1941: Literature, Children's

The most significant feature of children's literature for the year 1941 was its spontaneous concentration of interest on American life, ideals and background. No individual, certainly no organized movement that could be called 'Americanization,' was responsible for this. It was not even nationalistic, in the sense of being aggressive, and it was not in the least warlike. It was evident long before Pearl Harbor, and as it is at least a matter of months for a child's book to go through the processes of preparation and publication, this wave of feeling must have been gathering much further back on the sea of our national consciousness. Authors, illustrators, publishers all over the country, seem to have realized, with the sharpening of vision that comes when something is threatened that familiarity has made almost invisible, the beauty of American life and the value of the American heritage.

American Ideals.

This urge to pass on that vision to the generation that would follow, gave to the year's books for children a special quality by which they will be remembered; it appeared in picture-books, especially such as were illustrated in colors by well-known artists. An American ABC, by Maud and Miska Petersham, alternated such pictures with simple narratives to show crucial instances in our history; though these were alphabetically arranged, the age-limit of the work extended beyond beginners' years. Lief the Lucky, by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire, in large colored lithographs and a text drawn from research in Scandinavian sources, made a genuine contribution to our pre-Columbian history. In Marguerite De Angeli's color-illustrated Elin's Amerika early settlers brought Sweden to the banks of the Delaware, their children becoming part of a new world.

A different manifestation of the same feeling was Little Town, by Berta and Elmer Hader; this community, easily identified as the one where they live, but just as easily identifiable as any one of hundreds of comfortable riverside communities, is shown in pictures and text in the details of everyday life. Its feature is that as these are infused with the loving pride of its inhabitants, the book presents a town not only as it is seen, but as it is loved. In My Mother's House, by Ann Nolan Clark, illustrated by Velino Herrera in the traditional Indian manner, shows life in a pueblo near Santa Fé, in characteristic cadence and with the same pride and tenderness. This book received one of the New York Herald-Tribune's prizes of the Children's Spring Book Festival in May, as the most distinguished publication for little children. For those in the middle group the prize went to Tom Robinson's Pete, story of an airedale in a typically American home, and Clara Barton, by Mildred Mastin Pace, a spirited biography of the Civil War heroine whose work lives in present-day war nursing, was the judges's choice for older children. Using a hand-lettered text thickly sprinkled with colored pictures, as in her last year's Little History, Mable Pyne carried out a more difficult task in her Little Geography of the United States. Holling C. Holling's Paddle to the Sea showed an Indian boy who carved a miniature canoe and so set it adrift that it floated through the Great Lakes into the ocean; by large colored pictures of what it passed this made an unusual addition to geography. The Mississippi, large color-plates by C. H. De Witt, story by Marshall McClintock, carried small children downstream.

Fantasies and Medal-Winners.

Even classic mythology moved for the moment to America: the most graceful fantasy of the year was Dorothy Lathrop's The Colt from Moon Mountain in whose pictures and story a little girl on a New England farm makes friends with what turns out to be a baby unicorn. The fantasy in Robert Lawson's I Discover Columbus was light-heartedly unhistorical, showing what the Great Admiral's parrot thought of the Great Voyage; the same friendly satire showed in his pictures for Munro Leaf's Simpson and Sampson, story of two medieval knights handicapped by being identical twins. Mr. Lawson's all-American picture-book of 1940, They Were Strong and Good, won this year's Caldecott Medal, while the Newbery Medal went to Armstrong Sperry's Call It Courage, with his own pictures, which though taking place in the South Seas brought out the same qualities in boy nature that the present-day crisis is developing in the United States.

Wanda Gag's fantasy kept clear of time and space; in her first color-picture-book for children, Nothing at All, she showed the career of an invisible dog — something harder to do than it sounds. Peter Churchmouse, story and pictures by Margot Austin, was a strong popular success; it told small children about an unusual friendship between a mouse and the kitten appointed to attend to him. W. P. DuBois's The Flying Locomotive took a Swiss milk-train into the air.

Home Life Tales.

Stories of home-life at the present time, possibly taking for granted that there is already in our children's literature at least one story about home-life in every land however remote, concentrated on the home front. The Moffats, by Eleanor Estes, was the every-day career of a poor family that happily got into everything. The Saturdays, illustrated by the author, Elizabeth Enright, showed another enterprising family group, this time in New York. Phil Stong's Captain Kidd's Cow sent real small boys peacefully pirating on an Iowan river. Lottie's Valentine, by Katherine Eyre with pictures by Susanne Suba, was a charming period piece of New Orleans. Run, Run! by Harry Granick, combined hilarity and social significance in a story of children visiting New York. Three from Greenways, by Alice Dalgliesh was much the best of several stories based on the coming of English children to America for the duration.

Biography.

In the field of biography — unusually well-filled this year — the same choice of subject prevailed. The Julia Ellsworth Ford Foundation Prize was well and truly won by Babette Deutsch's Walt Whitman: Builder for America, which combined an admirable life with a poet's introduction to his work. Other American subjects included, for older children, Young Edgar Allan Poe, by Laura Benét; Singing Sisters, by Laura Long, a study of Alice and Phebe Carey and their time; Dana of the Sun, by Alfred H. Fenton; River Boy, Mark Twain's story by Isabel Proudfit; Alexander Hamilton, by Johan Smertenko; Knight of the Sea, Corinne Low's stirring study of the career of Decatur; Narcissa Whitman, by Jeannette Eaton, which will be read also by many adults; The Man Who Would Not Wait, a well-balanced treatment of Aaron Burr by Mary Tarver Carroll; and two noteworthy biographies illustrated by James Daugherty, his own Poor Richard, and The Way of an Eagle, a panorama of Jefferson's life and times by Sonia Daugherty.

Among biographies for young children we had a blend of music and information in Opal Wheeler's Stephen Foster, one of a series of which children much approve; Ben Franklin, Printer's Boy, by Augusta Stevenson; and a real-life thriller by R. H. Chavanne based on the career of one who went to sea early, David Farragut, Midshipman.

History.

The most important work of non-fiction for the children's year was in the field of history: Genevieve Foster's George Washington's World gave, in successive cross-sections, a view of what was going on elsewhere in the world as well as in America, at stages of Washington's life.

In historical fiction writers for children began to do their duty by the American Revolution, which had hitherto kept its place in our children's fiction by reason rather of numbers than of merit. Coat for a Soldier, by Florence M. Updegraff; and Sons of Liberty, by Gertrude Robinson, showed not only what went on then but the spirit in which they went on. Down Ryton Water, by E. R. Gaggin, for older children, and John of Pudding Lane, by Mabel Leigh Hunt, took place in Colonial times. A story of marked distinction was Indian Captive by Lois Lenski, based on the life of Mary Jemison. The outstanding junior novel for the middle period in the Middle West was what seems to be the concluding volume of Laura Wilder's autobiographical romance for children under twelve: Little Town on the Prairie; this honest, stimulating and completely lifelike family record deserves a permanent place in our young literature. Sing for Your Supper, by Lenora Mattingly Weber, brought back wagon-show days not long after the Gold Rush in California. Growing up with America, an extensive anthology, gathered stories of boys and girls from our literature of childhood chronologically arrayed to show what life was like for children from Colonial times to the turn of the century and even after. At this turn of the century the amusing adventures in Janette Sebring Lowry's Rings on her Fingers took place in Texas. Sarah Deborah's Day, by Charlotte Jackson, came during real Gold Rush years in California, when all sorts of things could and did happen. Cornelia Meigs chose the Mississippi River in the 'nineties for her story of a boy's solving his own problems in Vanished Island. Elizabeth Howard's Sabina lived in Detroit a century ago; The Matchlock Gun, by Walter D. Edmonds, one of the most strikingly illustrated of true stories for younger boys, showed in stirring narrative and by Paul Laune's color plates how a little chap in the Mohawk Valley defended his home against Indians in days before the Revolution. Yankee Doodle's Cousins, by Anne Malcolmson with Robert McCloskey's pictures, displayed America's folk-heroes in action. Another feature of this year's historical fiction was the appearance in it of places whose possibilities as subjects for adventurous and stimulating stories had not hitherto been recognized.

Stories of Latin America.

Latin America was naturally a popular subject, so much so that its representation in children's books was uncommonly large, but many of these were of the textbook or semi-schoolbook type outside the scope of this survey. The most important of the year was Wings Over South America, resulting from a long tour by air around the continent which the author, Alice Dalgliesh, and the illustrator in color, Katherine Milhaus, were commissioned to take under circumstances most favorable to establishing understanding. The Story of the Other America, by Richard C. Gill and Helen Hoke, and Picture Map of Geography of South America, by Vernon Quinn, reinforced information with many illustrations; Panchita, by Delia Goetz, presented the life of a little girl of Guatemala. There were two full-length biographies of the great liberator-hero, Simon Bolivar, by Elizabeth Waugh, and He Wouldn't be King, by Nina Brown Baker; and Marian Lansing carried on her historical and biographical Heroes and Liberators of South America with Liberators and Heroes of Mexico and Central America.

Religious Books.

Finally, there was a significant upturn of interest in religion as subject-matter for children's reading, not in the interests of any particular form of faith but in response to a realization on the part of parents that much they had taken for granted as part of their children's mental equipment, because it had been made part of theirs, was not there. Books of prayers, such as children say, came out and were taken in without suspicion of sanctimoniousness; they were given beautiful pictures and offered as books little children would like, and they did. A Bible ABC, by Grace Hogarth, to be given to children as young as three, made a gentle and alluring introduction. In books for older children this was also noticeable: for the first time a history of the Christian faith, simply told and avoiding controversial issues, was successfully made for young people in Roland Bainton's Church of our Fathers; the first biography of Cardinal Newman for the teens appeared, Covelle Newcomb's The Red Hat, and Princess Poverty, by Sarah Maynard, a double biography of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Claire, appealed to anyone of simple faith.