1939: Literature, Children's

Children's books in the United States must be considered without reference to statistics: they have become an established feature of American literature and art and a recognized factor in our culture and civilization, but they are also a feature of the publishing business, so that a best-seller list, compiled from bookstore reports the country over and controlled largely by matters of price and distribution, would bear slight resemblance to a list of 'best books of the year' for children compiled by critics concerned only with their literary, ethical and artistic qualities. Of these the children's librarians, those who maintain the standards of admission to collections of the Children's Rooms now part of city, village and farm life in the United States, have been for years devoted guardians. Their choice for the annual award of the Newbery Medal for the best book of the year is eagerly awaited and discussed with fervor by all interested in American children's books, whose high general level of excellence in content and in production is not now reached by any other country.

This year there was general satisfaction with the choice of Thimble Summer, a story of a child on a Wisconsin farm, written and illustrated in color by Elizabeth Enright; it was, moreover, in line with the strong interest in the American scene displayed in the field of our general literature. The Caldecott Medal, awarded for a child's book whose illustrations had been adjudged the best of the year, went to Thomas Handforth's brilliant lithographs in Mei Li, his story of a little girl's great day at a New Year's fair in North China. The runner-up was Laura Adams Armer's The Forest Pool, whose pictures, glowing with colors of sub-tropical jungles and reminiscent of Mexican technique, accompanied an idyllic tale of two small natives. Both these books appeared in 1938, the 1939 medals being awarded as usual for books published during the preceding twelvemonth.

The Children's Spring Festival prizes offered by the New York Herald-Tribune for the best books published in the spring for younger and older children respectively, were both awarded to works with a distinctive American flavor. The Story of Horace is a nonsense folktale of a voracious and appealing bear, long widespread by word of mouth in the United States but never published until put into book form and illustrated by Alice M. Coats. The Hired Man's Elephant, by Phil Stong, a rollicking record for older young folks of the impact upon an Iowa farm of a travelling show is reassuringly true to character of the American scheme of things. The Julia Ellsworth Ford Foundation prize was awarded to a medieval romance for girls, Falcon, Fly Back, by Elinore Blaisdell.

The season was marked by the entrance into juvenile literature of an unusual number of writers distinguished in the adult field. Of these the most unexpected was Gertrude Stein, whose first book for very little children, The World is Round, illustrated by Clement Hurd, gave three-year-olds whose elders were willing to read it to them the same pure delight both simple and sophisticated adults found in her famous stage play. Two Pulitzer Fiction Prize winners made juvenile debuts: Margaret Wilson, who won it in 1923, wrote The Devon Treasure Mystery and Josephine Johnson, who won it in 1934, wrote and illustrated Pauline: the Story of an Apple-butter Pot. Kay Boyle's The Youngest Camel was deeper in meaning and higher in technique than any other in this group, which included two Englishmen, J. W. Dunne, author of An Experiment with Time, with St. George and the Witches, and Somerset Maugham, whose short story, Princess September and the Nightingale, reprinted from an earlier collection, was made the subject of decorative designs in brilliant colors by Richard C. Jones.

Picture-books paid this year particular attention to classics newly illustrated. Robert Lawson gave a shortened version of Pilgrim's Progress, made for Victorian children by Mary Godolphin, black-and-white drawings restoring a popularity to which this work had been long unaccustomed in American homes. Dorothy Lathrop's exquisite designs in underwater color for The Little Mermaid translated Hans Christian Andersen with sympathetic fidelity. The most beautiful picture book of the year was The Ageless Story, paintings by Lauren Ford to accompany the New Testament record of the childhood of Jesus: the charm of these was that they placed the characters of the story with loving reverence in the scenery and with the costumes and furniture of contemporary Connecticut farm country. Clare Newberry's Cousin Toby, child portraits and the horse portraits in C. W. Anderson's Black, Bay and Chestnut stand out in this section.

James Daugherty's Daniel Boone qualifies as a picture book by reason of its characteristic drawings of struggle and strength, but it was also one of the year's most distinguished biographies for young people, which were in general a credit to writers undertaking this special and difficult task. Marion W. Flexner's Drina: England's Young Victoria; Laura Benet's Enchanting Jenny Lind; Francis E. Benz's On to Suez, a life of Ferdinand de Lesseps; Isabel Proudfit's The Treasure Hunter, a life of R. L. Stevenson, were for older young folks or beginners of any age. An important contribution to ethnology was made in one of the year's most entertaining autobiographies, a book for small boys: Kanguk, story of the boyhood of a Bering Strait Eskimo, told by the old man himself to William Albee and illustrated with his own drawings of rare interest and value.

Light-hearted humor, always a marked merit in American children's books, showed itself especially in the gay but admiring irreverence with which the story and pictures of Robert Lawson dealt with Benjamin Franklin in Ben and Me, autobiography of a mouse whose nest was in the famous fur cap; Wiggins for President, by Walter R. Brooks, an animal story illustrated by Kurt Wiese; Animals for Africa, a demure absurdity by a new writer, Rosalys Hall, with drawings by Fritz Eichenberg; Cowhand Goes to Town, by Phil Stong and Kurt Wiese; the uproarious doings in The King's Stiles, by Dr. Seuss; the dilemma of Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, by Virginia Lee Burton; the intractable milk horse in Margaret Van Doren's Thomas Retires, and the irresponsible tugboat in Hardie Gramatky's Little Toot. Kate Seredy's enduring favorite, The Good Master, had a long-awaited sequel, The Singing Tree; Laura Ingalls Wilder's continued story of growing up on the frontier approached its culmination in By the Shores of Silver Lake; Elizabeth Morrow, author of The Painted Pig, reached a nationwide audience with a tiny story of Christmas, A Pint of Judgment. The most successful stories of magic were Cinders, by Katharine Gibson, a side-light on Cinderella, and Thomas Burns's Terrence O'Hara, an Irish fairy tale with drawings by Reginald Birch. One of the most unusual books of the year was a tribute to this veteran illustrator still actively engaged in his work; this was an anthology, Reginald Birch: his Book, edited by Elizabeth Hamilton, offering, together with pictures chosen over a period of fifty years, long selections from books already children's classics, that these introduced to the children of America.

There were not so many stories about children in foreign lands as for some years past; emphasis was rather on picturesque possibilities of the western world or of the past of the United States as in Skippack School, by Marguerite de Angeli, told of Pennsylvania Germans long ago; and Treasure in Gaspésy, by Amy Hogeboom, a tale of child life on the Gaspé Peninsula, each with colored pictures as part of the narrative. There were four stories of life in Peru, each centering in a llama, the best being The Silver Llama, written and illustrated by Alida Sims Malkus. One of the best stories of present day Europe was Edna Potter's Land from the Sea, describing reclamation of farmland from the Zuyder Zee. Efforts were made to clarify and illuminate, even for little children, the idea of democracy. Of these but one was noteworthy but this was one of the best books of the year: Fair Play, by Munro Leaf, a light-running yet serious presentation, brightened by cartoon-like drawings, of the basic ethics of right living in a democracy; it appealed at once, if not to so many readers as the author's Ferdinand, certainly to a widespread and heartily approving public. Home life in the United States, in the generation before the automobile, was a favorite subject for 1939, several of these stories being autobiographical.