Humor in Eudora Welty'sThe Shoe Bird

Abstract

The only children's book written by Eudora Welty, The Shoe Bird (1964) offers teachers in the elementary grades a unique opportunity to introduce their students at an early stage in their schooling to the work of a major American author. Yet, because it has been largely ignored by reviewers and scholars alike and is currently out of print, it is almost unknown today, even to those familiar with children's literature. Following its publication, it received only sparse reviews, most of which were cordial but restrained. Helen Bevington in the New York Times Book Review called it a "delightful book," suggesting that children would love both its words and its birds. Emily Maxwell in The New Yorker, which had published a number of Welty's short stories, was more enthusiastic, describing it as a "seriocomic f an ta sy . . , fused with realism," praising its humor and asserting that, for "anything like it," one would have to look to the literature of the late Middle Ages (p. 221). However, J. B. Hardendorff in Library Journal, after criticizing its "stereotyped characterizations" and "heavy-handed moral," concluded that this "contrived story filled with inconsistencies" was "poor fare from such a talented writer of adult fiction." Most scholars have either ignored it entirely or simply noted its date of publication. In only two articles has it received even limited treatment. Jeanne R. Nostrandt suggests that a pageant of birds which Welty photographed in a Negro church in Jackson in the early 1930s was a source for The Shoe Bird, which she calls "mild satire" (pp. 113-117) , and Albert Griffith analyzes the "aggregation of friends" motif prevalent in folk and fairy tales as a structural principle underlying Welty's story.