Fitting that the passing of an artist should inspire so much art.  Here are a few tributes to Maurice Sendak that I’ve enjoyed. (I’ve assembled links to prose tributes at the bottom of my reminiscence of Maurice; The Comics Journal has its own page of mostly prose tributes, too.)

Pat Bagley

This is easily my favorite, and the one that I think Sendak himself would most have enjoyed. Pat Bagley dos a great job in representing Sendak’s un-sentimental approach to death. Sendak often spoke of his own mortality, and accepted the inevitable with a dark sense of humor.

Hanna Freiderichs (a.k.a. AgarthanGuide)

Under her Deviant Art pseudonym ArgathanGuide, Hanna Friederichs has created Avengers in a Sendakian parade.  You can find it on her Deviant Art page and Tumblr.  The image calls to mind Sendak’s many parades — in Ruth Krauss’s A Hole Is to Dig (1952), and his own Where the Wild Things Are (1963). The above image derives from a less well-known source: his 1961 mural for Larry and Nina Chertoff that now resides in the Rosenbach Museum.

The photo of Sendak’s mural, above, comes from The History Blog‘s great story about it, which I recommend.

Update, 13 May, 9:30 am: Thanks to Roger Sutton’s post, added Hanna Friederichs’ full name.

Harry Bliss

Harry Bliss‘s graveside portrait of Babar, Madeline, Curious George, and the Man with the Yellow Hat evokes how everyone in the children’s literature community has felt — artists, scholars, writers, librarians, teachers, editors, agents, all of us.  Losing Maurice Sendak has felt like a death in the family.  As Kenneth Kidd put it, “Could be the select company I keep, but my Facebook newsfeed is a virtual wake.”

Debbie Milbrath

Most artists invoke Where the Wild Things Are (presumably because it’s Sendak’s most recognizable work), but Debbie Milbrath references a more thematically appropriate work: Outside Over There (1981), in which Sendak filters the kidnapping (and accidental murder of) the Lindbergh baby through Mozart’s Magic Flute,  and ends up with a work that offers glimmers of hope through its darkness.

Andy Marlette

Andy Marlette imagines wild things paying tribute to Maurice Sendak.  There were many such cartoons — I’ve only included a few here.

Jeff Koterba

Jeff Koterba makes Sendak into Max, apt since — as Sendak has admitted — Max is a version of Maurice himself.  I suspect Sendak intended an allusion to Wilhelm Busch’s Max und Moritz (1865).

Nate Beeler

Nate Beeler imagines roaring terrible roars and gnashing terrible teeth — a first response to Maurice Sendak’s passing.  The first stage of grief.

Sarah McIntyre

Stuart Carlson

Stuart Carlson‘s tribute seems an apt one to end on. First, mourn. Next, hang your teddy bear, threaten the dog, shout at your mother, and board a boat (… to where the wild things are).

More on Sendak from Nine Kinds of Pie (this blog):

• The Most Wild Thing of All: Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012.  9 May 2012.  Remembering Maurice (including an extract from an interview I did with him in 2001).  At the bottom of the page, I’ve assembled links to many other Sendak tributes, obituaries, and so on.
• Eat, drink, and be merry.  8 Oct. 2011.  My review of Bumble-Ardy.
• In or Out?: Crockett Johnson, Ruth Krauss, Sexuality, Biography.  17 Feb. 2011.  I never talked about Sendak’s sexuality with him, and whether it was something Ruth and Dave knew about. Now that he’s out, should I mention it in the  bio?  I wrote this post to try to figure that out.
• Children’s Literature + Music = Great Album Covers.  11 Mar. 2012. A gallery of album covers by artists who also create children’s books, including Sendak, Lane Smith, many others.

Graphic genius Chris Ware designed the cover for my Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature (due this September from the University Press of Mississippi). The front cover is above.  The full, wrap-around cover is below.  Click on it for a larger image.  Trust me: you’ll really want to see all of the detail.  It’s beautiful.  It’s perfect.  I’ve never been happier about one of my book covers.  And for those keeping count, there are six previous books (two co-edited), all of which have striking covers.  The other designers were no slouches.

But Chris Ware is a genius. And no, I am not overusing that word.  But, yes, perhaps we should add a few more words to describe the cover itself. Clever. Detailed. Vivid. Art.

He’s done the cover in the style of Crockett Johnson.  In the case of the girl dancing above Krauss’s typewriter, it’s Mary Blair filtered through a Crockett Johnson aesthetic; for the boy sliding own her back, it’s Maurice Sendak filtered through Johnson. (The girl is from Krauss‘s I Can Fly, illustrated by Blair; the boy is from her A Hole is to Dig, illustrated by Sendak.)  Finally, Ware transforms all of these styles into something uniquely his own.

Fans of Johnson and Krauss: Are you getting all of the references here?  Would you like some help?  I could fully annotate this cover, but I wonder if that would detract from the pleasure of exploring it yourself.  The academic in me wants to proceed with the annotations, but the art lover wants to stay silent, so that your eyes can linger on Ware’s art, looking slowly, experiencing it on its own terms.  And… the art lover wins.  (No annotations.)  Enjoy!

And: Thank you, Chris Ware!

But the wild things cried, “Oh, please don’t go—

We’ll eat you up—we love you so!”

And Max said, “No!”

—Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are (1963)

In June 2001, I went to hear Maurice Sendak speak at Yale University. A couple of years earlier, I’d started working on a biography of Crockett Johnson, and I knew they were close. I had written him to see if he would be willing to chat, but, the previous April, he had declined via a letter from his assistant: “Mr. Sendak does not have any useful recollection relating to Ruth and Dave…. He hopes your research yields more valuable results and best wishes!” So, I thought: I need to try again. I’ll go, I’ll ask him during the Q+A period. When that time came, I was very nervous. He’d already turned me down once. What if he gets angry at me for pestering him? But… I plucked up my courage, and asked.

He looked me in the eyes, and after the briefest pause said Yes. I should talk to him after the Q+A. I did. He wrote his home number down in my notebook, and told me to call.  I did.

I remain astonished at his extraordinary generosity toward me, who (at that time) had published a handful of articles and no books… and yet was going to write a biography. Why even give someone like me the time of day?

This is why. Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson — along with their mutual editor, Harper & Brothers’ Ursula Nordstrom — were the most important people in shaping his early career. In the early 1950s, he began visiting their Rowayton Connecticut home on the weekends, while working on Krauss’s books. They were his “weekend parents” who helped shape him into the great artist he would become. He stayed with them many times during the ’50s, illustrating eight of Krauss’s books, starting with the groundbreaking A Hole Is to Dig (1952).

So, he was willing to help me. I phoned, we chatted, and then set up a time for a longer conversation later that evening.  At 9pm on June 22nd, I phoned him.  We talked for the next two hours.  The phone call began like this:

Philip Nel: Let’s hope the tape works.

Maurice Sendak: Oh, you’re taping it?

PN: Yes, if that’s alright with you.

MS: Yes, that’s fine.  You’re going to hear an odd sound now and then which is my putting a colored pencil into my sharpener ’cause I’m going to try and draw as we speak.

PN: OK.

MS: I have to finish a page a day, a layout a day, for the book I’m doing.

PN: What are you doing?

MS: Well, it’s a book based on an opera, an opera that I’m going to produce.  I have a little children’s theatre which I’m getting rid of, but this is our last thing to do.  It’s an opera that was performed in a concentration camp in Prague, there’s a very famous concentration camp called Theresienstadt.  It was actually Emperor Tieresias’ army encampment right outside the city.  During the war, it became a camp, and it was known as Hitler’s favorite camp.  There was a movie made to impress Red Cross and diplomats coming that all that they were hearing about dead Jews, dead gypsies, dead gays was all a lie.  And a film was made showing volleyball and chess and children, part of a children’s opera, some brief moments.  And the true fact is that there was an opera composed in the camp.  A young composer named Hans Krasa and his librettist wrote an opera for the children in the camp.  And the opera is called Brundibar, and it’s one of the only things we have of Mr. Krasa except for a trio and some songs because he was incinerated when he was about 35 along with the librettist and all the children who performed the opera.

PN: Wow.

MS: We now have the rights to the opera — took us a long time to get it — and Tony Kushner, the playwright

PN: Yeah, Angels in America.

MS: Yeah.  Is one of my very most wonderful friends.  I begged him to take the job of translation because the original English translation is horrible.  The Czech is beautiful, but it’s got to be sung in English, so we translated it, and we got people interested in doing it, staging it.  It has been done, but in schools, in community centers.  It’s never had a real production.  And so in order to raise the money for it, we agreed we would do a picture book.  So, Tony extrapolated from the libretto into a very gorgeous complex story — the first time he’s ever done anything like this.  He’s amazing.  He just adapted it, without any fuss or feathers.  Gorgeous, gorgeous funny language.  And I’m doing the picture book because we need the money for the stage production, and Hyperion will pay for a good part of the stage production and the trade is they get the picture book.  And I was very sick for a year and a quarter, and of course I’m terribly late.  So, I’m trying very hard to catch up.

PN: Wow.

MS: And, it’s beautiful, beautiful work — a perfect way for me to wind up, actually.  So that is it.

PN: Wow.  I’ll be fascinated to see that — the book — when it comes out.

MS: Yeah, the book is evolving because Tony keeps rewriting and I keep rethinking, and we swore we would not make it too dark.  It would be the sweet, little Czech peasant opera.

PN: Well, good luck.

MS: It’s hopeless already.  I have Hitler in it, I have Eva Braun in it, I mean I’m just uncontrollable.

PN: It would be difficult to avoid the darkness.

MS: Impossible.  But, really, seriously must to an extent in order to not obscure what these people really set out to do, which was to write a charming piece to amuse the children.  It’s just that history beclouds it so much.  It is difficult to do.  It is difficult.  But it’s also great fun.  I’m having a wonderful time.

PN: I’m fascinated.  I’ll be interested when it comes out to show it to my class.

He asked about my class.  I had just begun teaching Literature for Children at Kansas State University.  “I always wonder how you teach children’s literature,” he said.  I offered to send him a syllabus.

MS: To me, it’s really a great mystery.

PN: Well, I’m new to teaching it.  I’ve taught it only for a year.  So, I’m pretty close to that sense of mystery.

MS: Well, once the mystery settles deep on you, then you’ll know how complex this thing is.  It’s always been considered low man on the totem pole, one page in the New York Times, and it’s all treated like Peter-Pan-ville.

PN: Right.

MS: It’s very tiresome, and it used to irritate me profoundly when I was young and now I just can’t afford the energy that goes to being irritated.

After a little more conversation, he started to tell me about Ursula.  And Ruth.  And Dave. (David was Crockett Johnson’s real first name, and his friends called him “Dave.”)  Maurice was very open, direct, and shared an enormous amount of deeply personal memories with me — tears in his eyes, as he described his visit to Ruth just before she died. I felt like his therapist, mostly listening, asking the occasional question. By the end of the conversation, I felt as if during the course of those two hours we had become old friends. He invited me to visit him in Ridgefield. I accepted.

(I never did manage to get out there, which is something I now very much regret, of course.)

Maurice Sendak became the biography’s third central character.  Dave and Ruth are the two co-stars, but Maurice gets third billing — or would, if the book were a film.  Beyond the decade of the 1950s, when he was collaborating with Ruth and staying with them some weekends, he visited in 1963 when he got stuck working on Where the Wild Things Are.  What should he call the three wordless two-page spreads in which Max and the wild things cavort in the forest?  Dave suggested “rumpus.”  So, just before the wordless pages start, Sendak has Max say, “Let the wild rumpus start!”  Dave and Ruth were so important to Where the Wild Things Are that Sendak has said, “I feel as though Max was born in Rowayton, and that he was the love child of me, Ruth, and Dave.”

Maurice and I collaborated on getting Crockett Johnson’s Magic Beach published in 2005, with an afterword by me and a foreword by him. We kept in touch. Generally, I’d write him a letter, and then a few days later, he’d phone me back. It was always astonishing to pick up the phone and hear Maurice’s voice on the other end. Or to find his voice on your answering machine. I don’t think I ever quite got over the fact that Holy cow, I’m talking with Maurice Sendak.  That, truly, was “the most wild thing of all!”

In the summer of 2008, I sent both him and Nina Stagakis (who knew Johnson and Krauss very well) an early draft of the manuscript up until the mid-1950s. How was I doing? Anything I might improve? Anything missing? As he recuperated from triple bypass surgery, he read what had become a double biography of both Johnson and Krauss.  On September 10th 2008, he left a message on my office phone.  He said he liked it, it was good work, but he had a few questions. Call him back. I did. He was hesitant to criticize, but I wanted to know. So, he offered his critique: “For me, it was me and Ruth.  And, for you, it was you and Dave.”  Ah, I said, so I need to have more Ruth in there.  He said, well, it’s your manuscript and you can do what you like.  I said, no, I want there to be a balance between the two.  He said, it’s “like a missing color from a palette.”

So, after our phone call, I started going back through the manuscript, and creating a map for each chapter that included a one-line summary of each paragraph which I then labeled either “CJ,” “RK” or “CJ-RK.”  I made the same map for all subsequent chapters, too.  This allowed me to see where the book was unbalanced, and to create a balance, trimming “CJ” sections, expanding “RK” sections.

Maurice was a little out of sorts that September night. In addition to being in recovery, he was also in mourning — his partner of 50 years, Dr. Eugene Glynn, had died the year before. And, at the start of our conversation, he alluded to an article about him in that day’s New York Times, which he described as “a very odd interview that’s very frank.” So, he said, “I’m telling you because I may sound odd.” Wondering what he was talking about, I looked it up (on-line) as we spoke. That’s the article where he at last talks openly about his sexuality. The interviewer asks whether there were anything he had never been asked, and Maurice answers, “Well, that I’m gay.” So, I think he may have feeling a little more vulnerable than usual that evening. (I expect that, if I had just told the New York Times a secret I’d been keeping for 80 years, I’d feel vulnerable, too.)

That was the last time we spoke.

He continued to be supportive of the biography, granting permission to use artwork, and sending me a scan of a photo of him in his 20s — I wanted an image of how he looked at the time he met Ruth and Dave. I believe my biography of Johnson and Krauss will mark the photo’s first publication, though I’m not sure.  But this was all done through his assistant, Jennifer.

My sense of his final years was that he was devoting the life he had left to his work and to mentoring other artists. So, though he no longer returned my occasional letters by phoning me, I figured: well, if I were in my 80s, I would also claim as much of my time for myself as I could! And: He’s been so very generous to me. I can’t complain. I could worry about him, though. I did worry about him.  Whenever he talked to the press, he sounded sad. And he’d sounded sad to me, when last we spoke.

I did write him, and thank him for all he’d done. I was planning to write him again, in a few months’ time, sending him a signed copy of the bio. and another thank-you. (Sigh….) Well, at least he got to see page proofs. The publisher sent him those a few months back.

When I heard the news this morning, “No!” was my first reaction. Yes, I knew he was 83, and he’s never been in the best of health. (He was sickly as a child, and had his first heart attack just before he turned 39.) Still, I assumed he’d always be there. I assumed I’d get the chance to write to him again.

But it was time for him to board Max’s boat and sail away.

Farewell, Maurice.  And thank you.

More on Maurice Sendak (last updated 16 May 2012, 7:15 pm Central Time):

• Philip Nel, “The King of the Wild Things Is Dead. Long Live the King. Maurice Sendak (1928-2012).” The Comics Journal, 10 May 2012.  My obituary, adapted from a longer piece appearing in The Comics Journal 302 (coming November 2012).  The Comics Journal has also assembled a page of “Maurice Sendak: Tributes” featuring Mo Willems, Seth, Mark Newgarden, Charles Hatfield, Lauren Weinstein, Peter Blegvad, more.  And I’ve assembled “Tributes to Maurice Sendak: Visual Artists Respond,” 11 May 2012.  The New York Times has also published artists’ tributes to Sendak, including work from Art Spiegelman and Tomi Ungerer.
• Margalit Fox, “Maurice Sendak, Author of Splendid Nigthmares, Dies at 83.”New York Times, 8 May 2012.
• Derick Dreher and John C. Haas, “Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012.” Rosenbach Museum and Library, 8 May 2012.
• Alec Baldwin, “Rest in Peace, Maurice Sendak.”  Huffington Post, 10 May 2012.
• Brian Biggs (featuring Charles Hatfield), Maurice Sendak. Mr. Biggs.com, 8 May 2012.
• Elizabeth Bird, “Wild Thing, I Think I Loved You: Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012.” Fuse #8 (School Library Journal blog), 9 May 2012.
• CBC, “The Many Meanings of Where the Wild Things Are.”  Day 6 with Brent Bambury. CBC. 11 May 2012.
• Nick Clark, “Dead at 83, the beloved writer who showed children where the wild things were.”The Independent, 8 May 2012.
• Julie Walker Danielson, “Be Still.”  Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, 8 May 2012.  She’s gathered some more links at the end of her post “Stories Breathing,” 9 May 2012.
• Dave Eggers, “V.F. Portrait: Maurice Sendak.”  Vanity Fair, August 2011.
• Neil Gaiman, “Maurice Sendak: ‘Cannibals and Psychotics.’” Neil Gaiman’s Journal, 9 May 2012.
• Neil Gaiman, “My hero: Maurice Sendak.”  The Guardian, 11 May 2012.
• Terry Gross, “Fresh Air Remembers Maurice Sendak.”Fresh Air, 8 May 2012.
• Libby Gruner, “Mothering at Mid-Career: Maurice Sendak’s Gift to Mothers (and others).”  Inside Higher Ed, 14 May 2012.
• Michael Patrick Hearn, on Maurice Sendak.  Educating Alice, 16 May 2012.
• Steven Heller, “Thanks, Maurice.” New York Times, 12 May 2012.
• Horn Book, Maurice Sendak 1928-2012, Horn Book, 8 May 2012.  Includes links to several Horn Book pieces by our about Sendak.
• Shirley Hughes, “Maurice Sendak: An Appreciation.” The Observer, 12 May 2012.
• Hillel Italie, “Writers Remember Maurice Sendak.”  Chicago Sun Times, 8 May 2012.  Includes comments from Gregory Maguire, Judy Blume, Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket), Sandra Boynton.
• Kenneth B. Kidd, “Goodbye, Maurice. And Thank You.” University of Minnesota Press, 10 May 2012.
• Gregory Maguire, “Maurice Sendak: King of All Wild Things.”  CNN.com, 9 May 2012.
• Leonard S. Marcus, “Maurice Sendak: An Appreciation.”  Publishers Weekly, 10 May 2012.
• Chris Mautner, “Maurice Sendak, cartoonist: An appreciation.” Robot 6, 12 May 2012.
• Bill Moyers, “Maurice Sendak: ‘Where the Wild Things Are.’”  NOW.  PBS, 2004.
• Stephanie Nettell, “Maurice Sendak obituary.”The Guardian, 8 May 2012.
• NPR Staff, “An Inside Look at Sendak’s ‘Wonderful Magic.’”All Things Considered, 8 May 2012.  Illuminating conversation with Gregory Maguire.
• Aaron Renier, “Maurice.”  Aaron Renier, 9 May 2012.
• Michael Rosen, “Maurice Sendak: My tribute for BBC Radio 4  ’Last Word’” Michael Rosen, 11 May 2012.
• Sergio Ruzzier, “The Sendak Fellowship.”Sergio Ruzzier: A Picture Book Blog, 6 May 2012.
• Paul Schmid, Maurice Sendak, Paul Schmid Books and Illustration for Kids, 8 May 2012.
• Maurice Sendak, “Descent Into Limbo.”  May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture, MIT, April 2003.  Maurice takes the stage at 17:45.
• Kathryn Schulz, “Maurice Sendak: The King of the Wild Things.”  New York Magazine, 8 May 2012.
• Peter D. Sieruta, “Maurice Sendak: How It All Began.” Collecting Children’s Books, 8 May 2012. Great post includes artwork from the first book Sendak illustrated: Atomics for the Millions (1947).
• Laurel Snyder, “Maurice Sendak, Author Who Scared Generations of Kids.” Jewish Daily Forward, 9 May 2012.
• Art Spiegelman and Maurice Sendak, “In the Dumps.” Originally published in the New Yorker, 27 Sept. 1993.  Reproduced on Blown Covers, 8 May 2012.
• Art Spiegelman, Tomi Ungerer, Gary Taxali, Marc Rosenthal, Geoff McFetridge, Bob Staake, “Thanks, Maurice.” New York Times, 10 May 2012.  Beautiful series of artists’ tributes.
• Roger Sutton, “My friend Maurice.”Read Roger (Horn Book blog), 8 May 2012.
• Maria Tatar, “We Are All in the Dumps.” Breezes from Wonderland, 8 May 2012.
• Shaun Usher, image of Sendak-illustrated envelope to Nonny Hogrogian.  Letters of Note, 8 May 2012.
• “Mo Willems Remembers Author Maurice Sendak.” Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen. PRI, 13 May 2012.

More on Sendak from Nine Kinds of Pie (this blog):

• Tributes to Maurice Sendak: Visual Artists Respond. 11 May 2012
• Eat, drink, and be merry.  8 Oct. 2011.  My review of Bumble-Ardy.
• In or Out?: Crockett Johnson, Ruth Krauss, Sexuality, Biography.  17 Feb. 2011.  I never talked about Sendak’s sexuality with him, and whether it was something Ruth and Dave knew about. Now that he’s out, should I mention it in the  bio?  I wrote this post to try to figure that out.
• Children’s Literature + Music = Great Album Covers.  11 Mar. 2012. A gallery of album covers by artists who also create children’s books, including Sendak, Lane Smith, many others.

On April 21, 1950, the FBI’s New York Division reported that Crockett Johnson was one of “400 concealed Communists.”  In June, the New Haven office began compiling a file on him.  These are the first 15 pages.  (Clicking on each page will yield a larger image.)

This (above) is one of the less accurate pages in the file.  In 1950, Crockett Johnson was not a “concealed Communist” or even an open one.  Also, Barnaby was never written by Jack Morley.  At this point, Johnson was writing the scripts for Barnaby and providing rather detailed sketches to guide Morley’s art.  So, although the strip’s byline at this point read “Jack Morley and CJ,” it would have been more accurate to credit it to “Crockett Johnson and Jack Morley.”  The page is correct, however, in identifying Ruth I. Krauss as his wife, and noting his association with the Independent Citizens’ Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions (ICCASP).

The claims on this page appear to be accurate.  Johnson was a New Masses editor from 1936 to 1940, attended the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, supported the American Committee for Spanish Freedom. I don’t know whether the Jefferson School of Social Science considered him for a lecturer, but that strikes me as well within the range of possibility. In Johnson’s case, the FBI was very good at identifying organizations with which he was associated, but rather poor at gauging his loyalty to the country.

I’ve verified most of the claims on this page, and the FBI is accurate.  They fail to note (for example) that the American Committee for Spanish Freedom was supporting the democratically elected government of Spain against the Fascist usurpers — surely the sort of activity that the U.S. government should support.  But it’s true that Johnson supported that group; the Win the Peace Conference; the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace; and Benjamin Davis, a Communist who represented Harlem on the New York City Council from 1943 to 1949.

Again, though their assumptions about his loyalty are off the mark, the FBI has correctly identified Johnson’s political affiliations.  The Daily Worker issues mentioned do provide the information that the file alleges.

The FBI here have done their homework, once more.  Crockett Johnson not only attended William Gropper‘s 47th birthday party (Gropper’s papers, held by Syracuse University, verify that both he and Ruth Krauss were there), but — as noted above — art-edited the Communist weekly New Masses, 1936-1940.

The FBI has here found an entirely different “Ruth Krauss.”  This Ruth Kraus is not the Ruth Krauss married to Crockett Johnson.  Oops.

Informants’ names redacted.  Not all pages in an FBI file contain interesting information.  However, sometimes they forget to redact info. — a later page reveals that professional informant Louis Budenz was one of the people who supplied information impugning Johnson’s loyalty.  Though Budenz was eventually discredited as unreliable, for a few years he made a good living as a government witness.

Except for his party affiliation, this page (above) is accurate.

I can’t verify the $100 donation, but everything else here checks out.

Crockett “is derived from an old family name relating to the subject,” eh?  That’s a new one on me, fellas.  Also, Johnson moved to Connecticut in 1942, not 1941.  But apart from those claims, the above info. appears to check out.

I picture neatly dressed FBI agents surrounded by stacks of radical newsletters, busily compiling lists of alleged offenses.  A rather dull job, but on this page, the G-Men have done fairly well.  That said, I can’t verify each and every claim, and it’s worth noting that they’re doing a lot of “guilt by association.”  Crockett Johnson and [name redacted] were both at an ICCASP meeting; [name redacted] was also active in the Norwalk Communist Party.  The suggestion, then, is that Crockett Johnson may have been also active in the Norwalk Branch of the CP.  I have no evidence that he was, though he was definitely a member of the ICCASP, and I suspect that the FBI is correct in placing him at that meeting, and at other ICCASP events.

As noted previously, the report of Johnson’s affiliations with ICCASP and “Win the Peace” are both accurate.

Johnson did indeed support Henry Wallace and the PCA.  He also appeared at the event for the American Society for Russian Relief.

These items can be verified.  However, as in many of the other items here, the FBI’s interpretation of Johnson’s affiliations is not as strong as their ability to uncover those affiliations (which is quite good).  For example, the Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor Committee (below) was the inverse of the Scottsboro Boys trial: African-American woman (Taylor) raped, but white perpetrators get off scott free.  Johnson’s support of equal justice under the law is laudatory, and should be read as such.  From the FBI’s point of view, Communists were in the forefront in their support of Civil Rights for African-Americans; so, in their eyes, Johnson’s support of justice for Mrs. Taylor reads as a “red” activity.

As you might expect, I have mixed feelings about “collaborating” with the FBI on my biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss (coming this September). On the one hand, Crockett Johnson’s FBI file displays the dangers of unchecked power, and reminds us why the Patriot Act was and is a reckless idea. On the other hand, the file is a wonderful resource and I am grateful for the FBI’s assistance. Though information in FBI files is not always reliable and their allegations about Johnson’s loyalty are false, their tracking of causes he supported is accurate.  I verified everything I could, and the New Haven G-Men tailing Johnson did thorough work.

The entire file runs 114 pages — relatively small, as FBI files go.  If I find the time, I may post other pages.

This is fun.  Reading Is Fundamental‘s new promotional video features a song by the Roots; vocals by  Jack Black, Chris Martin (Coldplay), John Legend, Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Jason Schwartzman, Nate Ruess (vocalist for fun.), Melanie Fiona, Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney, Wild Flag), Regina Spektor and Consequence; appearances from Pinocchio, Madeline, Greg (the Wimpy Kid), the Three Blind Mice, Humpty Dumpty, Curious George, Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf, and even Captain Ahab on waterskis!  Plus many many more! (Find them all!)

Reading Is Fundamental has more information about the song (and its aims) at bookpeopleunite.org.  If you take the pledge, you can even download an mp3 of the song!

Hat tip to NPR’s Linda Holmes.

I’ve managed to schedule two invited talks within three days of one another.  I believe both are open to the public.  The Johnson-Krauss talk (Normal, IL, 26 Mar.) definitely is open to the public, and the Harry Potter talk (Pittsburgh, PA, 23 Mar.) offers no indication that public needs permission to attend.  So, if you’re in the area, stop on by!  Here are more details.

March 23, 2012

University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA

I’ll be speaking on “Harry Potter: A Cultural Biography” at 1:30 pm, in 324 Cathedral of Learning.  This is part of a day-long Harry Potter conference attended by University of Pittsburgh students.  Karin Westman is also giving a lecture, “Harry Potter and the Object of Art,” in the same location at 3:15 pm.  You can learn more about the event on this University of Pittsburgh webpage.

March 26, 2012

Illinois State University, Normal, IL

I’ll be speaking on “Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature” at  7 p.m., in 138 Schroeder Hall.  This is the spring’s Lois Lenski Lecture, and it will allow me to premiere what will be the “book talk” for my biography of Johnson and Krauss (which, not incidentally, has the same title as the talk).  You can learn more about the talk here.  They’ve got a spiffy poster for the event, too!

Many children’s writers and illustrators have created covers for albums.  Below, we’ll look at a dozen or so of these artists.  As is ever the case with any art posted on this website, the artwork belongs to the artists.  Visit their websites!  Buy prints!  Buy their books!  (I’ve included websites for each artist.)  Enjoy!

Saul Bass

Recently republished, Bass‘s Henri’s Walk to Paris (1962, words by Leonore Klein) is fantastic. If he did other children’s books, I’m unaware of them. He did, however, do many famous album covers.  Here are his covers for Elmer Bernstein’s The Man with the Golden Arm (1956), Duke Ellington’s Anatomy of a Murder (1959), and Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s West Side Story (soundtrack, 1961).

Guy Billout

The author-illustrator of The Frog Who Wanted to See the Sea (2007) and Something’s Not Quite Right (2002), Billout has also done album covers. I’m reproducing one below — Crack the Sky’s Animal Notes (1976).  I know I’ve seen other covers, but just cant put my finger on where I’ve seen them.

R. Gregory Christie

Christie has won Coretta Scott King Honor Awards for his children’s books Palm of My Heart: Poetry by African-American Children (1996), Only Passing Through: The Story of Sojourner Truth (2000), and Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan (2006). Here are his covers for Justice System’s Rooftop Soundcheck (1994) and John Coltrane’s Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings (1997).

Hat tip to Jules Walker Danielson for this one! And check out her interview with Christie at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.

Marcel Dzama

As far as I know, Dzama has illustrated only one children’s book — They Might Be Giants’ Bed Bed Bed (2003). Admittedly, that makes him a less likely candidate than most of the other artists included here.  Here are his covers for the Weakerthans’ Reconstruction Site (2003), Beck’s Guero (2005), and They Might Be Giants’ The Else (2007)

Carson Ellis

Ellis (married to the Decemberists’ front man, Colin Meloy) has created many Decemberists album covers, as well as a few for other artists.  More recently, she’s worked on some cool children’s books, illustrating the late Florence Parry Heide’s Dilweed’s Revenge (2010), Lemony Snicket’s The Composer Is Dead (2009), and Meloy’s Wildwood (2011), among others.

Here are three covers she’s done for the Decemberists.

And here’s the cover she did for Laura Viers’ July Flame (2010).

Much, much more on Ellis’s website!  Also: Jules Walker Danielson did a great (and lavishly illustrated) interview with Ellis over on Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.  Indeed, if you care about children’s picture books, you must read Danielson’s blog — preferably, as frequently as you can.

Jim Flora

Flora had a long career designing album covers before the record industry’s preference for photographic covers (in the 1950s, at any rate) reduced demand for his work. At that point, he turned to children’s books, writing such loopy classics as The Fabulous Firework Family (1955), The Day the Cow Sneezed (1957) and many others.  Irwin Chusid has written (and co-written) some super books on Flora, and maintains a great Flora website, from which I’ve taken the following covers: Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer’s Bix and Tram (1947), Gene Krupa and His Orchestra (1947), and Mambo for Cats (1955).

You can buy prints of Flora’s album covers (and other artwork) from the website.

Crockett Johnson

I’m mostly avoiding children’s records, but Johnson‘s art for the adaptation of Ruth Krauss’s The Carrot Seed (1950) differs from the cover he did for the book (1945, which he also illustrated).  So, I thought I’d bend my rule a little and include it here.  The recording was performed by baritone-voiced Broadway actor Norman Rose, and was released by Young People’s Records and the Children’s Record Guild.

Richard McGuire

McGuire is a renaissance man.  He wrote and (with his band, Liquid Liquid) performed “Cavern,” the song that became the music for the classic hip-hop track “White Lines,” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.  He’s created one of the most innovative experiments in comics, “Here” (1989).  He’s created four picture books, including The Orange Book (1993) and What Goes Around Comes Around (1995).  And that’s not to mention his work in film or his New Yorker covers.  Here’s his cover for Liquid Liquid’s compilation Slip in & Out of Phenomenon (2008).

Dave McKean

The prolific Dave McKean is best known for his many collaborations with Neil Gaiman.  But he’s done lots more, including album covers.  Here are his covers for Counting Crows’ This Desert Life (1999), and the UK release of Tori Amos’s single, “God” (1994).

Hat tip, again, to Jules Walker Danielson, whose interview with McKean you should check out — it has lots of art, and even more album covers.  Indeed, the album covers you see here were lifted from her interview.

Maurice Sendak

The greatest living author-artist of children’s books has done a few album covers — many in the early 1950s, but a few later in his career, too. Here’s his art for Cynthia Gooding Sings Turkish and Spanish Folk Songs (1953), Carole King’s Really Rosie (1975, lyrics by Sendak), and Shawn Colvin’s Holiday Songs and Lullabies (1988).

Shel Silverstein

People remember Silverstein primarily for his many children’s books, but he was also a Playboy cartoonist, and songwriter — Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” and Dr. Hook’s “On the Cover of Rolling Stone” were both Silverstein songs.  He recorded several albums of his songs for adults, including Drain My Brain (1967), for which he also created the cover below.

Lane Smith

In 1983, Smith created album covers for the Dickies’ Stukas Over Disneyland and Oingo Bongo’s Good for Your Soul.

He’s posted both of these and one other on his abandoned blog, Lane Smith’s Closet: Illustrations from My Drawers.  His other abandoned blogs are also great, but Curious Pages (co-curated with Bob Shea) is fantastic.

Art Spiegelman

Best known for his Pulitzer-Prize-winning Maus, Spiegelman has also worked on a few children’s books, including Open Me… I’m a Dog! (1997), and Jack in the Box (2008).  Here’s his art for Spiked! The Music of Spike Jones, which includes liner notes from Thomas Pynchon (!).

Mark Alan Stamaty

Better known for his cartoons, Stamaty has created a few children’s books, including: Who Needs Donuts? (1973), Minnie Maloney & Macaroni (1976), and Where’s My Hippopotamus? (1985). He also created the artwork for They Might Be Giants’ first album (1986).

Chris Ware

Sure, Mr. Ware is primarily known for his comics & graphic novels, but he did contribute “Fairy Tale Road Rage” to the first volume of Art Spiegelman and François Mouly’s Little Lit, he writes eloquently about childhood, and… well, I like his work.  In addition to other book covers, New Yorker covers (and covers for other magazines), brilliant design work for Fantagraphics and Drawn and Quarterly, he’s done a fair few album covers.  Here is his art for the Beau Hunks’ Manhattan Minuet (1996) and Reginald R. Robinson’s Euphonic Sounds (1998).

The Hammer Gallery’s Ware site has art for sale.

I assembled this page when I should have been doing other work.  Have I missed some artists of children’s books who also worked on album covers?  Yes, certainly.  Will people point this out in the comments section, below?  I certainly hope so!  Isn’t that what comments sections are for?

The commercials for The Lorax film say:

I am the Lorax. I speak for the tweens.¹

The commercials for the many Lorax tie-ins say:

I am the Lorax. I speak for the SUVs.²

I am the Lorax. I speak for the pancakes.³

I am the Lorax. I speak for the diapers.⁴

But what does the film itself say?  In its own way, Illumination Entertainment’s film adaptation actually does speak for the trees.  Sure, having the film’s male lead (Ted, voiced by Zac Efron) drive a gigantic motor-scooter isn’t exactly environmentally friendly. Why not give him a bicycle, or, better, the Seussian equivalent of a bicycle? That said, the kid only gets his ecological consciousness raised near the end of the film. So, perhaps having him buck social convention prior to the awakening of his conscience would have been less plausible for his character.

In any case, he does get the message. Initially, he seeks a Truffula seed solely to impress the girl he has a crush on — Audrey, voiced by Taylor Swift. (She’s named for Geisel’s widow, and he’s named for Theodor Seuss Geisel himself.) However, by film’s end, the Once-ler has convinced Ted of the Lorax’s message. In one of the movie’s final scenes, Ted, defending his goal of planting the last Truffula seed in the town square, announces, “I’m Ted Wiggins. And I speak for the trees!” Indeed, the movie manages to work the book’s central message in twice:

UNLESS someone like you

cares a whole awful lot,

nothing is going to get better.

It’s not.

Realizing what the “UNLESS” left by the Lorax must mean, The Once-ler delivers this line, just as he does in the book.  Later, just before the credits roll, the filmmakers put the full quotation up on the screen:

UNLESS someone like you

cares a whole awful lot,

nothing is going to get better.

It’s not.

— Dr. Seuss

In The Lorax’s film adaptation, the book’s environmental message comes through loud and clear.

It also amplifies the book’s depiction of capitalism as amoral.  In the “How Bad Can I Be?” number, the Once-ler (in the narrative of his past) sings about the “biggering and biggering” of his business: “My conscience is clear. I’ve done nothing illegal. I have my rights.”  Just after he sings, “nothing is going to stop me,” the Super-Axe-Hacker cuts down the last Truffula tree, and the Lorax (voiced by Danny DeVito) tells him, “That’s it. The very last one. That may stop ya.”  This puts the lie to the plaque on the wall of his mansion, glimpsed earlier in the song:

TOO BIG

TO FAIL

The Once-ler.

Aligning the Once-ler’s Thneed business with the mismanaged banking industry, the film reminds us that no one is too big to fail. The Once-ler’s remorse for destroying the trees also indicates that all business decisions are moral ones: what is legal or financially remunerative may not also be moral.

Driving this point home, the film creates a second villain who, unlike the Once-ler, does not develop a conscience during the movie.  Voiced by Rob Riggle, O’Hare is the businessman who runs Thneedville, where our protagonist and everyone but the Once-ler lives. He makes his money selling air. Thneedville is a walled-in, completely artificial city: As we learn at the beginning of the film, it’s “a town without nature, not one living tree.” Visually, it looks a little too appealing, like a Seussian amusement park.  The grey, desiccated Street of the Lifted Lorax more effectively makes vivid the effects of pollution.  However, the film shows us that scene, too. And it exposes O’Hare’s mercenary nature: he doesn’t want a tree in Thneedville because it’s bad for business. Warning Ted to cease venturing outside Thneedville (where the Once-ler lives), he says, “I make a living selling fresh air to people. Trees — they make it for free.  So, I see this as a threat to my business.”

As you will have already discerned, yes, the film is didactic. Of course, the book was didactic, too. Both offer entertaining didacticism — brightly colored landscapes, rollicking anapestic verse, and, in the film, more fully developed characters, dance numbers, a lively score by and even a tween crush.  Seuss purists may complain: but the book has no dance numbers, no tween crush, no Thneedville, no O’Hare, and the Once-ler does not play the guitar!  All of that is true.  If you were hoping for a movie that was slavishly faithful to Seuss’s original book, then the film will disappoint.

However, a picture book and a film each have different strengths and weaknesses.  An attempt to create a literal rendition of the book would fail,… and would probably be quite short.  The question to ask is not: Was the film faithful to the book?  No film can be faithful to its original source, and nor should it aspire to be.  The question to ask is: How well did the director, writers, actors, animators, etc. translate the experience of the book into the medium of animated film?  And: Did their film manage to convey the core experience of the book?  In the case of The Lorax, the answer is: Yes.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that Dr. Seuss himself would like the film — or most of it, anyway.

I doubt Seuss would appreciate seeing his Lorax selling SUVs, diapers, or pancakes, just as I suspect he would have disapproved of the Grinch being used to sell cereal, candy, and soda.  The 2000 live-action Grinch film had its title character selling Frosted Mini-Wheats, Hershey’s candies, and Sprite — among many other products.  When Seuss’s anti-consumerist grouch (the Grinch) is selling Frosted Flakes or his environmental protector (the Lorax) is selling SUVs, there’s a problem.

Yes, I recognize that product tie-ins are a standard way to underwrite the astronomical costs of a big-budget film. Furthermore, I’m aware that Seuss was an advertising man himself: until the publication of The Cat in the Hat (1957), he made his living by creating advertisements, not children’s literature.  In other words, I’m not trying to represent Seuss as a morally uncomplicated, anti-consumerist figure.  He was a commercial success in part because he was able to apply what he learned in advertising to writing and illustrating books for children.

However, you don’t have to be a Seuss scholar to see that the Lorax should be speaking for the trees, not the SUVs. As the book and the film make clear, we really don’t need more Thneeds.

My rating for the film: B+.

My rating for the tie-ins: F.

1. The trailer plays up the romance narrative, which (mercifully) doesn’t figure as prominently in the film.  Below, the longer version.  The short ads give the whole love-interest angle even more prominence.

2. In connection with the film, the Lorax is selling the Mazda CX-5 as “Truffula Tree-Certified.”  In addition to running on TV, this ad ran in the theatre prior to the start of the film.  Oy.

3. As the Horton Hears a Who! film (which I would also recommend) did, The Lorax is selling food of dubious nutritional merit.  That is, both are selling food from the International House of Pancakes.  At IHoP, you can buy Rooty Tooty Bar-Ba-Looty Blueberry Cone Cakes and Truffula Chip Pancakes.

True, the commercial above indicates that IHoP is also giving away free seeds — which, at least, is something.

4. Seventh Generation is selling diapers bearing the Lorax’s likeness.  In their defense, they’re trying to make healthier diapers (which is more in line with The Lorax‘s message).  Of course, they are disposable, which isn’t great for the environment.

Noting the rise in “adult” authors writing for children, Dr. Seuss in November 1960 published an article in which he argued that children’s books were more important than other types of books — because children’s books had the potential to be more influential than all other books.

I’m reproducing it below exactly as it appeared in the Los Angeles Times, on 27 Nov. 1960.  For this reason, the fanciful claim that Seuss was “mayor of La Jolla” remains, even though Seuss or his editor was just kidding.  (Theodor Seuss Geisel lived in La Jolla, California, but he wasn’t mayor.)

Writing for Children: A Mission

(Dr. Seuss is one of the world’s best-known writers and illustrators of children’s books. He is editor and president of the beginner book division of Random House, and, in his other identity, is mayor of La Jolla)

BY DR. SEUSS

Some 23 years ago I made a move that most of my writer friends acclaimed as the height of stupidity.

I walked out on a fairly successful career as a writer who wrote for great, big grown-up adults and began to write for the Kiddie-Kar and Bubble-Gum set.

This, in the 30s in the writing profession, was not a sign of going forward. This was a step down. At that time, the attitude of most of this country’s top writers was: writing for children is literary slumming. With a few notable exceptions, they wanted no part of scribbling for little girls who played with dollies and for little boys who had not yet shaved.

Flood of Treacle

And, to a certain degree, these authors were right. In those days, an appalling percentage of books for children were concocted out of inept, condescending, nature-faking treacle. They insulted the intelligence not only of the child, but also of the people who write them. They were batted out, hippity-hoppity, by amateurs and semi-pros with little or no experience in the very tough-to-learn craft of writing.

The funny part — and the happy part — of this brief historical essay is this:

Those same top professional writers who, a few years back, wouldn’t be caught dead with their name on a brat book are today writing enthusiastically in the juvenile field. More and more of them every year.

I think that writers have finally realized that children’s reading and children’s thinking are the rock bottom base upon which this country will rise. Or not rise.

New-Found Potential

In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have a greater potential for good or evil, than any other form of literature on earth.

It is the awareness of this is now bringing so many fine top writers into the once-despised juvenile field. To be sure, the field is still full of the dispensers of mush, still hippity-hopping around their Maypoles and still ladling out their lukewarm treacle.

But the children are absorbing treacle in ever-decreasing doses. For the proportion of fine books vs. junk is growing steadily. And the children are eagerly welcoming the good writers who talk, not down to them as kiddies, but talk to them clearly and honestly as equals.

Seuss repeated the theme of talking to children “clearly and honestly as equals” throughout his postwar career.  He was equally critical of the “lukewarm treacle,” works he derisively called the “bunny-bunny” books.  Indeed, in 1949 at the University of Utah, he delivered an illustrated lecture on the subject: “Mrs. Mulvaney and the Million-Dollar Bunny.”  I hope that this lecture, the above article, and his other non-fiction someday gets collected in a book.  As mentioned in a previous blog post, a collection of Seuss’s non-fiction is one of my (many!) failed book proposals.

In celebration of what would be Seuss’s 108th birthday (March 2nd), you might enjoy perusing other posts tagged Seuss.  Here’s a selection:

• Dr. Seuss on “conditioned laughter,” racist humor, and why adults are “obsolete children” (16 Jan. 2012)
• Seussology (15 Jan. 2012): On my graduate-level “Dr. Seuss” course.
• Oh, the Thinks That He Thought! Some of Seuss’s Lesser-Known Works (2 Mar. 2011): My post for Dr. Seuss’s birthday, last year.
• You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch (20 Dec. 2010): 15 versions of the song.
• Corporate Seuss; or, Oh, the Things You Can Sell! (21 Aug. 2010).

Occasionally, I get asked to talk about Dr. Seuss — indeed, I’ll be on Wisconsin Public Radio from 7 to 8 am (Central Time) tomorrow (Friday, March 2nd).  Here are a few others:

• All Things Considered. Lynn Neary, “‘The Bippolo Seed’ : The ‘Lost’ Dr. Seuss Stories” (13 Apr. 2011): audio & transcript.  Charles Cohen & I talk about the new book of “lost” Seuss stories (edited by Charles).  Time: 3 mins, 30 secs.
• Diane Rehm Show. Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (22 Dec. 2010): audio | transcript. Reverend Derrick Harkins, Maria Salvadore, and I talk with Diane Rehm about the Grinch.  Time: 1 hour.
• Morning Edition. Lynn Neary, “Fifty Years of The Cat in the Hat” (1 Mar. 2007): audio & transcript. Anita Silvey and I talk with Lynn Neary about the Cat in the Hat.  Time: 7 mins, 20 secs.
• Talk of the Nation.  Steve Inskeep, “Celebrating the 100th Birthday of Dr. Seuss: A New Book Looks Back on the Life of Theodor Geisel” (10 Feb. 2004): audio.  I was a bit nervous at the beginning (I believe it was my first time on live national radio), but after the first few minutes I seem to settle into it well enough.  Time: 1 hour.

Though the website has been designed to impede its utility, Random House’s Seussville‘s author section includes a bio. and timeline I wrote — the former heavily influenced by Judith and Neil Morgan’s excellent Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel.  (If you read only one book about Dr. Seuss, the Morgans’ bio is the one I’d recommend.) And… that’s all.  Happy Read Across America Day!* *Each year on or near March 2nd (the birthday of Theodor Seuss Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss), the National Education Association sponsors Read Across America, designed to promote literacy.  Read more about it at the NEA’s website.

Continuing my series on building the “perfect” children’s library (for criteria, see first post), here are some great alphabet books.  The first post listed Dr. Seuss’s ABC (1963), Crockett Johnson’s Harold’s ABC (1963), and Bill Martin, John Archambault, & Lois Ehlert’s Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (1989).  Here are ten more alphabet titles I’ve recently sent to my niece (Emily, currently 10 months old).

Sandra Boynton, A Is for Angry (1983)

In a book subtitled an animal and adjective alphabet, Boynton illustrates “B is for BASHFUL” with a small bunny looking up at a bashful bear, who is partly concealed behind the letter “B.”  While a fox flees flying fish overhead, “F is for FRIGHTENED.”  As is ever the case, the remarkable emotional range of Boynton’s animals’ faces interacts perfectly with her words, and makes me laugh.  Accompanying “T is for Tangled” is a turkey tangled in a telephone cord.  The turkey is labeled “turkey,” and the telephone is labeled “turkey trap.”  More Boynton books are listed on the first “Emily’s Library” list.

Michael Cheswick, Alphaboat (2002)

A pun-lover’s picaresque which, yes, is undoubtedly too advanced for my 10-month-old niece. But, in a few years, she may appreciate the humor.  The story begins like this: “One day i chanced to stop for t / and listen to sweet Mellow D, / in her old H beside the sea, / sing of her long-lost Mister E.”  And off go the letters on a journey for hidden treasure, accompanied by abundant wordplay.

Donald Crews, We Read: A to Z (1967)

Perhaps best known for Freight Train (included in the first “Emily’s Library” list), Crews made his debut with this book… which was never intended to be a book at all.  A graphic designer, he made it to freshen his portfolio.  It’s less an alphabet book than it is an alphabetically organized book about space.  On the left page, c is for “corner: where the yellow is.”  On the right page, a field of orange, with a yellow square in the bottom-right corner.  Later, a left page gives us h for “horizontal: from side to side,” accompanied by a right page consisting of eight thick horizontal lines that alternate between a lighter green and darker blue.  This book should be brought back into print.

Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich, Bembo’s Zoo (2001)

This, too, should be brought back into print.  Using only the Bembo typeface, each letter names an animal, and the letters within that name create the animal.  J is for Jaguar, and iterations of “J,” “a,” “g,” “u,” “a,” and “r” get be rearranged to create the shape of a jaguar.  Ingenious.  Mr. de Vicq de Cumptich has a website devoted to the book.  Check it out.

Alison Jay, ABC: A Child’s First Alphabet Book (2003)

The board book version (2005, pictured at right) is nearly identical to the picture book.  The only two differences (apart from slightly smaller size, & boards instead of paper) are minor: (1) the cover, and (2) the omission (in the board book) of the final page of text that lists all the other items named by the letter.  For instance, the “M” page tells us “m is for moon,” but it also shows a mountain, moose, and map…  and refers to other pages.  One of the many pleasures of Jay‘s book is following the recurring characters and motifs.  The “M” page also has the nest of eggs that appear on the right-hand page “n for nest,” and again on the “o is for owl” page, which itself has the young woman from the “n is for nest” page holding up what she was drawing — a picture of a panda.  The panda is on “p is for panda,” having a picnic with the man who was reading the map back on “m is for moon.”  And so on.  Anyway, I sent Emily the board-book version because it’s nearly the same as the standard picture book and she’s still more in the “chewing” phase of book appreciation.

Stephen T. Johnson, Alphabet City (1995)

I suspect one reason this book appeals to me is that it recalls my own childhood experience of letters. Having learned my letters at a very young age (thanks to Sesame Street and The Electric Company, on public television), I began seeing letters everywhere. A car’s tire contained an “O.”  Looked at from the right angle, a hardback chair revealed an “L” or an “H.”  In twenty-six paintings, Johnson’s book explores this idea, finding an “E” in a stoplight, “P” at the top of a railing, and a “Z” in a fire escape. In so doing, he encourages readers to seek the alphabet in the landscape.

Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Delphine Durand, Al Pha’s Bet (2011)

With words by Rosenthal and pictures by Durand, the book explains how the alphabet came to be in precisely that order.  See, this was back when things were just being invented — including the twenty-six letters. And there was this guy named Al Pha, and he made a bet with himself: he would find a way to organize this (at that time) pile of disorganized letters.  It’s both a joke on why the letters are in this accepted but seemingly arbitrary sequence, and an almost-plausible explanation of how they came to be in this order.  As is always the case, Durand’s pictures are perfect.  And a bit loopy.  I highly recommend her work — some of which you’ll see in the first post devoted to French books.  (Her work is also available in English translation.)  This is the second book by Rosenthal in Emily’s Library.  The first — Duck! Rabbit! — is on the initial list.

Dr. Seuss, On Beyond Zebra! (1955)

She already had this one, courtesy of Linda (her mother’s) and my childhood.  But I wanted to list it here with the alphabet books because it’s not your standard A-B-C book.  One of Seuss’s bestiary books, this catalogue of imaginary animals invites you to invent your own alphabet.  It’s a lesser-known Seuss work that deserves a larger audience.

Paul Thurlby, Paul Thurlby’s Alphabet (2011)

Although new, this alphabet book is in the style of mid-twentieth-century advertising & graphic design. It’s also visually inventive.  As Crockett Johnson’s Harold’s ABC does, Thurlby’s book incorporates the letter into the shape of the object it names.  In “J for Jazz,” the “J” is a saxophone being played by a musician.  The two circular parts of “B” contain balls that have just bounced there — because “B” is for Bounce. “Y” shows a man doing yoga, his body forming a letter “Y.”  “E for Embrace” shows two capital letters “E” locked in an embrace: the “E” on the right is flipped horizontally so that its three prongs (ending, respectively, in a head, hand, and foot) and slide in between the prongs of the right-facing “E.”  Very clever.  On the cover, you’re seeing “A for Awesome.”

William Wondriska, A Long Piece of String (1963)

Recently republished by Chronicle Books, Wondriska‘s nearly wordless story follows a piece of string around an alligator, a bird, a castle, a dog, an elephant,… all the way to zipper.  But the book does not name each animal until the very end of the book when, on a single page, it lists all twenty-six words.  So, as you read, you get to supply the name yourself.

William Wondriska, Sur Le Fil: Mon premier imagier anglais-français (2011) [A Long Piece of String (1963)]

A bilingual edition of A Long Piece of String, this version writes the English and corresponding French word on the string near each item.  Some of the English and French words share an initial letter, but not all do — which, I suspect, may have inspired the decision to include the word with each picture.  Interestingly, the book works just as well with the word accompanying the image.  The bilingual edition uses the same typeface as Wondriska’s original, and places the word so that it rests precisely on the string.

Incidentally, I’m on the look out for good ABC books — and good children’s books generally — that were originally published in French. (Emily is being raised in French and English.)  Part 2 of Emily’s Library lists most of the French books I’ve sent so far.  And, at the end of that post, Clementine B & Deborah Freedman both offer promising suggestions, which I’m in the process of checking out!

Looking for other great children’s books?  Try these blogs:

• Elizabeth Bird’s Fuse #8
• Julie Walker Danielson’s Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
• Anita Silvey’s Children’s Book-a-Day Almanac

Related posts on Nine Kinds of Pie:

• Emily’s Library, Part 1: 62 Great Books for the Very Young (2 Jan. 2012)
• Emily’s Library, Part 2: Wordless Picture Books (3 Jan. 2012)
• Emily’s Library, Part 3: En Français (4 Jan. 2012)
• How to Find Good Children’s Books (April 2011)
• Desert Island Picture Books (Oct. 2011)
• Mock Caldecott, 2011: Manhattan, Kansas Edition (Dec. 2011)
• Mock Caldecott, 2010: Manhattan, Kansas Edition (Dec. 2010)

That’s it for this installment, but there will be more “Emily’s Library” features in the future.