Children's Books

Golliwogg and Gulliver

Patrick Skene Catling

This yuletide '(God Bless Shoppers, Every One!) there is an even richer abundance of good children's books than ever, including many that children, too, will probably enjoy.

There is also an excellent book with an adult-oriented text, including some in- teresting chapters about children's books and with illustrations, in colour and black and white, on almost every page, which children would like to look at, if given a chance. This instructive and entertaining survey of the century from 1850 to 1950, The World of the Nursery, by Colin White (The Herbert Press, £14.95), should be studied by all publishers, teachers, libra- rians and parents who profess to care about the books given to children.

In amongst the facts there are some salutary admonitions against 'cuteness' and in favour of tolerance, of Golliwogg, for example, now anathematised by most in- fluential sociological doctrinarians, though he was loved in the past by generations of children 'as a kind and compassionate friend' and, I believe, may still be seen memorialised on certain jars of jam and marmalade.

It would not be surprising to learn that conformist progressive editors are con- sidering transmogrifying Joel Chandler's Harris's Tar Baby, in Uncle Remus, into a noncontroversial artefact of sticky beige plastic. They may rehabilitate the dis- graced, though beloved, Little Black Sam- bo as Little Tan Sam (he recently spent two weeks on the Costa Brava); and perhaps Uncle Tom would no longer be used as a pejorative term if he were moved from his cabin into a California-style split-level ranchhouse with a swimming pool and taught to speak like a graduate of Harvard Law School, Class of 1984. But, as a matter of fact, black Americans I have known are amused, rather than offended, by blacks in traditional children's books and are con- temptuous of, rather than grateful for, the apparently obligatory token dark brown with fine features who smiles happily in every classroom and on every playground in many contemporary children's book illustrations, which often seem smugly con- descending. But let us try, in this season of good will, to eschew acrimony.

Many children's classics have been made available in beautiful new editions this year, and not all of them will appeal only to adult bibliophiles.

Holp Shuppan, of Japan, have published facsimiles of 35 early English children's books from the Osborne Collection of 2,000 in the Toronto Public Library. Distri- buted in this country by the Bodley Head, they range chronologically from Orbis Sen- sualium Pictus, said to be the first illus- trated school-book, by J. A. Comenius (the 12th edition, of 1777; the book was published first in 1657), which costs only £3.95, to B. H. & Florence Upton's The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls (1895), in which Golliwogg made his inaugural apear- ance, before he was refined. That costs £6.95. The most expensive volume of this historically important collection of facsi- miles is In Fairy Land, by Richard Doyle, who drew the original cover of Punch — £25. I particularly like Comenius's preface to OrbLs Sensualium Pictus, which begins:

'Instruction is the means to expel Rude- ness, with which young wits ought to be furnished in Schools: But so, as that teaching be, 1. True, 2. Full, 3. Clear, and 4. Solid.' Words that might well be in- scribed over the portals of every teachers' training college.

On the 500th anniversary of Caxton's publication in English of Aesop's Fables, Bamber and Christina Gascoigne have gently edited the 15th-century text, with the original coloured woodcuts (Hamish Hamilton, £4.95.) Rex Whistler's exquisite illustrations of Swift's Gulliver's Travels, which were pub- lished formerly only in a small, limited edition, are now generally available. (Her- bert, £12.50.) The text is that of the definitive 1735 edition.

John Vernon Lord spent three years lovingly illustrating The Nonsense Verse of Edward Lear (Jonathan Cape, £9.95), and did not waste a minute. Some of the 236 limericks, with their notoriously bathetic last lines, may seem rather feeble, except to devotees of the poor old ugly bachelor, but Mr Lord's meticulous drawings raise the level of the oeuvre to a new high level of lunacy. The artist has written an enlight- ening biographical introduction.

Maurice Sendak, who designed the sets for a recent ballet of E. T. A. Hoffman's 1861 tale, has adapted the stage designs to illustrate Ralph Manheim's new translation of Nutcracker (Bodley Head, £12.50 until 31 January, then £14.95). This exceptional- ly handsome book is like a model of a theatre in which the splendidly costumed performers in every scene seem to have been turned into small wooden dolls.

Hiawatha's Childhood (Faber, £5.95), illustrated with lovely, romantic paintings, like a series of miniature tapestries, by Errol Le Cain, presents a short excerpt from Longfellow's poem which could serve as an ideal introduction to the complete work.

The Walker Book of Poetry for Children: A Treasury of 572 Poems for Today's Child (Walker, £9.95), with an introduction for - adults and introductory poems for children by Jack Prelutsky and with numerous decorative, lively and funny illustrations by Arnold Lobel, is the most comprehensive anthology of its kind I have ever come across. All sorts of poets and versifiers are represented, from William Blake to Spike Milligan. If a child were to be allowed only one book, I think this should be it.

Fortunately, however, no such grievous restriction seems necessary — and just as well, for Macmillan have published facsi- mile reproductions of the original pub- lished editions of Lewis Carroll's master- pieces, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1866) and Through the Looking-Glass (1872), with the Tenniel illustrations placed in the text in accordance with the author's directions, which were usually ignored in later editions. Well bound in gilded scarlet and well printed by Richard Clay on paper better than that to which one has become accustomed in recent years, this boxed set is well worth the £21 demanded for it. There is a bonus, an eight-page pamphlet 'On the Writing, Illustration and Publication of Lewis Car- roll's Alice Books', in commendably plain non-Ph.D. English, by Professor Michael Hancher, of the University of Minnesota. It seems bad luck for him and for the reader that this informative supplement is physically so flimsy, unlikely to endure for long in even the most carefully regulated library. Macmillan have simultaneously pub- lished a literary curiosity, Alice Through the Needle's Eye, by Gilbert Adair (£6.95). It is a clever imitation of Lewis Carroll, with equally clever pseudo-Tenniel illustra- tions by Jenny Thorne. They have synther ised the flavour of the Victorian pedantic playfulness with perfect fidelity. I am sorrY that indignation made me feel rather sick' A few of the original new books are essentially serious: One Night at a Time, bY Susan Hill, illustrated by Vanessa Julian' Ottie (Hamish Hamilton, £4.95), lightlY shows how a sympathetic mother can helP a small child to contend with nightmares, Maria, written and illustrated by Catherine Brighton (Faber, £4.95), is about the coini pensatory fantasy-life of a sensitive 81r who is blind; Where the River Begins, ,11,Y Thomas Locker (Patrick Hardy, £5.9)/' with a nicely restrained text and Inl," ashamedly sentimental, old-fashioneu illustrations which appear to have bee. r) painted in oils or acrylics coated in asPle' and Granpa, by John Burningham (Capei £4.95), which is commendably un-cute, for the title, both deal subtly with morta; ity. Leonardo da Vinci, by Alice arw Martin Provensen (Hutchinson, £6.95), 's tells the great innovator's story in a fe words and 'three-dimensional, mov.abl'i pictures'. This is a wonderful book, winch nominate as The Pop-Up of The Year.. b There are books of instruction %vb. 1c address children in a would-be ingratiating chatty style, as if otherwise they iniet. too bored to pay attention. It is sufficieo to cite only one, Body Noises, by Stisa"

Kovacs Buxbaum and Rita Golden Gel- man (Hamish Hamilton, £1.95). Ms Bux- baum lives in New York and Ms Gelman lives in Los Angeles, but the wide separa- tion failed to stop them from collaborating. Their first chapter is characteristically enti- tled, `Oops, Excuse Me.' They are inexcus- able.

The best illustrated entertaining new Children's books I have seen recently are: The Visitors Who Came to Stay, by Annalena McAfee, illustrated by Anthony Browne (Hamish Hamilton, £4.95); A Mermaid's Tale, by Fiona Moodie (Hutch- inson, £5.50); Sir Cedric, by Roy Gerrard (Gollancz, £4.95); The Visitor, by Helen Oxenbury (Walker, £1.95); Dirty Beasts, by Roald Dahl, illustrated by Quentin Blake (Cape, £4.95); The Comical Celtic Cat, by Norah Golden (Brogeen Books, £4.95); Big Bad Bertie, by Martin Waddell, illustrated by Glenys Ambrus (Methuen, £3.95), and the five books of Copycats, by Nicola Bayley (Walker, £1.95 each). All these books are outstanding, imaginatively and visually, deserve medals and large cash Pnzes, and may be sufficiently beguiling to lure the little ones away from their electro-

n.le toys and video games, if only for a short time.