![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Margaret Wise Brown: Home for a Bunny, Dead Bird, Little Fur Family, The Diggers, Two Little Trains
The genesis of finally doing a deep (ish) (I am reading what Open Library has on offer, skipping Christmas books, but including multiple editions) Margaret Wise Brown was that she popped up in Hannah McGregor's A Sentimental Education, particularly in the context of queer picture authors/illustrators edited by Ursula Nordstrom, herself a lesbian. McGregor mentions that Nordstrom edited Arnold Lobel, James Marshal, Tomie dePaola, Maurice Sendak, and MWB, among others.*
This - the overlap between queer creators and children's fiction - is something I had noticed when delving into picture books a few years ago; it's an overlap probably not limited to Nordstrom, although her role is absolutely pivotal. But it's also so ... natural. McGregor comments that many beloved queer picture book authors (she mentions MWB, Edward Gorey, and Maurice Sendak IIRC) famously did not have, like, and/or indicate that they were writing for children, necessarily. Instead picture books, as exploratory, creative, often dreamlike works asking questions about self-identity and learning one's place in the world, are naturally spaces for queer exploration and self-expression. I'm paraphrasing from a text I read on audio and augmenting with my own reading*, but the TL;DR of this was:
Hey, go read more MWB. And thus I am!
And the thing about MWB as opposed to other picture book deep dives: MWB was not herself an illustrator; she has been enduringly popular; she left behind many unpublished manuscripts after an early death. As a result, there's rarely one true set of illustrations, and many of her books have been re-illustrated/re-released/re-edited, even, over the years, with some even more complicated origin stories (that'll come up in another set of reviews). Fascinating! Messy! And valuable insight into the relationship that art has on picture books, as I'll talk about below, in exceedingly long reviews for 30 page volumes.
As usual, my very very favorites are outside of the cut; but The Diggers, while not good, is fascinating.
* read: if I've mixed up any details, it's because oops, and because audio retention is for losers & I already returned the book.
Title: Home for a Bunny
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Garth Williams
Published: Golden Books, 1956
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 506,920
Text Number: 1806
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: "In the Spring a bunny came down the road. He was going to find a home of his own." This is so cute as to tip into saccharine. Blame, in part, the art, which is Easter greeting card-ish: fluffy, delicate, pastel illustrations of flowers, bunnies, and frogs; but it's also that the text has no interest in a subversive reading: the bunny finds his home exactly where he belongs, in a burrow with another bunny. Still, it's hard to fault a book for being cute and cozy, and this is that. When I think Little Golden Books, this is exactly what comes to mind: wholesome, appealing, charming, and a bit forgettable.
Title: The Dead Bird
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Remy Charlip (1958), Christian Robinson (2016)
Published: Harper & Row, 1965; Harper, 2016
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 40, 30
Total Page Count: 506,990
Text Number: 1807-8
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: Don't touch dead birds; k cool glad we got that out of the way.
This is phenomenal. The illustrations are kind of whatever for me - Charlip uses a limited (personally unappealing) (I hate blue-greens) color palette and soft, rounded shapes; Robinson's work is more vibrant and the children more diverse. Of the two, I prefer Charlip, in part because the more subdued palette reflects the somber tone, but mostly for the use of negative space: illustrations and text are on alternating spreads, which gives the text an incredible amount of contemplative space. And so in Carlip this is a spread:
And in Robinson, this is three pages of low contrast text over vibrant images.
And the text should have that weight. This is a quiet, honest book about the profound imperfection of grief - grief as celebratory, performative, experimental, as a preparation for later life experiences; grief as profound, communal, healing; grief as material act; grief as "And every day, until they forgot, they went and sang to their little dead bird and put fresh flowers on his grave." It's not didactic but rather reflective, and the space it gives to imperfection really struck me.
When I feel compelled to write more about a picture book than there are words in the picture book, I know I'm going to remember it.
Title: Little Fur Family
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Garth Williams
Published: HarperFestival, 2005 (1946)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 507,080
Text Number: 1811
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: The fur of cover of some editions (not an inset, it looks like, but an entire fur cover presented inside an illustrated case! insane!) is a ridiculous touch that could make this book. The furry ambiguity of the little fur family and protagonist child becomes all the more playful and experimental with a tactile element, and it suits Brown's style: another exploratory listing of experiences, of ways of engaging with the world and one's place in it. Williams's art is weird, here: he can do realistic and detailed, but opts instead for something a little off-kilter, anatomically fuzzy, cartoony. I don't love this book, but I'm intrigued by it, which seems just as appealing to the intended audience.
I am not kidding about that cover! Pls gaze upon it.
Title: The Diggers
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Daniel Kirk (1995), Antoine Corbineau (2016)
Published: Hyperion Books for Children, 1995; Parragon Books, 2016
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 40, 30
Total Page Count: 507,150
Text Number: 1812-3
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: A strange one indeed, which is reflected in the divided reviews. A posthumous publication, the two editions have slightly different editing and wildly different presentations.
The Kirk edition opens on a small scale, bugs and beasties digging holes, illustrated in oils so flat and cartoony that they feel like digital art. And then the scale expands: a man, power tools, a train, a tunnel, the world opening, the scale growing wondrous and disruptive and strange, with increasingly dynamic and busy art to match. Whole pages are unique to this edition, the digger violent, destructive in the act of creation, "Its great arms lifted, paused, and swung the world it had dug up and put it somewhere else in the world." I don't know that I like the complete work; one half probably appeals to each kind of audience, and the combination is unmooring - productively, I think, but not enjoyably.
The Corbineau edition is more frenetic but also more consistent: vibrant, flat art admixes text and illustration, typography chasing the digging under the ground and through mountains while anthropomorphized diggers (both animal and machine) unify and sweeten the narrative. The ending is slightly different; I appreciate dropping the "hole to China" line in favor of a more Brownian repetition of "And the smoke trailed back, and back, and back."
I feel like this was drafted as one of the books meant to earmark certain sections on a library shelf: boy's books, construction books, still MWB but a vibe that isn't going to grab me the way a different theme would. Given that, I at least appreciate the Kirk edition for its willingness to get weird - the growing sense of wonder is interesting, and I'll pick interesting any day.
Title: Two Little Trains
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Jean Charlot (1949), Leon and Diane Dillon (2001)
Published: William R. Scott, 1949; HarperCollins, 2001
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 30, 30
Total Page Count: 507,210
Text Number: 1814-5
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: The picture book deep dives I've done in the past (Gorey, Sendak, among others) have largely been by author/illustrators, so rarely have I encountered alternate versions of the same text. Reading MWB has taught me how illustrations change a picture book, not just the aesthetic but the tone, emphasis, even interpretation.
Two trains puff puff puff, chug chug chug, to the west. The Dillon frames one as real train and one as a toy, which is a classic real/play parallel that invites the child reader to imagine a stair rail as a mountain. And, as it's Dillon, the art is unsurprisingly solid.
But the (original 1949) Charlot is a different beast entire, a dreamscape of two trains rendered in flat pale colors and loose, fluid lines, the child-conductors napping under a gilded moon and amidst animal cargo on a long, surreal journey west, west, west. Rather than parallelism, repetition, but the use of negative space and direct address in the text ("Look down, look down that long steel track / Where you and I must go") invite the reader aboard.
The Charlot is less concrete and more open, impressionistic, fantastical even, and I'm crazy about it; and, also, by the juxtaposition, because while the Charlot is objectively better, the text taken in two such different directions is insightful and thought-provoking. And there's yet a third (Pizzoli) that I haven't read, and who know how it alters the text.
This - the overlap between queer creators and children's fiction - is something I had noticed when delving into picture books a few years ago; it's an overlap probably not limited to Nordstrom, although her role is absolutely pivotal. But it's also so ... natural. McGregor comments that many beloved queer picture book authors (she mentions MWB, Edward Gorey, and Maurice Sendak IIRC) famously did not have, like, and/or indicate that they were writing for children, necessarily. Instead picture books, as exploratory, creative, often dreamlike works asking questions about self-identity and learning one's place in the world, are naturally spaces for queer exploration and self-expression. I'm paraphrasing from a text I read on audio and augmenting with my own reading*, but the TL;DR of this was:
Hey, go read more MWB. And thus I am!
And the thing about MWB as opposed to other picture book deep dives: MWB was not herself an illustrator; she has been enduringly popular; she left behind many unpublished manuscripts after an early death. As a result, there's rarely one true set of illustrations, and many of her books have been re-illustrated/re-released/re-edited, even, over the years, with some even more complicated origin stories (that'll come up in another set of reviews). Fascinating! Messy! And valuable insight into the relationship that art has on picture books, as I'll talk about below, in exceedingly long reviews for 30 page volumes.
As usual, my very very favorites are outside of the cut; but The Diggers, while not good, is fascinating.
* read: if I've mixed up any details, it's because oops, and because audio retention is for losers & I already returned the book.
Title: Home for a Bunny
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Garth Williams
Published: Golden Books, 1956
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 506,920
Text Number: 1806
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: "In the Spring a bunny came down the road. He was going to find a home of his own." This is so cute as to tip into saccharine. Blame, in part, the art, which is Easter greeting card-ish: fluffy, delicate, pastel illustrations of flowers, bunnies, and frogs; but it's also that the text has no interest in a subversive reading: the bunny finds his home exactly where he belongs, in a burrow with another bunny. Still, it's hard to fault a book for being cute and cozy, and this is that. When I think Little Golden Books, this is exactly what comes to mind: wholesome, appealing, charming, and a bit forgettable.
Title: The Dead Bird
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Remy Charlip (1958), Christian Robinson (2016)
Published: Harper & Row, 1965; Harper, 2016
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 40, 30
Total Page Count: 506,990
Text Number: 1807-8
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: Don't touch dead birds; k cool glad we got that out of the way.
This is phenomenal. The illustrations are kind of whatever for me - Charlip uses a limited (personally unappealing) (I hate blue-greens) color palette and soft, rounded shapes; Robinson's work is more vibrant and the children more diverse. Of the two, I prefer Charlip, in part because the more subdued palette reflects the somber tone, but mostly for the use of negative space: illustrations and text are on alternating spreads, which gives the text an incredible amount of contemplative space. And so in Carlip this is a spread:
"The children were very sorry that the bird was dead and could never fly again. But they were glad they had found it, because now they could dig a grave in the woods and bury it. They could have a funeral and sing to it the way grown-up people did when someone died.
So they took it out to the woods.
And in Robinson, this is three pages of low contrast text over vibrant images.
And the text should have that weight. This is a quiet, honest book about the profound imperfection of grief - grief as celebratory, performative, experimental, as a preparation for later life experiences; grief as profound, communal, healing; grief as material act; grief as "And every day, until they forgot, they went and sang to their little dead bird and put fresh flowers on his grave." It's not didactic but rather reflective, and the space it gives to imperfection really struck me.
When I feel compelled to write more about a picture book than there are words in the picture book, I know I'm going to remember it.
Title: Little Fur Family
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Garth Williams
Published: HarperFestival, 2005 (1946)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 507,080
Text Number: 1811
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: The fur of cover of some editions (not an inset, it looks like, but an entire fur cover presented inside an illustrated case! insane!) is a ridiculous touch that could make this book. The furry ambiguity of the little fur family and protagonist child becomes all the more playful and experimental with a tactile element, and it suits Brown's style: another exploratory listing of experiences, of ways of engaging with the world and one's place in it. Williams's art is weird, here: he can do realistic and detailed, but opts instead for something a little off-kilter, anatomically fuzzy, cartoony. I don't love this book, but I'm intrigued by it, which seems just as appealing to the intended audience.
I am not kidding about that cover! Pls gaze upon it.
Title: The Diggers
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Daniel Kirk (1995), Antoine Corbineau (2016)
Published: Hyperion Books for Children, 1995; Parragon Books, 2016
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 40, 30
Total Page Count: 507,150
Text Number: 1812-3
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: A strange one indeed, which is reflected in the divided reviews. A posthumous publication, the two editions have slightly different editing and wildly different presentations.
The Kirk edition opens on a small scale, bugs and beasties digging holes, illustrated in oils so flat and cartoony that they feel like digital art. And then the scale expands: a man, power tools, a train, a tunnel, the world opening, the scale growing wondrous and disruptive and strange, with increasingly dynamic and busy art to match. Whole pages are unique to this edition, the digger violent, destructive in the act of creation, "Its great arms lifted, paused, and swung the world it had dug up and put it somewhere else in the world." I don't know that I like the complete work; one half probably appeals to each kind of audience, and the combination is unmooring - productively, I think, but not enjoyably.
The Corbineau edition is more frenetic but also more consistent: vibrant, flat art admixes text and illustration, typography chasing the digging under the ground and through mountains while anthropomorphized diggers (both animal and machine) unify and sweeten the narrative. The ending is slightly different; I appreciate dropping the "hole to China" line in favor of a more Brownian repetition of "And the smoke trailed back, and back, and back."
I feel like this was drafted as one of the books meant to earmark certain sections on a library shelf: boy's books, construction books, still MWB but a vibe that isn't going to grab me the way a different theme would. Given that, I at least appreciate the Kirk edition for its willingness to get weird - the growing sense of wonder is interesting, and I'll pick interesting any day.
Title: Two Little Trains
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Jean Charlot (1949), Leon and Diane Dillon (2001)
Published: William R. Scott, 1949; HarperCollins, 2001
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 30, 30
Total Page Count: 507,210
Text Number: 1814-5
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: The picture book deep dives I've done in the past (Gorey, Sendak, among others) have largely been by author/illustrators, so rarely have I encountered alternate versions of the same text. Reading MWB has taught me how illustrations change a picture book, not just the aesthetic but the tone, emphasis, even interpretation.
Two trains puff puff puff, chug chug chug, to the west. The Dillon frames one as real train and one as a toy, which is a classic real/play parallel that invites the child reader to imagine a stair rail as a mountain. And, as it's Dillon, the art is unsurprisingly solid.
But the (original 1949) Charlot is a different beast entire, a dreamscape of two trains rendered in flat pale colors and loose, fluid lines, the child-conductors napping under a gilded moon and amidst animal cargo on a long, surreal journey west, west, west. Rather than parallelism, repetition, but the use of negative space and direct address in the text ("Look down, look down that long steel track / Where you and I must go") invite the reader aboard.
The Charlot is less concrete and more open, impressionistic, fantastical even, and I'm crazy about it; and, also, by the juxtaposition, because while the Charlot is objectively better, the text taken in two such different directions is insightful and thought-provoking. And there's yet a third (Pizzoli) that I haven't read, and who know how it alters the text.