Virginia Lee Burton, Artist at Home

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

Virginia Lee Burton created the wonderful machinery heroines (Yes, they were girls!) like Mary Anne, the obsolete steam shovel who finds a new line of work in Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and Katy the determined little tractor in Katy and the Big Snow. Virginia Lee Burton, the name used for all her children’t books, was her maiden name. More officially, and in her other works, she was Virginia Lee Demetrios, wife of George Demetrios, and mother of the two little boys for whom she was creating books.

Virginia Lee Burton’s life and work has several remarkable similarities to Wanda Gag’s life and work, starting with the turn her life took because of difficult circumstances in her family. Wanda Gag gave up some of her dreams to support her family after her father died, while Virginia Lee Burton hoped to be a dancer, and had just signed a contract to be in her sister’s dance troupe when her father broke his leg. She chose to stay home to look after him instead of travelling as a dancer. That, she said, “was the beginning and end of my dancing career, which was just as well, because I wasn’t very good anyway.”

While at home in Boston, Virginia Lee took a job as a “sketcher” for the Boston Transcript, making sketches of dancers and actors to accompany articles written by the drama and music critic. It was in Boston that she enrolled in a drawing class taught by George Demetrios, an art teacher who had come highly recommended to her, and whom, after only a few months, she married.

Once she had her two sons, Virginia Lee became interested in producing books for children. She tested both the stories and the drawings on her own children, adjusting things (or not) depending on their reactions. “Children,” she said, “are very frank critics.” And excellent ones, too, judging by the quality of the finished work her collaboration with her sons produced.

When her sons grew out of the picture book stage, Virginia Lee moved on to another project—teaching design to people in Folly Cove (an area of Gloucester, Massachusetts) where her home was. Her design class evolved into a cooperative group of designers whose works consisted of linoleum block prints stamped onto fabric used to make clothing and items for the home. Products from the Folly Cove Designers, headed by Virginia Lee Demetrios, were sold throughout the United States in the 1950s. The piece shown below is one of the Folly Cove designs done by Virginia Lee, a fabric print called Fish Story.

In another parallel to Wanda Gag’s life, Virginia Lee Demetrios also died of lung cancer when she was in her fifties. That was the end of Folly Cove Designers, although various museums still feature works from the design cooperative.

I can’t help thinking that there is a similarity in the drawings and prints of the two women as well, especially in the roundness of the hills and roads that featured prominently in their children’s book illustrations, and also their trees. Directly below is an illustration from Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House, which was her Caldecott Medal winner. Compare it with the Wanda Gag’s illustration from Millions of Cats which follows.

 

And remember Wanda Gag’s tree with little cat from the cover page of Millions of Cats? Below is one of Virginia Lee Burton’s trees.

The similarities between the two women are striking, but there’s one noteworthy difference. Wanda Gag fabricated world travelling adventures and prestigious awards in a story of her life that she wrote just before her death. She was not, it seems, satisfied with the life she had lived. Virginia Lee Demetrios, on the other hand, was perfectly content to focus her life and work on her family and community, and found within her ordinary life perfect opportunities for expression.

For good measure, here are a few more examples of Virginia Lee Burton’s work.

Swing Tree, fabric for Folly Cove Designers

 

This is a page from Katy and the Big Snow. Katy was modeled after one of the tractors used by the city of Gloucester, Massachusetts at the time the book was written.

Last, we have the cover of Maybelle the Cable Car , featuring another of Virginia Lee Burton’s machinery heroines.

If you have young children, I hope you are reading them some of Virginia Lee Burton’s picture books, along with other classic picture books, like those of Wanda Gag. They’re not as flashy as some of the more recently produced children’s books, but they’ve proven themselves popular through a few generations of children, and are a piece of our collective children’s literature heritage. Besides, they’ll like them. I promise.

Comments

[Kim Shay]

That first drawing looks familiar to me. Which book is it from?

[Persis]

Thanks for the memories, Rebecca. I read Virginia Lee Burton as a child and read the same books to my daughter. Good children's books never grow old.

[rebecca]

Kim - It's from Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.