The Faithless Parrot by Charles H. Bennett
The Faithless Parrot is, in fact, just exactly what the title indicates.
Though why that should interest children, I don’t really know.
I also don’t know it’s not called The Faithless Cat.
There once lived happily together, in a fine house, a tortoise-shell Cat and a pretty white Dog: the Cat’s name was Tittums; the Dog’s, Fido. In course of time the pretty Dog fell in love with the Cat, and only waited for a good chance to disclose his affections.
But, when the colorful parrot shows up, the cat blows off the Pomeranian.
“Lovely Tittums,” said Mr. Paul, “you must forget such upstart puppies as Fido. Listen to me—I am a traveller—I speak five languages,—I have a palace made of golden bars, within which is a perch fit for a king,—I have a pension of bread and milk and Barcelona nuts: all of which I will share with you. To-morrow we will go for a trip into the field next to the house. Good-by for the present, my dear Pussy Cat;” and he went away kissing his hand.
And, you know, the Parrot runs off to woo another. He being faithless, and all.
“Dear me!” thought Fido, “this must be Mr. Parrot.” And, sure enough, so it was,—Mr. Parrot, indeed, and making the warmest of love to old Mrs. Daw, the widow of Miser Jack Daw, who, during a long life, and by means of stealing and saving, had laid by a large fortune, which he had left Mrs. Daw to enjoy.
The old widow seemed very much pleased at the warmth of Mr. Paul’s love, and no doubt thought that every word he said was true; leering round at him with her old eyes, and wishing that she had put on a clean muslin cap, as it might have made her look even younger than she thought she did.
As for Fido, he almost jumped for joy; he ran home as soon as ever he could.
The cat doesn’t believe him, so the Dog proves his story.
Busted!
“Oh, you bad Parrot!” she said; “did you not promise to marry me, and take me to your golden palace?”
“Golden palace!” screamed Mrs. Daw: “why, you wicked bird, that’s what you promised me. Stay, ma’am, what did he say besides?—did he promise you any bread and milk, or any Barcelona nuts?”
The Daw is very insulted.
As soon as Mrs. Daw was left alone with Paul, she began to upbraid him with his falseness,—“You vulgar, stuck-up, ugly, awkward deceiver! you have neither honesty enough to live by, nor wings enough to fly with.” Whereupon she jumped at him and gave him such a plucking as spoilt his good looks.
And, the cat and dog lived happily ever after.
Tittums could not help admiring the constancy of Fido; and when in the spring he had grown bigger, and was promoted to a sweet red and black collar, Pussy found that she loved him very much indeed, and made up her mind never more to forsake him.
The book is available on Project Gutenberg.
(Also: 100th post!)
Suzuki Beane by Sandra Scoppettone (1961)
I’ll let you in on a secret: I kind of hate Suzuki Beane. Not the character, but the whole bizarre situation the book is about. This is straight out of the Mad Men universe. Suzuki is a largely neglected beatnik kid, and her friend, Henry, is rich. The message is, I guess, supposed to be about children transcending class division.
It was written as a parody of the Eloise books, and it’s illustrated by Louise Fitzhugh (who later wrote Harriet the Spy.)
This scan is available on Sribd.
You’ve got Suzuki, who speaks beat.
Her dad, Hugh the poet, who will one imagines will eventually “go out for a pack of smokes” and never return. Leaving her mother Marcia…
…whom we can only imagine will develop a drug addiction shortly after the Kennedy assassination, resulting in a string of creepy “Uncles” helping with the rent.
Suzuki’s got a friend at school, maybe her only friend, Henry the rich kid.
She goes to dancing school with him, and then she goes eat dinner at Henry’s house. The people at Henry’s treat Suzuki as sort of a darling, exotic specimen, but she is fed properly. She goes off on Henry’s mother, who suddenly can’t take anymore beatspeak from a child, and hugs the kid.
Later she invites Henry to her house, but her dad insults him and tells him to leave.
It all goes badly.
So, Suzuki comes up with a plan.
She wants to run away, and start… I guess an all-kid’s commune of sorts.
So, she leaves her… parents, if you really wanna call them that.
And, she and Henry take off. (After Suzuki convinces him to get rid of all his Earthly possessions.)
Now, for the life of me, I cannot figure out how I am supposed to take this. Is it supposed to be cute? Because, it’s really not.
DesiLu studios actually made a pilot for a series based on the book:
But, it’s easy enough to see why that didn’t work out. There’s a lot of mid-century art and stories featuring the “wise-cracking” kid cliche, but there’s something that’s less “precocious” about Suzuki, either in print or on film, than it is just dark and sad and hollow and off-putting.
Beane does have it’s own cult following. But I wonder if it’s not largely comprised of childless hipsters that never actually lacked “bread,” sheets, stability, or affection as children?
The Magic Pudding (1918) by Norman Lindsay
Norman Lindsay (1879–1970) wrote The Magic Pudding to settle an argument with a friend who claimed that children liked to read about fairies. Lindsay argued instead that they liked to read about food.
The food is still magic food. Neener, neener.
I never read The Magic Pudding as a kid. Of course, I also never read Little Black Sambo or Tin Tin or many other “classics” that are, apparently, much more popular in countries that aren’t the U. S.
I do, however, recognize these guys:
Go fig.
So, as a noob to the entire Magic Pudding concept, I was pleasantly surprised. For 1918, it’s silly in a way that’s actually ahead of it’s time. It’s somewhere between a Looney Tunes cartoon and Dr. Seuss.
‘The fact is,’ said the Bunyip, ‘I have decided to see the world, and I cannot make up my mind whether to be a Traveller or a Swagman. Which would you advise?’
The koala, Bunyip, sets out to see the world. He meets Bill Barnacle, the sailor, and Sam Sawnoff, the penguin.
They are the ones that introduce the magic pudding.
‘Always anxious to be eaten,’ said Bill, ‘that’s this Puddin’s mania. Well, to oblige him, I ask you to join us at lunch.’
‘Delighted, I’m sure,’ said Bunyip, seating himself. ‘There’s nothing I enjoy more than a good go in at steak-and-kidney pudding in the open air.’
‘Well said,’ remarked Sam Sawnoff, patting him on the back. ‘Hearty eaters are always welcome.’
‘You’ll enjoy this Puddin’,’ said Bill, handing him a large slice. ‘This is a very rare Puddin’.’
‘It’s a cut-an’-come-again Puddin’,’ said Sam.
‘It’s a Christmas, steak, and apple-dumpling Puddin’,’ said Bill.
‘It’s a—Shall I tell him?’ he asked, looking at Bill. Bill nodded, and the Penguin leaned across to Bunyip Bluegum and said in a low voice, ‘It’s a Magic Puddin’.’
The magic is that the pudding never runs out. It’s named Albert, and it’s cantankerous.
That is, of course, just the sort of pudding that attracts malicious pudding thieves.
They were all singing away at the top of their pipe, as Bill called it, when round a bend in the road they came on two low-looking persons hiding behind a tree. One was a Possum, with one of those sharp, snooting, snouting sort of faces, and the other was a bulbous, boozy-looking Wombat in an old long-tailed coat, and a hat that marked him down as a man you couldn’t trust in the fowlyard. They were busy sharpening up a carving knife on a portable grind-stone, but the moment they caught sight of the travellers the Possum whipped the knife behind him and the Wombat put his hat over the grindstone.
And, you know, it come to blows.
‘And as we’re perfessional Puddin’-owners,’ said Bill, ‘we have to fight them on principle. The fighting,’ he added, ‘is a mere flea-bite, as the sayin’ goes. The trouble is, what’s to be done with the Puddin’?’
In later “slices,” they repeatedly defend the pudding against disguised pudding thieves. There are fires, and songs, and wombats. And, more fighting.
‘This is what I call satisfactory,’ said Bill, as they sat at breakfast next morning. ‘It’s a great relief to the mind to know that them puddin’-thieves is sufferin’ the agonies of remorse, and that our Puddin’ is safe from bein’ stolen every ten minutes.’
‘You’re a bun-headed old optimist,’ said the Puddin’ rudely. ‘Puddin’-thieves never suffer from remorse. They only suffer from blighted hopes and suppressed activity.’
‘Have you no trust in human nature, Albert?’ asked Bill, sternly. ‘Don’t you know that nothin’ gives a man greater remorse than havin’ his face punched, his toes trod on, and eggs rubbed in his hair?’
Eventually, the matter is taken to court.
‘I’ve got a paper-knife,’ said the Usher; and, the Puddin’ having been handed up to the bench, the Judge and the Usher cut a slice each, and had another glass of port.
Bill was naturally enraged at seeing total strangers eating Puddin’-owners’ private property, and he called out loudly:
‘Common justice and the lawful rights of Puddin’-owners.’
‘Silence in the Court while the Judge is eating,’ shouted the Usher
The can’t catch a break, really.
The case devolves into a chaos of snout-smacking and blame-laying, and… pudding eating. And, beating each other with bottles of port.
Eventually, despite the pudding being convinced that it has been poisoned, the heroes retire to a tree house, to live happily ever after.
Norman Lindsay was a prolific artist and sculptor, as well, with his own museum.
The Magic Pudding is available (at least in the US) at Project Gutenberg. It was also made into a reportedly terrible movie in 2000.
Tanglewood Tales (1853) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
I was one of maybe 3 people in my 11th grade English class that liked Nathaniel Hawthorne. However, I had no idea he wrote for children until recently.
Tanglewood Tales is a volume of retold Greek myths, meant as a sequel to The Wonder-book for Girls and Boys.
Being used to mega-volumes of myth, like Bullfinch’s, Tanglewood Tales is relatively short.
The images here are from an art deco era version illustrated by Jessie M. King.
Medea staid only long enough to take her son with her, and to steal the crown jewels, together with the king’s best robes, and whatever other valuable things she could lay hands on; and getting into the chariot, she whipped up the snakes, and ascended high over the city.
And what do you think the snowy bull did next? Why, he set off, as swift as the wind, straight down to the seashore, scampered across the sand, took an airy leap, and plunged right in among the foaming billows. The white spray rose in a shower over him and little Europa, and fell spattering down upon the water.
At the farther extremity of this hall, approaching slowly towards him, Cadmus beheld a female figure, wonderfully beautiful, and adorned with a royal robe, and a crown of diamonds over her golden ringlets, and the richest necklace that ever a queen wore. His heart thrilled with delight.
So the voyagers examined the web of cloth which the beautiful woman had been weaving in her loom; and, to their vast astonishment, they saw their own figures perfectly represented in different colored threads. It was a life-like picture of their recent adventures, showing them in the cave of Polyphemus, and how they had put out his one great moony eye; while in another part of the tapestry they were untying the leathern bags, puffed out with contrary winds; and farther on, they beheld themselves scampering away from the gigantic king of the Laestrygons, who had caught one of them by the leg. Lastly, there they were, sitting on the desolate shore of this very island, hungry and downcast, and looking ruefully at the bare bones of the stag which they devoured yesterday. This was as far as the work had yet proceeded; but when the beautiful woman should again sit down at her loom, she would probably make a picture of what had since happened to the strangers, and of what was now going to happen.
“O no, dear Proserpina,” cried the sea nymphs; “we dare not go with you upon the dry land. We are apt to grow faint, unless at every breath we can snuff up the salt breeze of the ocean. And don’t you see how careful we are to let the surf wave break over us every moment or two, so as to keep ourselves comfortably moist? If it were not for that, we should look like bunches of uprooted seaweed dried in the sun.
As soon as Proserpina saw the pomegranate on the golden salver, she told the servant he had better take it away again.
“I shall not touch it, I assure you,” said she. “If I were ever so hungry, I should never think of eating such a miserable, dry pomegranate as that.”
“It is the only one in the world,” said the servant.
At the appointed hour he met the beautiful Medea on the marble steps of the king’s palace. She gave him a basket, in which were the dragon’s teeth, just as they had been pulled out of the monster’s jaws by Cadmus, long ago.
“Look yonder,” she whispered. “Do you see it?”
Gleaming among the venerable oaks, there was a radiance, not like the moonbeams, but rather resembling the golden glory of the setting sun. It proceeded from an object, which appeared to be suspended at about a man’s height from the ground, a little farther within the wood.
“What is it?” asked Jason.
“Have you come so far to seek it,” exclaimed Medea, “and do you not recognize the meed of all your toils and perils, when it glitters before your eyes? It is the Golden Fleece.”
I was a giant nerd for Jason and the fleece when I was a kid. Seriously. I was a big dork for Greek myths in general, but Jason was probably my favorite. And, this is why I wasn’t a popular child. Hee.
Honestly, though, people, it’s Hawthorne. Doing Greek myths! In his marvelously concise way!
Young Goodman Brown! Dark romanticism! Struggling personally and philosophically with the transition from American Calvinism to the explosion of transcendentalism and new, American forms of Protestantism in the early days of the new country! Sneering at Emerson!
Is it just me?
Must be just me.
You can find Tanglewood Tales at Gutenberg and another wonderfully illustrated version on Google books.
Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn (via SmithsonianLibraries)
Via Wendy Martin’s twitter feed.
The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily
I adore The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily.
It was recently(ish) re-released by the New York Review’s Children’s Collection.
If you are into quirky, mid-century kid’s lit, Bears’ is really about as good at it gets.
The story is a little odd. And, it rhymes for no reason.
There’s magic. And, ghosts. And, gambling. And, kidnapping. It’s thoroughly inappropriate for modern children. Which is why it’s so awesome.
I cannot do it justice in a review, really. You just have to find it for yourself. The ratings over at Amazon run the gamut. It’s one of those books you either get, or you don’t.
Also: sea monsters. Hello. Awesome.
Illustrator - Mirko Hanák
I was very surprised, after finding this little fox, to find out that the illustrator wasn’t Japanese.
It’s by a Czech watercolor artist named Mirko Hanák.
From his famous version of Bambi:
Mirko was born in 1921 in Prague, The Czech Republic and worked as a painter, graphic designer and illustrator. His specialties were animals and human figures that were full of life and fun. He also had a firm grasp on composition as his paintings were so well balanced despite his casual fluid line. He was working on “Charlotte’s Web” the movie when he tragically died at the height of his career from leukemia in 1971.
From Matouenpeluche. A few more illustrations are posted over there.
More scans here.
Fairy tale images from The Bluebird:
The Death and Burial of Poor Cock Robin
Much like Babes in the Wood, it’s easy to see why The Death and Burial of Poor Cock Robin fell out of favor over the years.
Scholars don’t know how old the song actually is, but the oldest text version dates to 1744.
And, like so many nursery rhymes, it’s terrifically twisted.
From Original Designs by
H. L. STEPHENS
(1865)
You can find it here. The bummer of this version is that the big real deal for imagery is the robin with the arrow in it’s breast—the Stephens version leaves it out.
Who killed Cock Robin?With my bow and arrow, I, said the Sparrow,I kill’d Cock Robin.
Who saw him die? With my little eye, I, said the Fly, I saw him die.
Who caught his blood? With my little dish, I, said the Fish, I caught his blood.
Who’ll make his shroud? With my thread and needle, I, said the Beetle, I’ll make his shroud.
Who’ll dig his grave? With my spade and trowel, I, said the Owl, I’ll dig his grave.
Who’ll bear the pall? Both the Cock and the Hen, We, said the Wren, We’ll bear the pall.
Who’ll carry him to the grave? If it’s not in the night, I, said the Kite, I’ll carry him to the grave.
Who’ll be the Parson? With my little book, I, said the Rook, I’ll be the Parson.
Who’ll sing a Psalm? As he sat in the bush, I, said the Thrush, I’ll sing a Psalm?
Who’ll be the Clerk? If it’s not in the dark, I, said the Lark, I’ll be the Clerk.
Who’ll be chief mourner? Because I mourned for my love, I, said the Dove, I’ll be chief mourner.
Who’ll carry the link? I’ll fetch it in a minute, I, said the Linnet, I’ll carry the link.
Who’ll toll the bell? Because I can pull, I, said the Bull, I’ll toll the bell.
All the birds in the air
When they heard the bell
Fell to sighing and sobbing
For poor Cock Robin.
While the cruel Cock Sparrow, Was hung on a gibbet
The cause of their grief, Next day, like a thief.
