Books: Week

“It is unnecessarily hard on children,” said the fatherly New York Times in a recent editorial, “to put before them sloppily written stories of impossible people in an absurd world.”

It is also unnecessarily hard on children and their parents to put before them sloppily stacked tons of juvenile literature and expect them to choose between what is absurd and what is artistic, entertaining, instructive.

So, for seven years, publishers and booksellers have tried to make a virtue of the U. S. habit of having Weeks for things like Safety, Apples, Thrift, and agreed on the second week in November as a time to spread all their books for children on the front show-tables and have the clerks specialize in describing them. Some said that herein flashed a shrewd eye for profit. To which others replied: “What of it? There are more children than ever before, hence there must be more books.” Still others added: “And never before were books made for children as they are made today.”

The calendar, habitually oblivious to arguments wise or otherwise, kept on shedding leaves. Children’s Book Week loomed.

Shen

One of the “founders” of Children’s Book Week was Co-Editor Frederic Gershom Melcher of the Publisher’s Weekly (trade organ), long high in bookmen’s councils. In 1921 he supplied the American Library Association with a medal, named in honor of Publisher John Newbery of England, an early advocate of particular books for particular small people. This medal was to be awarded annually to that U. S. writer who should make the “most distinguished” contribution to U. S. literature for children. It was no secret that Mr. Melchei hoped by this ruse to induce able writers to turn their attention, from the library to the nursery. The examples set by Authors Charles Kingsley, Rudyard Kipling, Sir James Barrie, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, A. A. Milne and many another backed him up.

In 1921 the Newbery medal was awarded to Author Hendrik Willem Van Loon for his Story of Mankind. The next year Author Hugh Lofting’s Dr. Dolittle stories were honored. Then Author Charles Boardman Hawes produced The Dark Frigate. In 1924, much-traveled Author Charles Joseph Finger published Tales From Silver Lands and won the prize.

Last month the American Library Association held its annual meeting, at Atlantic City, N. J., and announced that of all new reading for children published in 1925, the best was a collection* of Chinese fairy, folk, pirate and true stories, made by one Arthur Bowie Chrisman.

Author Chrisman made his leap to eminence from a literary nowhere. Raised near the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, he sought his fortune only a few years ago in the cinema studios of California. A camel stepped on him during the making of Intolerance. A fellow “extra” trod upon his face in The Gentleman from Indiana.

He went back to his Los Angeles boarding house. Next door lived a gentle Chinaman, who sold fruit and groceries. Perhaps this grocer was a relative of the Chinaman in London who sold ginger and started Author Thomas Burke on his notable career as the biographer of the Limehouse District. Perhaps not. But he soothed sad young Mr. Chrisman, by answering questions, telling stories.

One of the stories was about a fractious Chinaboy who invented printing, by accident, through getting jam on his father’s carvings. Another was of the sea-dwelling Shen (demons) who inundated a great city to expand their province but were later outwitted by the wisest of kings. There was Weng Fu, the wit-wandering beggar who sold himself as a father to an orphan boy in the Street of Wang’s Broken Tea Cup near the Seven Thieves Market, and “that lazy Ah Fun” who blew up his honorable father with the bed-stove, broooomp! All these things and many more Mr. Chrisman noted down carefully, wrote out with humor and understanding.

Oblivion

No more do young hearts melt, as once all young hearts did, at the piteous gaze in the liquid eyes of the fleet and noble steed, Black Beauty. That steed was passed and lost in dust by The Motor Boys.

Once The Waterbabies were to be found on every young bookshelf in the land. Poor innocents, they are no more.

Of Helen’s Babies nothing remains save the dim figure of a kind uncle, and a phrase, “Wants shee wheels go wound.” Hector My Dog, Bob Son of Battle, Stviss Family Robinson; even The Jungle Books, the Henty Books, Oliver Optic, Horatio Alger, and Little Lord Fauntieroy’s lace collar and filial perfection* where are they? Gone, all gone, yet once the child that knew them not was plainly a barbarian.

One figure of the past remains— Louisa May Alcott (1832-88). Yearly her books are issued; this autumn, in five editions.† Her upright heroines still curtsey at balls, have jolly sledding parties, converse soberly on morals, dismiss wayward suitors, love their families before themselves, suffer sorrow in pious silence.

Nor will oblivion’s bitter cup be soon prepared for her. Having brooded over two generations, mostly girls, as Duty’s very priestess, she was approached last winter by exceedingly ironic Biographer Thomas Beer. In The Mauve Decade he tore aside her veils of sentiment and revealed a harried housekeeper with bone-aches and a lounging father, most scornfully scribbling out what she herself called “moral pap for the young,” to make ends meet. He showed that she herself read the racy French and Russian novels of her day; that she was gaunt, dowdy, with a deep tinge of cynicism. At the same time, he noted the fact that she was indefatigable; that she sewed up baseballs for the neighborhood urchins; kept Harvard boys out of scrapes; slaved for one and all in kitchen, study, school, hospital. The saccharine type of “the nation’s pure and enlightened womanhood,” for which she was the unwilling inspiration, would have been aghast, as another generation is reassured, by the tart honesty of her journal: “I’m selfish. I want to goaway and rest in Europe. Never shall.”

Adventure

A great many more people write about adventures than have them, which doubtless accounts for the perennial savor of Author John Buchan’s Prester John (Doran, $2.50) and Author Frank T. Bullen’s The Cruise of the Cachalot (Dodd Mead, $3.50). Though a scholar, Author Buchan well knows feverish Africa where his gigantic blackamoor villain, pretended successor to a fabulous Asiatic monarch of the Middle Ages, stalks Hero David Crawfurd to the shadow of the grave. Author Bullen was firstmate of many a sperm-whale Mutinies, dirk play and shipwreck engross the Cachalot’s log around the world.*

First hand adventure is also be had from two boys that ha explored one the wettest, the oth the driest, places on earth. Dei Nusbaum,† aged 12, was brought up in Southern Colorado where Indians lived in desert cliffs centuries ago. He has rummaged their old shrines, climbed their watch towers, been let down over thousand-foot abyss to investigate an eagle’s nest. David Binney Putnamm,** aged 13, was taken by his publisher-father to Greenland’s mountainous icebergs where they killed sharks, seals, walrus, polar bear, collected birds’ eggs, aquired Eskimo habits.

Goose

MOTHER GOOSE SONG BOOK—Music by Holland Robinson; drawin by Mac Harshberger—A. & C. Bo ($2.50). Despite attacks‡ made upon her, Mother Goose*** remains as indispensable as ever to the process of growing up. Of the many editions of her songs issued annually, none is more notable than this volume, each page of which extraordinarily, turns up a difftrent color—mauve for “Ding Dong Bell”, yellow for “A Cat Car Fiddling”, tan for “Sing a Song Sixpence”, grey for “Ladybug Ladybug”, green for “Ride a Cock Horse”—and then start all over again.

The same authors and publishers have a companion volume, similarly made, called Zoological Solilquies ($2.50), including “The Supercilious Camu-el,” “My Giraffinity” “The Flamingolosh,” “The Puzzled Emu.”

Compendiums

Just as it is a good thing have a bureau for clothes and box for toys, it is convenient have one big book with a great many different things to read in it. There are several such books.

JOHN MARTIN’S BIG BOOK, No. 10—Dodd Mead ($2.50). Author Martin, of Manhattan, is the kind of man who, just as soon as he puts up his green sunshade on a bathing beach, is speedily surrounded by all the small children in sight. For years he has edited John Martin’s Magazine, causing other people who happen to have his name no little embarrassment. They are forever having to renounce credit for his good work. He puts fancy, history, biography, poetry, science and much more into his annual Big Book.

LETTERS FROM UNCLE HENRY— Henry B. Mason—Stokes ($2). Author John Martin (see above), introducing Uncle Henry, says: “He knows the exact size of the fairies’ panties and petticoats.” There is a letter per day for two weeks.

NUMBER FOUR JOY STREET—Appleton ($2.50). Only experts are allowed to work on Joy Street— such writers as Walter de la Mare, Lord Dunsany, Rose Fyleman, Hilaire Belloc, Compton Mackenzie, Laurence Housman, Hugh Chesterman. Mr. de la Mare’s contribution concerns John Cobbler, a Wiltshire boy who was turned into a tench. Mr. Belloc, in verse, confesses himself a votary of jam.

SKAZKI—Ida Zeitlin—Illustrated by Theodore Nadejen—Doran ($5). The title of this book sounds not at all like a sneeze when you know how to pronounce it, and means “wonder-tale” or “folk-story” in Russian. The characters are chiefly ancient Russian royalty, tsars and tsarinas, involved in marvelous episodes with their good, bad and mysterious subjects.

THE TREASURE SHIP—Scribners ($2.50). “The usual rabble of fairy godmothers”, armored knights, rubicund policemen, aunts, bears, sponge cake and “the biggest giant that ever gianted” infest this compendium. It is entirely concocted by British authors—Sir James M. Barrie, P. G. Wodehouse, A. P. (“Punch”) Herbert, Walter de la Mare, Hilaire Belloc, Algernon Blackwood, Cynthia Asquith (the editress) and many another.

Rackham

Stories are all very well, but the better you like them and the harder you believe them, the more you want to see the people in them.

No one with any sense at all ever fails to look first at the pictures in any book whose cover says that it was “illustrated by Arthur Rackham.” In fact, that one phrase makes a great many people want certain books which they might otherwise never think to buy. This applies particularly to grown people, who have read Peter Pan and The Water Babies and Aesop’s Fables and Hansel and Gretel years ago. A great many parents now buy Rackhamized editions of these books and pretend that they are doing it to please their children. It comes to that in the end, but actually the parents are getting fun themselves. This season there are at least ten books* which will make parents furtive.

Saying why this should be so is like trying to say why some leaves have crickets living under them while others have not. When Artist Arthur Rackham adjusts his cuffs and sets out to put part of a story into a picture, his fancy slips cricket-wise into the subject, in small surprising lines that never reveal what they are about until they have done it. Some are firm lines with tiny hairs on them, like a cricket’s thigh. Some are more delicate and hesitant, like timid creatures creeping from crannies. Some are wry and perverse, like a witch’s pin or a bat’s flight. None are straightforward or prosaic. Together, colored over and shaded in with pale washes, they create pictures of a world, half small-animal, half fairy, in which no one could fail to believe, if only because it is quaint, beautiful, impossible.

You can watch an old tree or the weathered slabs of a thatched shed take form from Artist Rackham’s pen, and the first thing you know the tree or shed is leering at you like a weird warlock, or smiling like an oldtime grandmother, put of eyes and mouths that vanish when you look closely. Only some knots, bark or grain-wrinkles remain. A gnarled shrub will be writhing and snickering like a soul lost and sarcastic in a twilit place, until you examine. Then you see it was only some Rackham lines, perpetually innocent in their deceit.

Animals, especially small bead-eyed rodents whose tails must obvious though invisible, are Rackham specialties. He is a man to see that their personalities quite comprehensible, differing from ours only at their extremities where he observes the distinction by bringing their legs and armsout of pantaloons and shirtsleeves with paws and claws instead feet and hands. He makes a muskrat’s ear quite as eloquent as unearthly tresses of an undine, rather badly jointed wooden doll is as truly alive to him as themost grizzled of grey old men who have obviously been alive for centuries. He cannot view a stone without anticipation; the very turf and atmosphere of his world teem with unimaginable whispers and apparitions.

Difficult to discover and pin down as is the full content of his pictures, Arthur Rackham himself still more elusive. His U. S. publishers despair at his abhorrence of publicity. Not since 1909 has his photograph appeared in U.S. public prints. Hardly a soul among his admirers knows that he began life 59 years ago as the son a business-like London gentleman who set him to work in an insurance office. Or that now, having perfected his draughtsmanship until it is a byword, he lives amid Sussex downs with a wife who also draws, in a cottage of crazy-quilt architecture, under an old beech, an elm, and near a business-like workroom devoid of all “arty” furnishings. Sitting at his drawing board with his round, glittering spectacles and clean-shaven ascetic countenance, he looks very much like a village deacon, gnome-like brow, repository of his inspiration and technique, is revealing feature. Years ago drew political cartoons for Punch and The Graphic. Lately he been called “court painter to King Oberon and Queen Titania.”

Pooh

WINNIE-THE-POOH—A. A. Milne—Dutton ($2). Another man A lately made grown-ups furtive Author Alan Alexander Milne of Cotchford Farm, Hartfield, Sussex (not far from Artist Rackham’s beech tree). He used to be (1906-14) an editor of Punch. He fought all through the War and got back safely to tell stories to his son, Christopher Robin, who encouragred his father (by asking for more) to write a book of jingles called When We Were Very Young (1924). Writing things was nothingnew for Author Milne. He had had plays of his played both sides of the Atlantic (Mr. Pim Passes By, The Truth About Blayds, The Dover Road). Butthe success of his children’s book startled every one. This season he hasanother book, with Christoper Robin doing things all through it with Winnie-the-Pooh. Winnie was Christopher’s favorite Big Bear called “Pooh” because of a noise made blowing flies off his nose.

*SHEN OF THE SEA—Arthur Bowie Chrisman—DUTTON ($2).

*He called his mother “Dearest” ; never answered back.

†LITTLE MEN—L. M. Alcott—Burt (S.60).

LITTLE WOMEN—L. M. Alcott—Crowell ($2.50).

LITTLE WOMEN—L. M. Alcott—Macmillan ($1.25).

LITTLE WOMEN—L. M. Alcott— Sears (2 vo’s.. $1.50).

AN OLD FASHIONED GIRL—L. M. Alcott— Little, Brown ($2).

*Author Herman Melville’s great work on whaling, Moby Dick or The White Whale, has been abridged for young reade with careful preservation of the demonicnarrative, by one A. E. W. Blake, illustred by Artist Rowland Hilder, published Knopf ($2.50).

†DERIC IN MESA VERDE — Deric Nusbai —Putnam ($1.75).

**DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND — David B ney Putnam — Putnam ($1.75).

‡Most notorious of Mother Goose’s enemies (TIME, Jan 12, 1925) is Mrs. Winifred Sackville Stoner Jr. (Mrs. Charles P. de Bruche), of Manhattan, who was raisedto be an infant prodigy, given a typewritter at three, permittted to makeimpromptu speeches at four. Mrs. Stoner finds the Mother Goose jingles “badgrammar,” “bad morals.” She offers as substitutes, “fact-jingles.” Example (byMrs. Stoner):

Every perfect person ownsJust two hundred and six bones.

***Mother Goose is not an imaginary personage. She lived in Boston in the 17thcentury. Born Elizabeth Foster, she married one Issac Vergoose (or Goose),a widower “with eight or ten children,” becoming Mother Goose to these and “sixor more childern of her own.” Her son-in-law, one T. Fleet, printer, recorded songshe heard her sing; in 1719 published a book at his own press entitled Songs for theNursery or Mother Goose’s Melodies for Children.

*Childrens books new and old, illustrated by Arthur Rackham and nowin print:

HANSEL AND GRETEL AND OTHER TALES— Doran.

ENGLISH FAIRY TALES—Macmillan.

IRISH FAIRY TALES—Macmillan.

HAWTHORNE’S WONDER BOOK—Doran.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND—Doubleday Page.

UNDINE—Doubleday Page.

WAGNER’S RING or THE NIBBLING; THE RHINEGOLD AND THE VALKYRIE—Doubleday Page.

AESOP’S FABLES—Doubleday Page.

THE SRINGTIME OF LIFE, POEMS BY SWINBURNE—Doubleday Page.

POOR CECCO—Margery Williams Bianco— Doran.