Category Archives: English Language Children’s Books

Marks in Books 15: The Taylor Sisters’ Annotations in Limed Twigs to Catch Young Birds

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Ann and Jane Taylor by their father Isaac Taylor, oil on canvas, circa 1792

Collaboration isn’t anything unusual in the performing arts or the sciences, but the construct of the solitary literary genius is so strong that writers who work together can be slighted as less talented.  How texts are created by a team isn’t perfectly understood, especially when evidence for working methods can be elusive.   Some divide up the tasks according to individual strengths.  At the beginning of a project, the great folklorists Iona and Peter Opie did just that: she did the field work, he did the library research.  It’s unclear if the division of responsibilities was so clear cut when they got down to writing the manuscript.

When the collaborators don’t describe their creative process anywhere and no working manuscripts survive, chance survivals may be the only means of learning about how they worked.   Early in their careers, the trio of siblings Ann, Jane, and Isaac junior known as the Taylors of Ongar, together wrote and illustrated works for children.  All three had been trained as engravers, but they also had a turn for writing.   Some hints survive in Ann’s memoirs about the way the girls worked when they were little.  They found skipping rope was condusive to thinking up verse, which sounds a bit like William Wordsworth composing in his head while he walked.

One of the Taylors’ rarest collaborations, the graded reader Limed Twigs for Young Birds (1808) came on the market recently. (The title pays tribute to Lady Ellenor Fenn’s best-selling reading lessons, Cobwebs to Catch Flies.) Cotsen was very lucky to acquire a special copy, which the sisters presented to the Taylors’ old neighbors the Watkinsons after they had emigrated to America years before.

“J” for “Jane” at the end of “The Two Games.”

Isaac signed the copper plate for frontispiece, showing a conversation between the nurse, who is holding a baby,  and her big sister, stockings sagging.  Her dolly has been thrown face down on the floor.  The text is divided into twenty-six storylets in words of one to five letters, then one to four syllables.  At the end of every one is an initial assigning authorship: “A” for “Ann” or “J” for “Jane.”  Each of the young women contributed thirteen passages.  Ann penned “The Bee,” “The Cut,” “Getting Up,” “The Cat,” “The Poor Old Man and the Cakes,” “Learning to Read,” “The Dark,” “The Bird’s Nest,” “The Babe,” “The Kites,” “Disappointments,” “The Church Yard,” and “The Two Sixpences, That at Last Made One Schilling.”  Belonging to Jane are  “The Gay Book,” “The Careful Ant,” “The Idle Fly,” “The Frog,” “Old Dobbin,” “The Blind Man,” “The Two Games,” “The Birth-Day,” “The Rabbit,” “The Evening Play,” “The New House,” “The New Dresses,” and “The Old Mariner.”

Limed Twigs was a rather dreary little book  according to bibliographer Lawrence Darton.    He thought it reflected “The Taylors’ preoccupation with the theme of child mortality and physical distintegration,” but the only storylet to which that is applicable is  “The Church Yard,” an conversation between mother and daughter about the body and the soul that arises during a  walk through the church yard.  They do see a human bone in freshly dug earth, which turns into an object lesson about death, but it is short and short on details.

“A” for “Ann” at the end of “The Poor Old Man and the Cakes.”

All the other storylets’ subjects focus on the mundane experiences of ordinary children and they reflect real familiarity with the interactions of parents and children.  In Ann’s “The Cut,” a little boy says to his father, “O, do see my sad cut!  Is it not a bad one?” as if he is happy to show it off to get some attention.  His father doesn’t take the bait, remarking that yes, it is all red, but not worth crying over. “It is so sad to be cut, do let me cry,” the boy replies, making a play for sympathy.  Papa holds the line, “O no; a boy may not cry!”  And why not, asks his son, arguing that cats cry when they are hurt, and so should he.  Papa points out that he is bigger and older than a cat, and besides, seeing and hearing his son cry makes him sad.  Only when the boy concedes that he’ll try not to cry if it’s not allowed, his father praises him for being brave and tells the cut “Now dry up, sad cut, for my boy did not cry.”  It’s not a strategy acceptable to many parents now, but it’s important to see when it could be used without question.

In “The Two Games,” Jane captures the authentic whine of sibling snark:

James. Charles, pray come out and have a game of trap-ball out on the lawn.

Charles. I shall play at nine pins to day.  I do not like trap-hall half so well as I did: one has to run such a way after the ball, and then I am so often out, and and you do not play fair, I know.

James. O, as to that, I could cheat at nine pins too, if I pleased; but I do not though, I am sure.  I do not cheat in any game; so if you will not come and have a game at trap, you may go where you like. –I shall not play at any thing else, I can tell you.

Jane’s  “The Old Mariner” teaches children that putting sugar in their tea is not an innocent act. It’s not  at all uncommon in a volume composed of short passages to find material with a political slant where the title gives no indication of its presence.  Does the “fine little gentleman” realize that his favorite tea comes from a country half way around the world?  Does he take it with sugar?  “Well then,” says the mariner, “away we sail to the west, to those sultry islands where the sweet sugar-cane is cultivated.  Aye, Sir, and there one may see thousands of poor black negroes, that are brought slaves from their native country, toiling all day long, in the burning sun to cultivate this sweet nicety, for the gentlefolks in England.”

Ann  slips an in-joke into “Learning to Read,” which is a conversation between two girls, who just happen to be named…Ann and Jane.  When Jane asks her friend Ann if she can read, the answer is, “No, to be sure: what need have I to take so much time with a dull book?”  Ann, the resistant reader, is unconcerned if people will think she’s a fool if she never learns her A, B, C. “O, I do not care for that; for I have got a new doll, and a tea-pot, and some cups, and a nice bed for my doll to lie in; and I mean to play all day long and not care for my book.  Will not that be a good way?”  Jane stoutly defends herself, and points out that she doesn’t feel at all like a “mope” when she sits down to look at her lovely picture book, “I am sure you will love it much when you try.”  Jane has the last word, so the reader does not learn if she convinced Ann of the error of her ways!  The reader may not realize that the two anonymous authors are poking fun at themselves, but that doesn’t necessarily spoil their fun.

Critics tend to give the Taylors a bad rap, but they should be given more credit for lively dialogue and humor in their children’s books.

 

100 Best Children’s Books: New Lists by BBC Culture, Chris Loker, and Leonard Marcus

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There is always room for one more list of outstanding children’s books.  A hundred is the usual cut-off for an ambitious survey, large enough to be comprehensive while giving the pundit some wiggle room for individual expression.  Whether prepared by an individual, committee, or poll, accommodation is the name of the game.  The results are bound to make as many people cross as happy.  Scanning one of these lists usually brings the opinionated critic out of the book lover, gorge rising that certain favorites didn’t make the cut and furious that others did.

Given all the questions that have to be addressed, the creation of a list of 100 best/ classic/ essential/ significant books is never a quick and easy exercise.   Who gets to decide which books are classics?   Teachers, librarians and other educational experts?  Readers?  Book buyers or publishers?  Critics and reviewers?   Because their concerns are not identical, all should be allowed to chime in.  Are some, on the other hand, are more equal than others if long discussions ensue to untangle the messy ball of criteria?

To what extent does “best” mean of personal importance to the selector—i.e. childhood favorites?  Is the “best” book one that is read by many over a long period of time and just how long is long enough?  Why weigh readers’ responses if few have survived?  Should the authors be included primarily on  literary merit or should they reflect a cross-section of their society, with outsiders and elites represented?  What about authors like Enid Blyton or Roald Dahl with phenomenal sales records over generations when they expressed values now considered unacceptable?  Should Palmer Cox’s Brownie books, which were popular between 1870 and 1920, be considered or are they more correctly regarded as a far-reaching craze of historical interest?  Beloved series books tend to fall in this gray area and who knows if eventually Harry Potter will too.  How heavily should the number of movies, adaptations, translations, etc. be weighed?  Should non-fiction and information books have a place at the table?

And so on and so forth.  Eventually the arguing has to stop and some kind of consensus reached so the selecting can start.

Chris Z. Loker, an antiquarian bookseller and past board member of the EricCarle Museum of Picture Book Art, brings a thoughtful and disciplined approach to A Shimmer of Joy: One Hundred Children’s Picture Books in America (San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 2019), the companion volume to her One Hundred Books Famous in Children’s Literature (New York: Grolier Club, 2014).  A showcase of a private collector’s treasures, at first the book looks as if its primary audience is children’s book collectors.  Shimmer can be browsed or dived into, thanks to the addition of a section of four short essays contextualizing the genre by Catharine Mercier, Joel Silver, and Michael F. Suarez.  There is also  a compendium consisting of a 2011 manifesto proclaiming the picture book’s relevance signed by 22 artists and an omnibus of definitions which were offered between 1699 and 2019. The entries are written in a clear, relaxed style accessible to anyone beguiled by modern picture books.  Stereotypes and cultural appropriation in books published before 1960 are addressed honestly while keeping in sight of those qualities which have held an audience for decades.  Designed by Jerry Kelly, who has many sumptuous museum exhibition catalogues to his credit, Shimmer is among the most handsome 100 best lists on any subject.

Pictured Worlds: Masterpieces of Children’s Book Art by 101 Essential Illustrators from Around the World (Abrams, 2023) is a thoroughly professional job as one would expect of Leonard S. Marcus.  The format suggests the goal was to reach out to the widest possible audience, because it is both a generously illustrated coffee table book and a reference book, each entry featuring an author portrait, brief biography, appreciation, and publication history of one major work. Marcus insists that this is not an “old-fashioned” list of the canon or an artistic pantheon, but instead a roster of those who have engaged children “in the kind of artful blend of instruction and delight that John Locke recommended long ago, and which continues to prove its worth to an ever larger portion of the world’s population.”  Having invoked Locke, Marcus chose not to address the question if the seventeenth-century philosopher would have agreed that the contemporary picture book still embodied his idea of “some easy pleasant book suited to his capacity” that communicated “clear ideas,” when centuries of improved printing technology have dramatically changed the role of illustrations vis-à-vis the words.

Tana Hoban, Shapes and Things (1970).

Christian Epanya, Le taxi-brousse de Papa Diop (2005).

If Marcus really wasn’t interested in the canon making, then perhaps he should have experimented with the format and ditched with the the magic number of 100, provided the publisher would have gone along with it.  He has written extensively elsewhere about the twentieth-century American children books and many of the British ones that constitute nearly two-thirds of the list  The representation of Continental illustrators feels a little thin even when those American artists who were emigrés from Europe between World Wars are counted as out/insiders to both traditions.  Even though the Russians had an outsized impact on modern children’s book illustration, only two make the cut and neither are the 1920s.  The six illustrators from the Far East, two South American, and one African seem to have won places at the table primarily on the basis of the awards won.  Had Marcus branched out and covered another 25-50 artists after 1950 beyond the Anglo-American illustration tradition, Pictured Worlds would have been a less predictable and more adventurous selection.  Taking a look at picture books from the last fifty years would have opened up the field for lively discussion—something as more valuable and eye-opening than predicting which illustrators will make it into the winner’s circle of the future.

Late winter 2023, the staffers of BBC Culture announced that having compiled lists of the 100 greatest films and of television shows, the time had come for the children’s book.

We needed to finally turn our attention to another art form so deeply embedded in all our lives – books. And there is no variety of books more embedded in them than children’s literature…It also felt like just the moment to survey children’s books because of the recent conversation around how they are sorely undervalued compared to adult literature…All in all, then, it felt like the right time to do our bit to both give children’s literature its due and consider what has made and continues to make great children’s writing. And so, in order to do that, we have decided to ask many experts a very simple question: what is the greatest children’s book of all time?

The actual instructions to contributors were somewhat different: submit a list of ten children’s books, ranked from 1 to 10.   Only one volume could be  chosen from a series The Chronicles of Narnia or Harry Potter. ISBN numbers were also required, for some obscure reason.  Participants were encouraged to think internationally and to write comments clarifying their selections, if they wished.   The methodology of list creation is rarely watertight, so the exercise may turn out to be more entertaining for the compiler than instructive to the reader.  As no criteria were given for weighing one book against another, it was up to the list maker to decide how to play the game.  The cynic might decide to pick the ten most likely to be chosen by fellow contributors in order to score high, which could mean putting oneself inside the skin of the sentimentalist who favors childhood favorites.  The contrarian will try to separate the sentimental canon from works transcending nostalgia on the wings of author’s imagination, style, and impact.

How many respondents dashed off a list?  How many agonized over it?  How many people approached by BBC Culture didn’t bother to respond?  And most importantly of all, how did BBC compile the list of experts?

The results were posted on the BBC Culture website in books section at the end of May.  It revealed that a total of 177 “critics, authors, and publishing figures” from 56 countries made submissions: 133 were women, 44 men, and three unidentified by choice.  The 1050 books nominated were scored and ranked to create the final list.  All the respondents, with their positions, countries of residence, and list of ten books can be studied—which is in many ways, as BBC Culture admitted, more intriguing than the final list of 100, with Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are in first place and Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories in one hundredth.  There are few surprises, the majority being modern classics from the popular canon published in England or America.  Children’s literature still doesn’t have a history, even in the minds of most experts.  Some authors like Roald Dahl might have had a higher profile if they weren’t prolific, giving respondents the opportunity to name different titles.  No one admitted to liking series fiction like Nancy Drew, the Babysitters Club, Goosebumps, etc.   For those who tried to champion their country’s best children’s books in languages other than English, this was not the venue to bring them to a wider audience–only the international best-selling Western authors like Astrid Lindggren or Tove Jansson made it to the final one hundred.  Even the great traditions in Russian, Chinese, and Japanese barely surfaced.  Works written in the last twenty-five years, however, got special treatment in a separate list.

Making lists of 100 best children’s books has always struck me as a fruitless exercise,  because it is impossible to get it “right,” whatever that means.  We know it doesn’t mean 100 books absolutely everyone will agree on forever and ever.   Lists assembled by tabulating the results of a survey will produce a different cross-section of books than ones compiled by an individual: trying to figure out what those lists tell us about taste and values takes a lot of time to unpack.   Perhaps “getting it right” means the selection represents a balance between old and new, popular and high-brow, familiar and surprising.  Maybe the combination of knowledge, passion, and quirks are what really count because it shows the compiler wasn’t afraid to take risks and make some outrageous or debatable calls.  A bland selection is nowhere as much fun as an opinionated one: the best 100 bests push buttons, challenge convictions, and ask to be revisited for ideas and inspiration.