21st century | Cotsen Children’s Library

In January I followed the controversy that erupted shortly after the publication of Ramin Ganeshram’s A Birthday Cake for George Washington, prompting Scholastic Press to recall it. Illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton, the picture book is a tribute to the slave Hercules, a highly skilled chef belonging to Washington, whom Ganeshram imagines happily baking a cake for his master’s birthday dinner. When it became obvious that Cotsen was not going to be able to acquire a copy of the book through the usual channels, Freeman Ng, author and children’s book blogger, was kind enough to donate his copy to the collection.

After reading A Birthday Cake, I went looking in children’s books of the 1790s for Black characters who were servants in private families (that’s the period when Hercules was working in Philadelphia). If any Black domestic slaves did appear in children’s books, I was curious to see how were their circumstances, both physical and mental, were depicted. Were they presented in sufficient detail for us to see if they were aware of their condition? And how were their relationships with their masters portrayed?

Some quick and clever searching turned up a handful of interesting stories. Perhaps I should not have been surprised at my success. Didn’t Lucy Aikin, the niece of Mrs. Barbauld, boycott sugar as a girl out of anti-slavery sentiment? The lawyer Thomas Day pointedly attacked the institution of slavery in his famous novel for children, The History of Sandford and Merton (1784-1789), whose narrative focuses on the reclamation of the spoiled son of a Jamaica plantation owner. During the same period, one of the first slave narratives, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1772) went through nine editions and was translated into Dutch, German, and Russian.

One unknown writer who tried to argue children out of their lack of respect for the victims of the transatlantic business of slavery, was a Miss Mitchell. Her story “Goodness not confined to Complexion or Form,” was published in Tales of Instruction and Amusement (London: E. Newbery, 1795). Miss Mitchell published another three children’s books under her married name, Mrs. Ives Mitchell Hurry. In the Guardian of Education‘s review of Tales, Mrs. Trimmer noted that Mitchell probably wrote it for her pupils, a Miss Harrison and her younger sister A. B. Harrison. The dedication, which is signed from Copford Hall, the beautiful country manor of the Fiske-Harrison family in Essex, suggests that Mitchell might have been governess to the two daughters of John Haynes Harrison and his wife Sarah Fiske Thomas.

The most interesting character in Hurry Mitchell’s “Goodness not confined to Complexion or Form” is the father Mr. Murray, who owns a plantation in Jamaica. At the beginning of the story, the family has just begun living in England so the children can receive a better education than was possible in the Caribbean. He has also brought over several black servants, including a little girl named Janet, whose parents had been in his service for years. On their deathbeds, Mr. Murray promised them that Janet would have a friend in him for as long as he lived.

Janet is supposed to be more companion than servant, but the children Dorothy, Arnold, and Sophia frequently tease and bully her without provocation. As the children of a Caribbean plantation owner (albeit an “enlightened” one), they regard Janet as nothing more than a house slave. After observing his children’s cruelty to Janet, Mr. Murray decides to punish them for making Janet’s unhappy situation more unbearable. First he asks them to explain how they can justify treating the generous and affectionate Janet so cruelly and then picks holes in their logic. Next he reveals that Janet is of much higher rank than the children as the granddaughter of a king, who lost a war against a neighbor and was sold to European traders (a scenario with a basis in historical fact). Mr. Murray makes Dorothy, Arnold, and Sophia apologize to Janet one by one, before announcing that they must participate in a week-long educational experiment designed to show them a thing or two about about their supposed superiority to Janet..

From our standpoint, many critical issues have been left unaddressed in “Goodness.” Perhaps the most glaring contradiction is Mr. Murray himself, held up as a “moral” Jamaica planter, who champions the interests of slaves when nobly born, but never questions the institution. Then there is Janet herself, more a cipher than a fully realized character. On the one hand, she has been given a girl’s name instead of one for a dog (many Black boys in children’s fiction are named Caesar or Pompey), Hurry Mitchell never lets Janet speak for herself. Everything the reader knows about her comes from Mr. Murray. Janet is easily frightened, reacting more like startled animal than the granddaughter of a king. Yet Ives Hurry Mitchell insists that the reader, like the Murray children, acknowledge Janet’s humanity: there is no question that it is right for Dorothy, Arnold, and Sophia to be made to suffer for their treatment of Janet and that by suffering, they will change for the better. So here is the story…

For twenty years, Los Angeles Times has hosted the largest book festival in the country in the City of Angels, but when people call LA an industry town, we all know the industry isn’t publishing. No matter what New Yorkers say, we do walk and read books in LA. And Los Angeles has been home to some great independent bookstores.

As a child I remember going with my parents to Pickwick Bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard. While they transacted their business, I headed back to the children’s department. I used to sit on the floor in front of the bay with all the books in the Wizard of Oz series, with the wonderful designs on the dust jacket spines. When my mother took me along with her to UCLA, sometimes we would swing by Campbell’s Bookstore before getting on the freeway to go home. She probably bought textbooks for classes, while the future rare book curator snuck off to admire the stuffed Winnie the Pooh characters made in England. Of Dutton’s in Brentwood, which occupied a building originally designed by a notable local architect as a small office complex around a central courtyard, novelist Carolyn See said, “If you weren’t the drinking kind, you could go there the way you would a bar.”

Looking up in the Bonaventure lobby.

These three bookstores are gone, along with Acres of Books, one Mr. Cotsen’s early hunting grounds, but the tradition lives on at The Last Book Store on downtown’s South Spring Street, a stone’s throw away from the Westin Bonaventure, where I was attending a conference last spring. It bills itself as the Golden State’s largest new and used book and record store. After listening to papers for two days, it was time for some retail therapy in the children’s department of The Last Bookstore, whose motto is, “What are you waiting for? We won’t be here forever!” It currently occupies a space that once was a bank building.

This is a bird’s eye view of the store from the second floor where the vault used to be. Thanks to my colleague, Col. Scott Krawzcyk, for taking these great interior photos, which were beyond my Samsung Galaxy…

I’ve been in a Pasadena restaurant with book walls, but they were nothing like this. I’d commission one for Cotsen but there would be issues the first time a book was paged for a patron. So much for creative solutions to rare book storage…

I forgot to ask the name of the artists who dreamed up the store’s book sculptures, but they have a standing invitation to visit our Bookscape gallery.

I doubt I would find this monograph about Mary Blair, who worked for Disney, on the tables of art books in any self-respecting Northeast indie bookstore, even if this year is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Alice in Wonderland. Here is the back wall of the children’s department. It was nice to see several parents reading with their children in the cavernous space.

These, and other books with even more inappropriate cover designs juxtaposing food and fashion, were sitting on top of the bookcases where the picture books were shelved.

Proof that BabyLit board books, highlighted in a post earlier this year, are a bi-coastal phenomenon. I had not seen the Damien Hirst ABC before and was pleasantly surprised that did not reek of formaldyhyde.

A shelf of classics, with Lauren Child’s quirky cover for Anne of Green Gables prominently featured. Somebody with a sense of humor put Touching Spirit Bear next to The House at Pooh Corner. Milne is probably rolling in his grave.

Of course there was a lot of Francesca Lia Block in the YA section. That cover for Weetzie Bat looks way too wholesome.

The congenial bookseller efficiently rang up my pile of loot for Cotsen.

And the nymph by the exit–who could resist this siren call to come back again real soon? Gotta love her, gotta love The Last Book Store. It’s sooooooooo LA.

For another view of downtown Los Angeles, check out Cotsen’s virtual exhibition about illustrator Leo Politi.

For a peek into foreign bookstores, read Minjie Chen’s post on her visit to Shanghai and Abu Dhabi in 2016.

Cotsen Children’s Library

Princeton University

Category Archives: 21st century

The Good Slave and Her Master: Object Lessons for 1790s England

Tour The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles