The Day the Cow Sneezed

by James Flora
Harcourt, Brace & World 1957
reprinted by Enchanted Lion 2010

Noted Mid-century Modern illustrator tells a shaggy dog story. Not all illustrators are meant to be seen and heard.

"I bet your cow never sneezed a hole in the schoolhouse wall," begins The Day the Cow Sneezed, and truth be told, the cow in the story didn't either. Through a chain reaction like Rube Goldberg on steroids, the cow's sneeze precipitates a series of events that leads to a number of animals on progressively larger runaway vehicles doing much mayhem to country, town, school, zoo, and carnival rides. And when it was all over, and the world neatly set to right almost as quickly as it had been destroyed, little Fletcher (the boy whose neglect allowed the cow to catch a cold in the first place) is dragged off to the barn by his ear for a little good old-fashioned country discipline by Papa.

But you know what, forget the story. Don't even read it. It's a cumulative story that builds one preposterous whopper on top of another simply to provide Flora a canvas on which to draw this wild anarchy. It's like putting up with a few minutes of boring movie expository in order to get to the explosions. I really don't have a problem sometimes with dropping the whole set-up and starting with the second act in medias res.

Without the story – whose text is a tad tedious – the story makes a perfect madcap storyboard for a cartoon. It isn't sophisticated, but it isn't really much different from any other children's book in the mid 1950s, and the bold shapes and colors Flora employs show us just how tame most attempts at a retro style really are these days.  

His influence at the time is nothing to be, ahem, sneezed at either. As the graphic designer for Columbia Records in the 40s and 50s Flora's work is iconically linked with hundreds of jazz recordings. It's a style you can recognize by sight, one that many hip parents back in the day might have been drawn to without even realizing the connection.

Having said that, it is understandable that the text might fall a little flat. Many great illustrators are able to convey good stories through images without really being able to do the same thing with text. Paul Rand was a genius of graphic design – logos for IBM, ABC, and UPS among others – but no matter how visually modern or stunning, few would call his Little 1 a great children's book. I'm not about to attempt to tar every graphic designer with the same brush and say none of them should write, but there are many, today even, who design and illustrate books they should not be writing themselves. I think sometimes illustrators are giving a pass because they can visually wow an editor that perhaps might intimidate them or make them fear they might lose a good book by suggesting that perhaps they should stick to pictures. It's hard to know for certain, and I admit I may be shooting in the dark here, but I do tend to find that the better picture books come from teams and not individuals.

Now watch, the next dozen books or so I read will completely prove me wrong.

Lion

by William Pene Du Bois  
Viking Press  1956  

In an animal factory in the sky winged artists invent new animals, including one very unusual looking lion.  

Artist Foreman, looking suspiciously like an angel, was one of the first animal designers in the Animal Factory in the sky.  Now in semi-retirement as, well, a foreman to the other artists, he has come up with a new name for an animal -- LION -- and sets about to design an animal to fit the name.  Artist Foreman being a bit rusty designs a multi-colored quadruped with whiskers and a mane of feathers, the tale of a fish, and a variegated striped pattern that defies nature.  Doubting that he has made an animal to match the great name he has given it he goes around to the other animal designers and asks them, in one word, what they think is wrong with the creature.  Size, feathers, color, legs, haircut... each of these responses sends Artist Foreman back to the drawing board to make the necessary adjustments.  

Finally he takes his creation to the Chief Designer and asks what is wrong with this marvelous creature and is told "Nothing!"  Ah, but the Chief Designer hasn't heard the proposed noise for the Lion -- PEEP PEEP! -- but his suggestion that a creature like that would make a mighty ROAR leaves Artist Foreman little choice but to accept that a peeping lion would be as wrong as everything else he originally thought about his creature.  So Artist Foreman returned to his drawing board and roared with happiness over his latest creation.  


This is one of those time capsule books, something I had totally forgotten I'd read as a small boy.  When I stumbled upon the title on a Caldecott book list (it's an Honor title), and with fond memories of his other books besides The 21 Balloons, I had to hunt it down. My first reaction was What an odd take on the creation stories.  Clearly we are shown a heaven in the clouds, with angels of creation in the service of a god, but what we know of the Biblical creation was that the animals were created by God and not his underlings working in a factory.  Then there's the notion that God merely signs off on these creatures not of his design, and that no one dares contradict him... it all reads like an odd bureaucracy, complete with yes-men and semi-competent foremen whose employees laugh at him behind his back. Though fifty years ahead of its time, the book seems to argue both for and against the idea of Intelligent Design.

Of the mid-century children's book authors and illustrators William Pene Du Bois fits an odd space in my nostalgic heart.  There is a childlike whimsy and logic to his stories and illustrations that, as an adult, don't quite hold up.  At the same time that innocence is oddly in keeping with the way kids think.  The odd fraternity of The Three Policemen, the looney inventions of Lazy Tommy Pumpkinhead, even his original illustrations for Roald Dahl's The Magic Finger all speak to this sense of Du Bois channeling some other world that looks like ours but simply isn't.

In Lion he gives a glimpse of a heaven no one has ever claimed, before or since, with angels working an animal factory, working their way through trial and error.  The story allows the reader (or listener) a chance to recognize everything that is wrong with the Lion and decide for themselves what exactly is wrong with Artist Foreman's creation. Were it not for the wings and the clouds the story could be set anywhere, setting becomes almost incidental from the start. The Animal Factory in the Sky is simply a door through which we are given entry into Du Bois imagination.

I was surprised that a single library in my local system had a copy of this book on hand.  Out of print since 1986, I wonder how often it gets checked out by young readers, and how long before this lone copy ends up discarded and lost to the memory of grown children from another era.

Thumbelina of Toulaba

"After Hans Christian Andersen"
by Daniel Picouly
illustrated by Olivier Tellac
Enchanted Lion Books 2007
translated by Claudia Zoe Bedrich
published in France as Poucette de Toulaba
by Rue de Monde 2007

"Once upon a time in Toulaba, a country at the far end of far away..."

So begins the trouble with this updating of the classic Andersen tale because the illustration shows us a dark-skinned woman which implies that the setting -- an island in the Caribbean -- is at the far end of far away. Whether geological, cultural or ideological, implying these islands are at the far reaches of where this story is being told implies a colonial mindset. But let's take on the second sentence on the first page and see what happens.

"...she wanted a child, but a child no bigger than the smallest of small children. In other words, tiny. She had already had so many children that her house was full..."

Uh huh. Poor, non-white, house full of kids.

Okay, it's a picture book, and perhaps I am reading far too much into these words. But words, especially the words at the beginning of a story, set the tone and mood of the story. And the tone I'm getting here sits poorly with me.

The remainder of this tedious exercise doesn't even deal with the mother that called Thumbelina into existence so I'm not sure I understand why we need to know she had all these children, that she was dark-skinned, that she lived at the edge of what a Western European mindset would consider "exotic."

The bulk of the story has Thumbelina bouncing around, fending off marriage proposals right and left, and learning the ways of the world from all the plant and animal life she encounters. Even here the exotic is evoked as we discover at the end of the book a two-page glossary of all the native plant and animal species visited in the book. The story then is nothing more than a flimsy frame on which Picouly wants to showcase the wonders of nature.

Why drag Andersen into it, why tell the story this way at all? It's difficult to know how much is lost in the translation, how a different nationality -- the French in this case -- perceives the "other" differently than we do ourselves. But to bring a book from one culture into another asks that the reader know and understand the book as presented, not as it was perceived at home, so these questions of surface are relevant. Does the non-fiction picture book for children exist in France, or do they need to resort to having their nature books couched in old fairy tales in which to make them more palatable?

There is another element that is slightly disturbing and that is the "message" added to the story about the ever-compliant Thumbelina having to learn the power of the word "no" to be used to thwart her suitors. It's made clear early on that she does not know the words "yes" and "no" (though she is capable of much more complicated conversation throughout) until she is taught to say no and then when she uses it her suitors leave her alone. What creeps me out about this is the idea of a story teaching a small girl how to say no to advances by truly gruesome characters who think nothing of demanding she be their bride. I don't recall the female empowerment message in the original tale, and instead of feeling like an updated element as it's presented here it has all the subtlety of teaching small children about turning down the advances of sexual predators. That may not be the intent at all, but its incongruity within the text leaves that sort of bad taste in my mouth.

By all means, check it out for yourself and let me know if you think I'm being too harsh. I doubt it, but I'm open to alternate suggestions about why this experience left me feeling like I needed to take a shower afterward.

Little Eagle

Chen Jiang Hong
Enchanted Lion Books 2007
Originally published as Petit Aigle
Album l'Ecole des Loisirs 2003
translated by Claudia Zoe Bedrick












In 15th century China Master Yang finds a boy half frozen in the snow. The boy's parents were killed by General Zhao so Master Yang decides to be the boy's guardian.

There appears to be nothing unusual about Master Yang until one night when the boy awakens and discovers Master practicing Eagle boxing, a school of Kung Fu. The boy observes his Master at his studies, studies and practices his every move, until one day when he finds the perfect opportunity to practice his newly acquired skills on some town bullies. When Master Yang catches the boy at this he is initially upset but decides to take the boy's enthusiasm to train him properly in the martial arts. And he renames him Little Eagle.

Ten years on and Little Eagle has become a master himself. One night General Zhao has come to get a mystical book of secrets that Master Yang possesses. The book contains all of Master Yang's knowledge, wisdom and fighting secrets, with it the General hopes to become the most unbeatable warrior around. Both Master Yang and Little Eagle do battle with the General and his men and handily send the army packing but at the cost of Master Yang's life. With his remaining breath and strength Master Yang confesses to Little Eagle "There is no book, it is all in you. May wisdom and abundance follow you. I will watch over you always."

The story is a fairly common one though it would be new to young boys who might benefit from the message. Underneath the fairly simple story there are questions of when and how to use (or not use) force, how to deal with anger and revenge, the passing of knowledge between generations, and the benefits of discipline. Master Yang knows the General wants his "book" and the boy might want his revenge for having lost his parents, yet for both they refuse to deal with the General until he comes to threaten them. Even then they do not act out of anger, only self-defense.

Yes, this is a picture book, a beautiful one that contains within it the vistas of an art house Kung Fu movie. The predominant color and tone is red and yet Hong keeps the feeling warm rather than angry. And when it comes time for battle the gentle pen and ink drawings hold their own, adding strength to the dynamic compositions.

Really, this book caught me off guard. Siting alongside other picture books it feels all rather mature, almost like an adult book had been mis-shelved. Going in I wouldn't have imagined this story being made accessible to an older picture book crowd, and like a perfectly executed slight-of-hand I'm still not certain how it was done.