Monthly Archives: January 2018

Tweaking The Emperor’s New Clothes and other Classics for Today

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Probably the most common way of putting a new spin on an old favorite is to situate it in a different time and place, which gives the writer, artist, or author-illustrator the freedom to imagine richly detailed settings.  When done with skill and imagination, the retelling pays tribute to the original and the recreator.  However, this trio of picture books play with the texts in more radical ways, because the plots have been restructured to highlight themes of collaboration, cooperation, and collusion.

Alison Jackson, I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie, illustrated by Judith Byron Schachner. New York: Dutton Children’s Books, 1997. (Cotsen 87615)

Alison Jackson turns the old accumulative rhyme “I Know an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly,” into a tribute to Thanksgiving gluttony.   An grandmotherly lady shows up on the doorstep of a young family’s house bearing a pie.   As soon as she  crosses the threshold, she wolfs down the pie and has to wash it down with a gallon jug of cider.  This dubious  accomplishment  impresses the two children so much that they  want to see what else she will eat. They try to restrain her when she lunges for the turkey platter, but would they be smiling if they weren’t secretly hoping she’ll go for it?  Can she get the entire uncarved bird down her gullet and survive?  She does.  The children hesitate momentarily when the old lady–now monstrously bloated with pie, cider, salad, squash, turkey, and a stock pot–menaces the dessert, a ten-layer cake.  But there is no stopping her and afterwards the baby and cat loll on the old lady’s huge, pillowy body, while the little girl tries to retrieve her skinny feet from under the dress.  The parody of the rhyme wouldn’t be anywhere as funny if Schachner (better known as the creator of Skippy Jon Jones) hadn’t created this subtext about the children egging on the old lady, which isn’t suggested in the text.   Giving the greedy old lady an audience does make this retelling a little grosser and more subversive than the original.

Margie Palatino, Lousy Rotten Stinkin’ Grapes, illustrated by Barry Moser. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, c. 2009. (Cotsen 151965)

Lousy Rotten Stinkin’ Grapes, written by Margie Palatino and illustrated by Barry Moser, presents the fable of the fox and the grapes as a disastrous team effort.  When the fox discovers he can’t jump high enough to get the luscious fruit, he seizes the day when his acquaintance the bear lumbers along and allows himself to be roped into the fox’s plan.  Still unable to reach the fruit when balanced on the bear’s snout, the fox tries to make what ought to be a sure fire concept work by dragging in more collaborators with half his brains.The tottering pile-up could be out of the Grimms’ “The Bremen Town Musicians,” but the higher it gets, the farther it is to the ground.  Having lost face in front of his helpers, the fox stalks off saying he didn’t want the “lousy rotten stinkin’ grapes” anyway.   The supposedly slow-witted team members gather the grapes without any difficulty and the would-be captain’s absence doesn’t seem to decrease their enjoyment of the fruit.  A case could be made that Palatino has improved on Aesop by making fall of the cocksure fox more dramatic than it is when he has no witnesses.

The reinterpreted plots in the first two picture books do not change the outcome of either story.  YIng Chang Compestine’s revamping of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” turns a perfect story on its head and claims this is the real version–always a risky move.

The emperor of China is a nine-year-old boy Ming Da controlled by three dishonest ministers who are enriching themselves at the kingdom’s expense.  Hungry, ragged children in the street, whom he cannot feed and dress, remind the little emperor how powerless he is.  While inspecting fabrics at the tailor’s shop for a New Year’s gown, the boy thinks of a plan to outwit the bad ministers that just might work if the tailors will help him execute it.  The emperor invites his ministers to the tailor’s shop to admire his new magical robes, whose splendor can only be seen by the honest.  The robe is nothing more than a painted burlap sack, but the ministers lavish praise upon the quality of the silk and the beauty of the embroidery rather than admit they don’t see anything of the kind.   The emperor invites the ministers to have such garments made for themselves.

Ying Chang Compestine, The Chinese Emperor’s New Clothes, illustrated by David Roberts. New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2017. Promised gift.

Behind a screen in the tailor’s, Ming Da spies on the ministers when they return to inspect the finished robes.  Of course, each of the burlap robes is imperfect, so the ministers, determined to outshine each other, supply the tailors with more jewels, gold, and rice to ensure the receipt of the finest garment that can be had.  The tailors hand off the treasure to the little emperor, who purchases cloth and rice so that the poor people can be clothed and fed.

At the New Year’s parade, the ministers in their burlap finery march behind the emperor, puzzled by the lack of response from the crowds in the street.  The spectators  break into raucous laughter as soon as when the children expose the deception by shrieking that the ministers are clothed in itchy rice sacks instead of gorgeous silks.

Humiliated at  having been tricked, the ministers flee the country and the little emperor replaces them with honest men.   During the rest of Ming Da’s reign, everyone is happy because no one goes hungry or naked.   The story concludes like this: “The emperor marched through the town to save his country.  I don’t know how people ended up with the old folktale about two sly tailors fooling a vain emperor.”   There are several possible morals–that the powerful few will rule justly with the interests of the many at heart, or even the mighty need the humble to achieve social justice.  Perhaps the author rewrote Andersen like this so children would have faith in the rectitude of authority.  But I miss the puncturing of human vanity with the light and deadly touch.

The British illustrator David Roberts, who spent time as a milliner and fashion illustrator in Hong Kong, has done research to give this story a distinct Chinese flavor. The characters’ attire, crisp outlines, and caricatured faces recall animated Chinese films from the second half of the twentieth century. This aesthetic borrows and remixes visual elements from various Chinese art traditions, including ancient architecture and Peking Opera make-up and stage design.

Animated Chinese film Monkey King Wreaks Havoc in Heaven, first aired in 1964.

The Chinese Emperor’s New Clothes presents an anachronistic ancient China, which can often be spotted in picture books illustrated by cultural outsiders. The green robes and official winged-flap headwear of the three evil ministers signal that they are from the Ming dynasty or earlier. However, the Manchu braided hairstyle worn by the emperor, the tailors, and the children betrays the Qing dynasty. The confusion between these two consecutive dynasties is especially evident in a picture of the little emperor, who is wearing a Qing braid and a green robe and hat that are more likely Ming. Children’s literature critics have repeatedly lamented the peril of cultural misrepresentation, suggesting that publishers seek feedback from cultural insiders during the editing process. Just like Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Nightingale,” a fairy tale set in an imagined China, this rebellious retelling of Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” takes place in a distant China that never was.

(Minjie Chen contributed to the essay.)

If it’s Almost Microscopic, is it a (Real) Book? “Le Bijou des enfans pour l’année 1817”

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Can you judge a book by its cover? Cover of: Bijou des enfans pour l’année 1817. Paris, [1816?]) at 28 mm tall. (Cotsen 46176)

You can’t judge a books by its cover, the old saying goes. That’s true enough, for the most part. The body of the binding isn’t necessarily a window onto the soul of the printed text within.  The early quarto publications of Shakespeare’s plays were offered for sale in unbound sheets, or sometimes in plain paper wrappers when first published. The simple green wrappers of the first edition of James’ Joyce’s Ulysses (with just author and title simply printed on the upper wrapper) provide no hint of the revolutionary narrative lurking inside. The unimpressive, and well-handled, covers of George Bickham’s 1750 Pretty-Book give no sign that the book is now a unique surviving copy. (You can’t get much more “rare” than that!).

There are some exceptions to this truism, of course.  Some book covers do signal the content inside: children’s books with bright (loud?) chromolithographed wrappers or covers, artists’ books with complex cover designs or engineered paper, or medieval “treasure bindings,” such as the gold, silver, and gem-encrusted “Magnificent Gems” on exhibit recently at the Morgan Library & Museum.

Bespoke morocco bindings of the book? Or is it “just” the box?

The idea of judging a book by its cover — and being surprised by it — was certainly brought home to me recently while working with the Cotsen Library’s copy of Le bijou des enfans pour l’anée 1817 (Paris: Chez Janet, [1816?]).  The cover, or so I thought, at first looked like a nice, bespoke maroon morocco binding for a nineteenth-century book, apparently in a protective sleeve.  Take a look for yourself!  But then as I (gently) pulled the “book” out, I realized it wasn’t really the cover of a book at all, but rather part of a protective box of some kind.  The plot thickened…

Opening up the clamshell box, a real surprise awaited me.  Inside was a tiny book — one of the smallest I’ve ever seen (at 28 mm., barely more than 1 inch)– and also a magnifying glass, an artifactual magnifying glass,to boot, which appeared to be roughly contemporary with the book, which is bound in crimson roan — probably a publisher’s binding (and definitely cheaper than the later bespoke morocco binding of the case).  I felt a little like Alice, after swallowing the “drink me” shrinking potion in Wonderland.  Where would this end?  Curiousier and curiousier, for certain.

A glimpse inside the box… Extreme miniature book, magnifying glass, bookplate, and hand-painted paper…

The tiny book and magnifier both lay within perfectly-fitted, red velvet-lined cut-out indentations inside the box.  (Note the gilt turn-ins around the box’s inner edges too.)  The box was lined with quite beautiful, hand-painted, floral-patterned paper — quite a work of art in itself. And then there was the hand-colored, engraved pictorial bookplate, depicting a seated young tutor and his charge, who seems more interested in his drum and hobby-horse than whatever might be inside the book that his tutor is holding!

Kurt Szafranski’s bookplate, depicting tutor and less-than-diligent pupil…

The bookplate belonged to Kurt Szafranski, an early twentieth-century book collector of some note, whose collection was purchased en bloc from his daughter in the late 1990s.  The German text on the bookplate — “aus der kinderbuch sammlung von” — translates as “from the children’s book collection of” Szafranski.

But what about the tiny book itself? OK, I’m getting to that now…  It’s a little hard to know where to start with this mini marvel, as I hope you can appreciate!  This is where the magnifier came into play — perhaps it was sold with the book? — and eventually, a more powerful, new-fangled one, better suited to tired eyes.

The book’s title page provides just the basic bibliographic facts, ma’am.

The Bijou’s title page “under glass”… No books were harmed in the making of this photo!

Pour les demoiselles…

Pour les garçons…

Title (including date), imprint, and address of Pierre-Étienne Janet, the book’s issuer, a Paris bookseller active from about 1791 to 1830. No illustration, publisher’s ornament or device, nor engraved frontispiece on the facing page. The date is part of the title, though, not the date of publication, and we’ve dated this book as [1816?], since almanacs were typically issued late the year before, just in time for Christmas or holiday giving (much like gilt-stamped leather pocket date-books were in the olden times before Palms, PDAs, and cell-phones rendered these.leather-and-paper objects somewhat obsolete to many).

These little almanacs tended to follow a similar general format in their contents: a monthly calendar noting holidays, religious events, and other dates of note, poetry, some sorts of mottoes, quotations, or sayings to inspire thought, and illustrations (often nicely executed).

Cotsen’s Bijou des enfans indeed follows that model, beginning with emblem-like illustrations facing little poems, followed by short rhyming couplets about love and romance for both boys garçons and young ladies (“devises pour les garçons” / “devises pour les demoiselles), a table of these “devises”, and the calendar pages.

December pages from the calendar section of Le bijou

According to the Grolier Club’s Miniature Books (the wonderful catalog accompanying their 2007 miniature book exhibition), these “bijou” (jewel) almanacs were especially popular in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the small “almanachs minuscules” (tiny almanacs) being especially popular among fashionable young ladies during the 1740-1850 period, when they were issued in two different sizes: a “larger” size of up to 3 1/4 inches tall (80 mm.), and a smaller size of “less than an inch” in height, numbering sixty-four pages in length, “entirely engraved from metal plates,” and featuring illustrated love songs or poems; Cotsen’s Bijou des enfans seems to fit the latter description to a “T”.  The Grolier’s Miniature Books catalog adds that these smaller leather-bound almanacs were “given out at the New Year to favored patrons of Parisian chocolate shops”!  I wonder if these special bijoux publications came with tiny sweets too?  That’s certainly a notion that would have appealed to children!

Hey buddy, Can you spare a dime? The cover of the Bijou (at 28 mm), with FDR included for scale

At less than an inch in height, the tiny size of these smaller almanachs minuscules places them at distinctly the smaller end of the spectrum of miniature books, which are technically 100 mm in size or smaller (i.e. less than 4 inches inches).  Compare the size of Cotsen’s 28 mm copy of the Bijou des enfans to the dime in the photograph and imagine just how small that really is. By way of comparison, Cotsen’s copies of the individual volumes in John Marshall’s Doll’s Library, a miniature library set (dated [1800?]), are 50 mm tall; Francis Newbery’s 1772 Pocket Bible for Little Masters and Misses is 84 mm tall; and each of the five volumes in Marshall’s miniature library set, A Concise Abridgement of Natural History … for the Juvenile, or, Child’s Library, are 98 mm tall.

Imagine handling, reading, and simply turning the pages a much tinier 28 mm book — it takes some dexterity.  And while children have smaller hands than grown-ups and are also more dexterous with tiny objects, think of how roughly they can handle books and toys, even in the case of older children, at whom the Bijou des enfans seems to be aimed.  One can readily imagine lost pages, torn up books, or books lost altogether.  Perhaps that’s why Cotsen’s copy is one of only a very small handful of copies of a Bijou des enfans from the years 1816 or 1817 that seemed to turn up on (admittedly very) quick searches of OCLC and the French Bibliothèque nationale.  Almost microscopic and rare!

The Bijou des enfans (box) on the shelf (third from left) with some of its mates… The next time you see a book on the shelf, as yourself: “Can you really judge a book by its cover?”