children's Books":
??? ??? ??? ?She began to try to find Black authors and artists; she also began, painfully, to examine herself and her WASPish-ness. ?Why were there no Black authors on the Dolphin list?? Did good Black writers not exist, or was she not recognizing them because they wrote in an idiom she did not understand and appreciate?? Should she publish a book that seemed to her poorly written just because the author was Black?? Maybe it was well written by other than middle-class, white standards? And if this were the case, how would she know?? How indeed?"? [Ann Durrell (from a 1982 Hornbook article) qtd. in Minders 237]
Presumably, before 1965 most editors were less or, at least, differently self-conscious about the authority they wielded over works by writers of color.? Do you have any anecdotes or impressions to add to those already in Dear Genius and Minders?? Nordstrom's rocky relationship with John Steptoe is intriguing, as is Massee's with Ellen Tarry.? ~ Fern?
-- Fern Kory Professor of English Eastern Illinois Universit y
Received on Mon 21 Jul 2008 04:28:01 PM CDT
