Beatrix Potter, Unconventional Woman

Another repost from a an old series of posts on a few of the author/illustrators of classic children’s literature.

Although Beatrix Potter’s upbringing might sound a little odd to us, for her time and social class, it was fairly typical. Both her mother and father inherited a fortune, and although her father was a lawyer, he didn’t work much because he had no need to earn an income. Beatrix lived a rather isolated life, playing only with her younger brother. She had no formal schooling, but was educated at home by governesses, which meant, in Beatrix’s case, that she was mostly left alone to pursue her own interests.

Beatrix was eight years old when she sketched these caterpillars It’s in her interests that she shows us she wasn’t an ordinary girl. She and her brother grew up surrounded by animals and plants—dogs, rabbits, frogs, salamanders, and more as pets, and large gardens and moors for roaming. They spent their time together studying, sketching—and even dissecting—the birds and animals and insects they found. When I was younger, I didn’t enjoy typical girl activities, either, but little Beatrix Potter took things a lot further than I thought to go. I can’t help but admire her for that.

As she grew into young adulthood, Beatrix’s passion became mycology, the study of fungi. She collected fungi, dissecting, painting, and drawing them. Her hope was that her detailed illustrations would be used in a textbook, but that didn’t happen. She also developed a theory about the germination of mold spores, and her uncle Henry, who was a noted chemist, presented a paper she wrote on this to the Linnaean Society of London. Her theory was rejected out of hand by the all-male society, because, according to every biography I’ve read, she was an amateur and a woman.

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Louis Slobodkin, Sculptor and Storyteller

Another repost from a an old series of posts on a few of the author/illustrators of classic children’s literature.

Louis Slobodkin was the illustrator of one of my favorite children’s books, The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes. Before he was an illustrator of children’s books, Slobodkin was a sculptor.

His statue of the young Abe Lincoln (right) was done for the 1939 New York World’s Fair, but it was never exhibited there. Instead, 

when the Slobodkins arrived at the Fair on opening day to inspect the installation, they were informed by a doorman: “‘Taint here any more.” The shocking word quickly went round that workmen had demolished the statue on order of Theodore Hayes, Executive Assistant to the Federal Commissioner for the World’s Fair, Edward Flynn. Five days later, Slobodkin told The New York Times that, according to a source in Washington, his sculpture had indeed been set upon with sledgehammers, reportedly because a lady who “lunched with Flynn” had not found it to be in “good taste.” (source)

It’s hard for me to imagine, looking back, what it was about Slobodkin’s young Abe that the woman found not in good taste. What could it be? That it was a bit exaggerated, and not entirely realistic? And why would anyone think it was a good idea to destroy it? I feel better knowing that the destruction of the Rail Joiner caused plenty of controversy, even drawing Eleanor Roosevelt, who was disheartened by what happened to the statue, into the fray.

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William Steig, Not an Idiot

Still reposting from a an old series of posts on a few of the author/illustrators of classic children’s literature. (In other children’s literature news, author and book editor Charlotte Zolotow died yesterday.)

William Steig was one of my children’s favorite picture book authors, but they knew him mostly for Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Doctor De Soto, Abel’s Island, and others of his older books. My kids grew up before the days of Shrek!, now made famous by the movie, which is probably the only way many contemporary children know Steig. 

The best part of William Steig’s picture books are his quirky drawings. But no picture book gets by on drawings alone; the story has to be good, too. William Steig’s stories are the perfect match for his illustrations—eccentric, silly, but also heroic and philosophical, and told in language that is literary, sophisticated, yet full of good humour. There’s no dumbing down for children in William Steig’s books!

His whimsical books were serious business to William Steig. In his Sylvester and the Magic Pebble Caldecott Award acceptance speech, he said that

[a]rt, including juvenile literature, … helps us to know life in a way that still keeps before us the mystery of things. It enhances the sense of wonder. And wonder is respect for life. Art also stimulates the adventurousness and the playfulness that keep us moving in a lively way and that lead us to useful discovery.

Steig didn’t start out doing children’s books. He began as an artist, and what he called “just drawing” was always what he liked best. But an artist has to make money, and Steig made his money as a cartoonist, most notably in The New Yorker. He was the magazine’s longest-running contributor, with over one hundred cover illustrations and one thousand cartoons attributed to him by the time of his death in 2003 at the age of 96. His cartoons from The New Yorker are still copyrighted, so I won’t post one, but you can check out Man in a Deep Depression or Say “I Love You” to see what they were like. On the right is his The New Yorker cover from July of 1953.

Steig supplemented his income from The New Yorker by doing other illustrating work, including making greeting cards. He claimed to be the pioneer of the contemporary humourous greeting card—the first create something other than sickeningly sweet Victorian type cards. He also drew advertising cartoons, which he didn’t enjoy. Those jobs ended abruptly when he told the advertising firm he was working for that they were “a bunch of idiots.”

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