Hebrew-language children’s books | Cotsen Children’s Library

Many schools open before Labor Day now. As is often the case, the change may be eminently practical, but downgrades the importance of an old marker of the passing year, the last long holiday weekend until Thanksgiving. The final weekend of freedom was bittersweet, with gloomy thoughts of the looming imprisonment brightened only by the prospect of having new clothes and tight new shoes to wear the first day of class (if one were a girl, anyway).

Two delightful picture books pay tribute to sand as a building material for summertime imaginative play—Israeli author/illustrator Einat Tsarfati’s Sandcastle (2018; American translation published by Candlewick Press, c.2020, Sommerville, MA) and Peter Bentley’s Captain Jack and the Pirates illustrated by Helen Oxenbury (New York: Dial, 2016). In Tsarfati, a girl is the architect of a fantastic palace; in Bentley a trio of boys build a ship out of whatever they have at hand.

A redhead with a red shovel, green pail, and sun hat walks by the multitudes on towels baking at the beach, ignoring the picnickers, gamers, readers, mermaids, babies, witches, and snorkelers. She gives the shoreline a quick look, then kneels and gets to work. Her creation is at least four stories high and its roof line with multiple turrets, spires, and domes is a sandy Chambord with spectacular ocean views.

Any king or queen worth a crown to flock to see the castle, with the royal children and corgies in tow. (A few people on the beach sneak in too.) The visitors dance the night away, refreshed by unlimited dollops of ice cream, but they are not enchanted by sand in their beds or breakfast pastries in the morning. Who can play cards on a table made of sand or compete in the Triathlon of Knights with sand in the seat of their armor? Well, what did they expect staying in a sandcastle? Luckily the unnamed heroine devises a solution. Everyone makes good firm sand balls and hurls them at the walls. When the sea rushes in through the holes, everyone has a grand time splashing in the water. Once the sandcastle has been washed away, she starts all over.No castle for Jack, Zack, and Caspar. Born naval architects, they build an enormous galleon of sand and outfit it with mast (two sticks), a sail (shirt and bib), and cannons (three plastic buckets). Mainsail hoisted, the pirate Captain Jack and his crew sail off to find loot and adventure. In the misty distance a pirate ship looms and they set their course dead ahead, prepared to board and cover themselves with glory and pocket gold doubloons. The gnarly rival pirates are ready to give as good as they get when a tropical squall blows the intrepid three far off course. Their ship is swamped and it melts into the surf. Undaunted Jack, Zack, and Caspar sneak up on their enemy’s hideout and discover sugary booty on the wooden table inside. Ambushed by the crew members left behind to guard it (Mum and Dad), the buccaneers must submit to being rubbed with towels and changed into dry clothes. Luckily their captors know that the quickest way to the hearts of marooned pirates is an ice cream cone. Oxenbury fills out Bentley’s reassuringly familiar story line with clever details that creative little boys playing together could dream up themselves: it is magical without straying beyond the boundaries of the real world.

It is delightful how sand and ice cream go together like cookies and milk in these two picture books set in such different imaginative spaces. The story lines may be considered by some to be too gendered, but the virtuoso use of nice wet sand will surely appeal to any child who loves being by the water on a bright sunny day.

Find the baby on the close stool! From the manuscript by A. B., “The Life of a Baby.” [England], ca. 1839. (Cotsen 46434).

In theory and practice, the non-fiction picture book can play an important teaching skills and competencies in a concrete way. Picture books have been drafted into the late twentieth-century campaign to make the critical transition from messy blithe incontinence to conscious, hygienic elimination trauma-free. While it no longer seems desirable to motivate gaining control over bodily functions by associating it with shame or guilt, the attempt to be upbeat about a semi-taboo subject can be interesting.

Japanese author-illustrator Taro Gomi took a strictly factual approach: every living thing eats, so we’re one big happy family when it comes to getting rid of the by-products. First published as part of the “Masterpieces of the Friends of Science” series in 1977, the English-language translation rights to Minna uchi were acquired by Kane/Miller in 1993. Gomi’s truthful but slyly humorous approach caused a stir when Everyone Poops came out in the United States, but once the initial shock wore off, it become something of a cult classic. Cotsen has the English- and Chinese-language translations, but not the Japanese original.

Double-page spread from Taro Gomi, Everyone Poops. Translated by Amanda Mayer Stinchecum, Brooklyn, NY: Kane/Miller, 18th printing, c1993. (Cotsen 24016)

When Israeli writer Alonah Frankel was a young mother with a son, she wrote a book to help other parents toilet-train their boys. The first of her many children’s books in Hebrew, “Sir ha- Sirim” [The Potty of Potties] became an instant best-seller in Israel when published in 1975. It was issued in 1980 under the title Once Upon a Potty in the United States and after that went on to find an international audience. In the 1990s, the version for girls, audible, audio-tape, and cartoon versions have bolstered sales in the US. Written from the point of view of the mother, who has to do the dirty work, she nicely but firmly demonstrates all the steps in the process.

What’s going to happen next? Alonah Frankel, Sir ha-Sirim [The Potty of Potties]. Tel Aviv: Masadah, 1984, 18th printing. (Cotsen 7519)

A friend gave Mr. Cotsen a copy of the original Hebrew-language book and his note explains something important that was lost in English translation.

Note to Mr. Cotsen laid into Cotsen 7519.

But Gomi and Frankel aren’t to everyone’s taste. Some people are more comfortable with a less clinical approach, and lots of authors and illustrators have risen to the occasion. The most obvious ploy is to let a cute baby animal stand in for the nah-saying toddler. Little bear Bartholomew feels pangs of distress after running out to play without going first like his George daddy bear suggested. I refuse to believe that the choice of a bear cub alludes to the well-known and slightly rude rhetorical question meaning, “It sure do!” to cheer on discouraged parents.

From the board book version of On Your Potty! by Virginia Miller. Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick Press, 2000. (Cotsen 87638)

What if a writer tries to convince the unwilling party that a toilet is a perfectly designed object for the use of human beings by showing why no other animal could find it convenient?

Andrea Wayne von Konigslow, Toilet Tales. Willowdale, Ontario: Annick Press, c.1987, 5th edition 1990. Gift of Jeffrey P. Barton. (Cotsen 7665968)

I happen to think this is pretty funny, but it’s easy to imagine von Konigslow’s whimsical strategy backfiring with a child who believes there are monsters under his bed. After looking at this opening, the suggestible pre-schooler might come to the sensible conclusion that there are really nasty things in the plumbing that might surface in the toilet at any time hunting for something tender to nibble. So why would you sit on it ever?

Alternative uses for the spurned potty chair.

One of the best-known euphemisms for the toilet seems to have inspired Tony Ross to create a toilet-training picture book that is much more imaginative than practical. A toddler princess (crown, but no frilly dress) who wants to get rid of her nappies puts up quite a fuss when the Queen Mummy tells her “The potty’s the place.” But the gist of the story is how the princess’s request for her plastic throne throws the court into hysterics…

Tony Ross, I Want My Potty. London: Andersen Press, c.1986 (Cotsen 86775). I assume the “L” stands for “loo.”

Some authors would rather bring to life the comic dimensions of the battle between generations during toilet training instead of offering tips. Littlesaurus leaves piles of poop everywhere in defiance of his elders’ efforts to civilize him, singing an obnoxious ditty to celebrate his independence. Finally his exasperated Daddysaurus yells he doesn’t care if Littlesaurus ever uses the potty, so the contrarian dino decides to give it a try, only to be caught in the act and given a taste of his own medicine by his beloved family…

Revenge is sweet… Colin MacNaughton, Potty Poo-Poo Wee-Wee! Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2005 (Cotsen). Would a publisher have touched this manuscript if the characters had been human beings?

In researching this post, I’ve come to the conclusion that the collection needs more specimens of this underappreciated genre of picture book to more fully document a) modern anxieties about toilet-training and b) portable potty design.

A tasteful tailpiece.

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