Category Archives: American children’s books

Lloyd Alexander’s The Four Donkeys: A “Timeless” New Tale Created from Two Fables

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Lloyd Alexander’s first picture book The Four Donkeys appeared in 1972 and has not attracted much attention, as in also the case his many excellent romances written after The Prydain Chronicles (1964-1968).  It was his practice to closely study world literature’s traditional tales seeking inspiration for new works.  In The Four Donkeys, he combined  two well-known fables to create another showing why people with common interests are better served by cooperating than going their own ways.  The Four Donkeys is also a good example of Alexander’s remarkable ability to compose prose in short, easy sentences which rely on the verbs and the verbs and dialogue to move along the plot smoothly.

The picture book also marked the debut of RISD graduate Lester Abrams as a book illustrator, usually remembered for the concept and character art he created for the version of J. R. R.  Tolkien’s The Hobbit produced by Rankin/Bass Studios (Gollum and Bilbo are shown to the right). His drawings of the three silly tradesmen might have walked straight out of Maxfield Parrish’s magazine covers.   The whimsical otter assistant of the tailor and the floral borders help visualize the narrative in vivid comic detail, so much so that the Kirkus reviewer thought that Abrams’ pictures imitating manuscript decorations (more Walter Crane than Jean Fouquet)  were what made the book. They situate the tale in the medievalesque world with no advanced technology with or without magic, the default location for much popular modern imaginative literature for adults and young readers. 

The Three Donkeys sounds as “timeless” as a folk tale because Alexander seamlessly wove together elements from two well-known fables into a new one about a tailor, baker, and shoemaker going to the fair in town.  While the tradesmen pack up their tools and wares, they daydream about all the money they  will make and how they will lay it out, just like the milkmaid in the classic fable who was so preoccupied with imagining how the day’s proceeds would fund the first step to a more comfortable life that she tripped over a rock and dropped the pot of milk which shattered to pieces.  Alexander’s characters are just as guilty of counting their chickens before they are hatched as the milkmaid, but they ought to know better as well-established businessmen competing against one another.  In their eagerness to make a profit that will underwrite the purchase of little luxuries, they forget to be realistic.

The next part of the story is Alexander’s diverting reimagining of the Aesopian fable “The Miller [or old man], his Son, and the Ass.”  Although they hurry to get an early start, there are unanticipated delays.  The shoemaker was going to catch the worm, but stopping for a nap set him back for at least an hour or two. The baker must have the tailor repair his coat before the wagon can be loaded.  The tailor leaves ahead of him, but before he gets very far, his new shoes cripple him with blisters.  The tailor and shoemaker are obliged to beg the baker for a ride and pay for the privilege of crowding into the wagon filled to bursting.

Soon the donkey collapses in the road, igniting a storm of mutual recriminations until it dawns on the three that they can’t stay or go.  The shoemaker’s plan to put the exhausted beast in the cart and pull it themselves to the fair is adopted with some grumbling.  Along the way, they actually stop thinking about their troubles and help each other make the best of a bad business. The shoemaker greases the tailor’s shoes so he can walk in them, the baker provides breakfast for the famished shoemaker, and the tailor agrees to fix the baker’s ruined jacket free of charge.

Of course, they arrive after the fair has closed for the day and have no choice but to turn around and make for home.  Now that they appreciate  how difficult the lot of a donkey really is, they make sure he has oats, a new harness, and a warm blanket before leaving.  Unaccustomed to kind treatment, the donkey rallies and pulls his burden as if it were light as a feather, leading the weary men on foot down the road.  “And so the Tailor, the Baker, and the Shoemaker came home together, a little wiser for having made donkeys of themselves. “ And that’s the end.

Circumstances that day forced them to see the advantages of working together if they were to get to the fair and back, but the last line does not hold out any promise that the experience has changed permanently changed their characters for the better.  Alexander resisted the temptation to end with them all shaking hands and promising to be best friends for the “benefit” of his young audience.  While his books–even the darker historical novels in the Westmark trilogy–always express a certain optimism about human nature with all its faults, they never go so far as to endorse the idea that hard lessons are learned the first, or even the fifth time around.

Lively Letters in The Jolly Kids Alphabet by Thomas B. Lamb, “The Handle Man”

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The letter “B” from Tom Lamb’s The Jolly Kid Alphabet. Cotsen 28644

Tom Lamb (full name Thomas Babbit Lamb, 1896-1988) doesn’t show up in major studies of American illustrated books like Barbara Bader’s American Picture Books from Noah’s Ark to the Beast Within (1976) or Leonard Marcus’s Minders of Make-Believe (2008).  Lamb’s picture books aren’t included in major exhibition catalogues like  the 1996 Myth, Magic and Mystery by Michael Hearn, Trinkett Clark, and H. Nichols B. Clark either.  None of this is very surprising because he wasn’t a prolific book illustrator.

His picture books were done as a free-lancer for the Chicago publisher P.F. Volland.  The company hired many notable talents, such as Lucille and Holling C. Holling, Johnny Gruelle, creator of Raggedy Ann, Maginel Wright Enright Barney, sister of Frank Lloyd Wright, and Hillary Knight’s mother, Katherine Sturges, but very few became canonical figures in the picture book genre.  Like a number of  Volland illustrators, Tom Lamb’s artistic practice was not limited to children’s books and spilled over into other lucrative forms of commercial media.   Eventually Lamb struck out in a new direction after World War II that was, in a curious way, foreshadowed by his illustrations for The Jolly Kid Alphabet.

Art and physiology fascinated the teenaged Lamb, who hoped to become a physician until it became clear his family couldn’t afford medical school.  At age fourteen, he was working in a textile design business on weekdays, studying figure drawing and painting evenings at the Art Students League, and trading medical drawings with a plastic surgeon for anatomy lessons on weekends.  He started his own textile design firm when he was seventeen.  Lord & Taylor, Macy’s and Sak’s Fifth Avenue sold his bedspreads, draperies, and linens in the 1920s, the decades he was also trying his hand at picture book illustration.   The success of Runaway Rhymes (1931) won him a contract with Good Housekeeping to draw cartoons for young readers for the magazine and his Kiddyland series was so popular that the brand expanded to include soaps, talcum powder, handkerchiefs, and other accessories for children like this Mother Goose tin to the right.

The 1940s saw a radical change in Lamb’s design philosophy which resulted in him undertaking new kinds of artistic projects. World War II awakened his patriotism and determined to help the war effort, he designed a line of Victory Napkins and Adolf the Pig bank to help sell war bonds.  The bright yellow piggy had a caricatured haircut and mustache, and “Save for Victory. Make Him Squeal” was hand written around the slot. Whenever a coin was dropped in, the device inside made a noise.

Watching the returning disabled veterans making do with inadequate crutches, Lamb’s interest in human physiology was channeled in a new direction. For the rest of his career, he strove to  improvement of the design of handles for a range of tools from cutlery to surgical instruments, wedgelocks to sports equipment.  His pioneering attempts at functional design was the subject of a 1948 show on at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and of a New Yorker profile of May 29, 1954 by E. J. Kahn junior.  Affectionately dubbed “Tom Lamb the Handle Man, he is now considered a founder of the Universal Design movement to honor his passion to help the differently abled relieve pressure on their hands.

All this activity looks back to The Jolly Kid Alphabet, an oblong book of  thick cardboard pages hinged with white linen.  Lamb signed the individual illustrations with a “T. L.” monogram and a second, larger one with a leaping lamb appears on the back cover.  The text is an alliterative alphabet acted out by highly energetic animated letters interacting with merry animals.  When the illustrations are carefully inspected, the letters’ hands are posed in ways that reflect how dynamic those five fingers attached to the palm, connected to the wrist and arm can be.  Below  D, precariously balanced on the terrier’s front paws, trims the terrier’s whiskers, his left hand firmly but gently steadying the dog’s muzzle, his right hand wielding the scissors.  A rides the  alligator, the reins in his right hand.
For a finale, A, B, and C use their hands and feet to create a living sculpture

while B, O, and K join hands to form the word “Book.”

Creative people whose careers don’t conform to the gallery artist model are make for puzzles because without biographical information, it is difficult to connect all the activities with the person.  This is not the case with Lamb, because his papers survive at the Hagley Museum and Library in Delaware.  Visit the informative on-line exhibition if you’d like to learn more about him.