Category Archives: Moveables

Marks in Books 11 : Hanukkah Gift Inscriptions

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To celebrate the eight days of Hanukkah in 2022, here’s a post from a few years ago about books that a mother gave as gifts to her children during the Jewish holiday in 1966…

The gift exchanges, which are central to American winter holiday rituals, are not so easy to document.   Opening presents within the family circle may be a familiar subject for advertisements, book and magazine illustrations, and family photographs, but how often is it possible to reconstruct who got what from whom any given year?   Gift tags, with hand-written notes identifying the giver and the recipent go the way of wrapping paper and ribbon, as do lists of presents made for the purpose of writing thank-you notes.

So it was pure luck to discover a handful of books from the Cotsen family’s collection that Mrs. Cotsen gave to her children during the eight days of Hanukkah in 1966.  Mother carefully wrote the child’s name and the occasion on the blue family bookplate illustrated with a faun by Robert Anning Bell.  And her picture book selections were so imaginative…

There were, of course, books appropriate for the season.  The older of her two sons received a copy of A First Chanukkah Word Book.He also received from his mother a rather sophisticated picture  book with see-through pages by Finnish illustrator Tove Jansson, featuring her characters from the Moomintroll series.  It was designed in such a way that there was no good place to put the book plate!For her younger daughter, there was a book about nature issued by Ladybird Books, the English equivalent of Golden Books, that was so successful that the publisher never needed to expand the market overseas.  Perhaps Mrs. Cotsen found it in a London bookshop and brought it home. The littlest member of the Cotsen clan got the book in a most unusual format about a little bear cub who did everything his mother told him to grow up big and strong.  The story is imposed on a giant uncut signature, which is folded up like a map and  placed in a folder with a ribbon tie.  The reader has to unfold the sheet to see how the cub changed during the course of his regimen…The last book given as a present to the entire family in 1966, was a traditional fairy tale retold as a Hanukkah story, complete with snow, dragons, and a good reb overcoming an evil one:  It still finds its way into lists of books for the Jewish holiday.   And when it was read aloud, everyone liked it.   Mrs. Cotsen gets credit for identifying a story that would bring the family together.In memory of Florence Sacks, a wise and steadfast friend.

Banned Books:  Lawrence Schimel’s Rainbow Family Stories Illustrated by Elina Braslina

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A collage of covers for Schimel’s Rainbow Family Books in a variety of languages.

Last summer, two children’s books ran into trouble with authorities in Hungary and Russia because they featured families headed by same-sex parents.  At first, I assumed the books originated in the old Eastern bloc and anticipated a bit of a wild goose chase finding copies for Cotsen.

A little detective work on the web revealed that copies in English translation (the texts were originally written in Spanish) would become available September 2021 from Amazon acting as distributor for Sphere, the Russian charitable foundation and co-publisher with the Russian LGBT Network.  According to the Amazon listing, a very limited number would be given away, which was puzzling.   The description didn’t specify if customers would the Russian edition, whose sale was prohibited by the country’s gay propaganda law–or something else.  Amazon charged for the books when the order was placed and gave a firm shipping date in September.

Two weeks ahead of schedule, the books were left on the doorstep.  They turned out to be a North American imprint issued by Orca, an independently owned Canadian book publisher that champions Canadian authors and its indigenous peoples, promotes diversity, and prints in Canada on Forest Stewardship Certified paper. Three other English-language editions have been issued in different parts of the world: by Peniarth in the United Kingdom and Wales; by Oratia in New Zealand and Australia; and New Africa Books in South Africa.

Both books feature a rainbow family or a gay or lesbian couple with children: the little boy has two mommies, and the girl two daddies.  The unstated point is that these families are ordinary and easy for any child to relate to.  Early One Morning is narrated by a little boy, who describes how he and the big marmalade cat get themselves some breakfast without making a mess while the rest of the family sleeps in.  The little boy proudly tells his sleepy parents and sister about this small but mighty step towards independence. Bedtime, Not Playtime tells about the fun the family had one night when the bedtime routine was disrupted.   When the dog steals the girl narrator’s stuffed bear and won’t let it go, daddies and daughter have to chase him all through the house to rescue the toy.  Once the mission has been accomplished, the romp suddenly ends when daddies and dog fall asleep, leaving the little girl wide awake with her teddy.  There’s nothing to be done except for them to quietly count sheep in bed.

I had incorrectly assumed that these books had been self-published by amateur authors and likely to have relatively low production standards.  Not only were the books attractive, they were superb examples of storytelling in a genre that lends itself to the visual teaching concrete information rather than narrative.  A board book’s format places significant limitations on its creators beyond the situation where a member of the intended cannot yet read and needs a literate mediator. Whatever a board book’s contents, the competent reader will resort to improvising on the text in order to point out to the listening child connections between their circumstances and those in the book..

After seeing the books, I wanted to know more about the circumstances of their creation and publication by award-winning author Lawrence Schimel, a distinguished literary translator, writer, and anthologist bilingual in Spanish and English.  His poetry, science fiction, and children’s books often deal with LGBT and with Jewish themes.  Schimel’s board books attempt to connect  not only with “ kids who might be in same-sex families or discovering their own LGBT identity, but for all kids to see these families that exist in the world…and to prevent a generation from growing up brainwashed by this political homophobia.”   According to Schimel, the books have now been published in 37 languages in 46 editions.

To attempt this much in a really elementary reading text is testimony to the combined talents of Schindler and his gifted Latvian collaborator, illustrator Elina Braslina.  Her chunky, colorful, two-dimensional  figures are very nicely differentiated.  Daddy number one daddy is white, bald and heavyset, while daddy number two is of color and wears glasses. They both have beards and look like nice guys.  Mischief radiates from the big round eyes of the great big orange cat and the black and white terrier.  Refreshingly, the kids are just kids who are alert, happy, secure, and loved.  In less skillful hands, the joyfulness of the stories could have been overwhelmed by good intentions. Schimel and Braslina humorously present special occasions many parents and children share every day.. Being overexcited and trying to quiet yourself down when you are the only one awake.  Trying to respond to a wideawake toddler before you’ve had your coffee. Portraying moments like these may not change the world, but their power shouldn’t be discounted either.Thanks to Lawrence Schimel, who contacted me and provided additional information that has been incorporated into the post.