Behind Children’s Books: Backstories & Revelations by Jerry Griswold

Abstract

Reviewed by: Behind Children’s Books: Backstories & Revelations by Jerry Griswold Joel D. Chaston (bio) Behind Children’s Books: Backstories & Revelations. By Jerry Griswold. Independently Published, 2020. I first became acquainted with Jerry Griswold’s literary scholarship years ago when I read Audacious Kids: Coming of Age in America’s Classic Children’s Books (1992), which had recently been named Outstanding Critical Book of the Year by the Children’s Literature Association. I remember being very impressed with Griswold’s keen insights into children’s literature and culture, and, especially, his personal and witty prose style. Over the years, various critics have praised Griswold, now an Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University, for his ability to speak simultaneously to general readers and academics. [End Page 222] I must confess that when I first picked up Griswold’s most recent book, Behind Children’s Books: Back-stories & Revelations, I was expecting a sustained, theoretical study of children’s culture similar to Audacious Kids, The Meanings of “Beauty and the Beast” (2004), and Feeling Like a Kid: Childhood and Children’s Literature (2006), and I was surprised by the differences in its content, purpose, and organization. Behind Children’s Books is a collection of sixty short essays about children’s literature and culture. All but ten of the essays are revisions of work which originally appeared in popular newspapers and magazines, such as The New York Times Book Review and Los Angeles Times, or in online publications. Most importantly, the book is primarily intended for a general audience. As Griswold explains in his brief introduction to the book: Coming from my Other Life as a literary journalist, these contributions are different from my academic publications because they are meant for general readers and they are brief (averaging two or three pages each). With regard to the latter, I have always admired Nietzsche’s aim “to say in ten sentences what others say in a book.” Here will be found dozens of bouillon cubes to inspire thousands of banquets. (2) Through these “bouillon cubes,” Griswold hopes to “pull back the curtain” for his readers, providing revelations and backstories about children’s books. Once I put aside my initial expectations, I took Griswold’s advice sampling various “bouillon cubes,” in the same way I might approach a “taster’s table.” I soon realized that Beyond Children’s Books is impressive in its variety of topics, as well as its personal style, which should appeal to Griswold’s primary audience and, I would hope, academics. The essays in this volume are loosely grouped into ten thematic sections, such as “Author Backstories” (biographical anecdotes about children’s authors), “Meetings” (Griswold’s personal experiences with children’s writers), “Derivations” (adaptations of and unconscious imitations of children’s texts), “Personal Favorites” (personal responses to various children’s books), “Behind Classics” (anecdotes about classic children’s stories), “Travel Tips” (literary destinations), and “ Books and Life” (the affective power of reading). Despite my teaching and writing about children’s literature for years, many of the essays have inspired me to think about children’s texts in new ways. For example, I never expected that an essay about “Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day” would make me to rethink my assumptions about Treasure Island, Peter Pan, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Pirates of the Caribbean. For me, Griswold’s most interesting “bouillon cubes” describe his “adventures” with writers and illustrators such as Maurice Sendak, Bruno Bettelheim, Sid Fleischman, James Marshall, and Nicoletta Ceccoli. I highly recommend both “Mary Poppins, P. L. Travers, and Walt Disney” and “P. L. Travers,” which draw on Griswold’s friendship with Travers, whom he first met as a graduate student when [End Page 223] she was visiting the University of Connecticut. Drawing on recorded interviews with Travers, Griswold discusses their shared interests in “yoga and Zen and mysticism,” the origins of the nanny, Mary Poppins, and Travers’s disdain for Walt Disney’s film adaption of Mary Poppins. In “Bruno Bettelheim,” Griswold describes Bettelheim’s contradictory behavior when he visited San Diego State University to deliver a lecture on fairy tales. At times, the psychologist seemed to thrive on conflict...