Golden Book Research Articles

A Piece of Cake by LeUyen Pham (review)

Reviewed by: A Piece of Cake by LeUyen Pham Hope Morrison Pham, LeUyen A Piece of Cake; written and illus. by LeUyen Pham. Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins, 2014 40p ISBN 978-0-06-199264-3 $16.99 R 5-8 yrs It’s Little Bird’s birthday, and Mouse has baked her a cake. En route to deliver the tasty treat, he runs into an assortment of friends, each of whom offer items in trade for a slice, until Mouse arrives on Little Bird’s doorstep without any cake at all. Wise Little Bird, however, knows the traded items—a cork, a wire, a net, and a flyswatter—will be useful, and in fact the pair trades the items back to the same series of friends for the necessary ingredients to make a brand-new birthday cake. Pham’s tale engages in delightful absurdity, with creativity and subverted expectations in the animal’s barters (when the Bear complains, “These bees won’t leave me alone! If only I had something to swat them away,” Mouse and Little Bird bypass the flyswatter and instead suggest a cork “to close up the hole of the hive”). The narrative alternates between blocks of text and speech bubbles, and the many characters make the story well suited for a readers theater adaptation as well as a readaloud. Pham’s digitally colored pencil illustrations are retro flavored in style and layout; Mouse and Little Bird, in particular, with their pupils nearly as large as their eyeballs, are reminiscent of 1950s illustrative work, while the palette and gently curved spot art will be familiar to Golden Book fans. This will work remarkably well in a storytime setting, and there are plenty of opportunities for curricular tie-ins (particularly prediction and inference) for a school setting. Copyright © 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

St. Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine

The term of doctrine inevitably calls to mind the classic work of Blessed John Henry Newman that has exercised so much influence on Christian thought over the past century and a half. (1) But the eminent nineteenth-century historian was not the inventor of this idea. As Newman himself freely acknowledged, the notion of development has its roots deep in the theological work of St. Vincent of Lerins, a fifth-century resident of a monastery on the Mediterranean coast of Gaul. (2) In our own day, the island of Lerins (now called Saint-Honorat after the first abbot in 410) still boasts the presence of a monastery. But, in its earliest years, Lerins was a citadel of profound theological reflection, giving rise to numerous monk-theologians, among whom was the insightful Vincent. (3) It is my contention that St. Vincent, with his vigorous endorsement of authentic doctrinal development, is an author worthy of retrieval by the contemporary Church. His work can still aid theological and ecumenical advances, even while it shows that the very notion of development is neither a modern idea nor a defensive reaction to the corrosive acids of historical scholarship. On the contrary, the notion of faithful development lies deep within the Church's genetic code. We know little of St. Vincent outside of the fact that he was a monk of Lerins and was, as Gennadius tells us around a.d. 490, learned in Holy Scripture and in church doctrine. His magnum opus, the Commonitorium or Reminder, remains an important monument to his theological acumen despite its unusual career. Although written in 434 (for Vincent tells us he is writing three years after the council of Ephesus, convoked in 431), for a full millennium the great book was enveloped by silence, so that from the sixth to the fifteenth century we do not hear a single word about it. The most likely explanation for this neglect is that the manuscript was buried in archives inaccessible to later thinkers. When the volume was finally rediscovered in the sixteenth century, Vincent's book was hailed by both Catholic and Protestant theologians as a contribution of singular importance. The seventeenth-century Catholic theologian St. Robert Bellarmine described it as a golden book, libellus plane aureus, an evaluation confirmed by the fact that over twenty editions of the Commonitorium appeared in the sixteenth century and another thirteen (along with twenty-one translations from the Latin) in the nineteenth. (4) In recent decades, however, Vincent's reputation has fallen from its prior lofty position, and once again theologians have fallen silent about his work. This neglect has occurred for two principal reasons. First, the monk of Lerins has come to be perceived as a determined opponent of St. Augustine, particularly of the latter's accent on the sovereign priority of grace. Vincent, it is claimed, is a staunch defender of semipelagianism, the idea that man's own disciplined efforts (rather than divine grace) constitute the beginning of salvation. While one needs God's grace to live a virtuous life, a person's first turn to God--the initium fidei--comes about through one's own agency. Even if this allegation is true (and a host of studies debate the issue), the charge does not substantively touch the Commonitorium's orthodoxy, since the precise relationship between grace and free will was a contentious topic in the early Church and received no authoritative clarification until the second council of Orange in 529, long after St. Vincent's death. Further, the grace-free will issue is tangential to Vincent's volume, which is centrally concerned with questions relating to the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity. A second and more substantive reason for Vincent's current eclipse is the alleged unwieldiness of his famous canon or rule, the bright line that the monk of Lerins offers for separating salutary orthodoxy from noxious heresy. Vincent asks: How do Christians who are constantly beset with errors and heresies (and Vincent lists a full roster of them) know the truth? …

Explorer: The Lost Islands: Seven Graphic Stories ed. by Kauz Kibuishi (review)

Reviewed by: Explorer: The Lost Islands: Seven Graphic Stories ed. by Kauz Kibuishi Elizabeth Bush Kibuishi, Kazu, ed. Explorer: The Lost Islands: Seven Graphic Stories. Amulet, 2013. 128p illus. Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4197-0881-7 $19.95 Paper ed. ISBN 978-1-4197-0883-1 $10.95 Ad Gr. 4-7 This companion title to Explorer: The Mystery Boxes (BCCB 6/12) brings back several contributors and introduces a few new artists, who collectively focus on short graphic stories with an island setting. The first three entries are the strongest: Jake Parker offers a charming parable of a village of bunnies who discover that robot assistance is good, but participation in island life is even better. Chrystin Garland contributes a visually stunning morality tale on a girl’s terrifying brush with death at an island carnival, while Jason Caffoe’s tale is a mini adventure in which a castaway boy finds an unusual way to help the ghost and exoskeleton of a giant crab return to the sea. The remaining four stories, which range from standard teen rebellion woes to the efforts of a drifting radio station deejay to hatch a pixie egg, are less involving, unfortunately, and they suffer from flat, fizzled endings or heavy-duty moralism. Variety of style is the real draw of Kibuishi’s graphic anthologies, and tweens reluctant to stray from their comic-book favorites will find the gamut of visual presentations eye-opening (Garland’s jewel-toned, Fantasia-esque extravaganza contrasts sharply with Parker’s Golden Book throwback bunnies.) This short-work exploration of the strange may capture the imagination of kids a year or two shy of Shaun Tan’s Tales from Outer Suburbia (BCCB 3/09). Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

"Advice to the medical students in my service": the rediscovery of a golden book by Jean Hamburger, father of nephrology and of medical humanities.

Jean Hamburger (1909–1992) is considered the founder of the concept of medical intensive care (réanimation médicale) and the first to propose the name Nephrology for the branch of medicine dealing with kidney diseases. One of the first kidney grafts in the world (with short-term success), in 1953, and the first dialysis session in France, in 1955, were performed under his guidance. His achievements as a writer were at least comparable: Hamburger was awarded several important literary prizes, including prix Femina, prix Balzac and the Cino del Duca prize (1979), awarded, among others, to Jorge Luis Borges and Konrad Lorenz.Here we would like to offer a selected reading of a “golden” book, “Conseils aux étudiants en medicine de mon service” (“Advice to the Medical Students in my Service”), the first book dedicated to patient-physician relationship in Nephrology, written when dialysis and transplantation were becoming clinical options (1963). The themes include: the central role of the patient, who should be known by name, profession, life style, and not by disease; the importance of the setting of the care; the need for truth-telling and for leaving hope; the role of research not only in the progression of science, but also in the daily clinical practice.

Where’s Walrus? (review)

Reviewed by: Where’s Walrus? Deborah Stevenson Savage, Stephen . Where’s Walrus?; written and illus. by Stephen Savage . Scholastic, 2011. [32p]. ISBN 978-0-439-70049-8 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R 3-6 yrs. In this wordless picture book, an adventurous walrus slips out of the zoo as the keeper naps, and the enterprising marine mammal leads his would-be captor on a merry chase through the city. After successfully hiding himself amid group after group of people, he finally tips his hand—flipper?—by winning a diving contest; the thoughtful keeper then creates a happier home (and a zoo showpiece) for the walrus by providing him with his own diving board and regulation pool. The visual gag of the walrus’s blending into various lineups merely by adding an accessory (a plume on his head means the zookeeper can’t find him amid the Rockettes, a hard hat is sufficient to disguise him in a line of bricklayers, and it’s the removal of his diver’s bathing cap that finally outs him to his pursuer) is an amusing one, cleverly conveyed, and while there’s not much plot beyond that, it’s still a giggle-worthy and creatively interpreted conceit. The trim illustrations are digitally created, with the smooth regularity and crisp clarity common to that medium, but there’s a generous helping of Little Golden Book retro style that gives a period flavor to the escapade. The palette, carefully limited in each spread, sports muted shades of aqua and navy in addition to its predominant gray, but the creamy white of the matte pages ensures that the spreads stay bright and sunny. The shapes balance sturdy rectangles with the rounder shapes of people and Walrus, with Walrus’ odd-critterout status visually emphasized by the droll Fisher-Price sameness of the humans among whom he’s attempting to secrete himself. The read-it-yourself wordlessness, visual humor, and sheer absurdity of a walrus’ urban adventures will surely appeal to youngsters with a taste for the incongruously silly. [End Page 296] Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Un livre d’or de la chirurgie plastique française

Susruta, Tagliacozzi and Dieffenbach are considered to be the first plastic surgeons. Many French surgeons deserve to figure in the "Golden Book" of the specialty. From Pierre Franco to Paul Tessier, many famous or sometimes unknown surgeons introduced important innovations. In the XVIth century, Pierre Franco realized the first autoplasty of the face as well as the first suture of a cleft lift. This was modified by Mirault, three centuries later. Delpech created at Montpellier a real "school" dedicated to plastic surgery where there was an attempt to oppose a French technique to the success of surgeons from Berlin. Roux was the first (or the second according to Von Graefe) to succeed a cleft palate closure. The first Zplasty was performed by Denonvilliers and Morestin devoted many works to plastic surgery insisting on scar discretion. After World WarII, the main cosmetic procedures were described and performed by French surgeons: Bourguet, Passot, Dartigues… Suzanne Noel was the first female plastic surgeon and the first to perform outpatient operations. After the creation of the French Society of Plastic surgery, Paul Tessier conceived the craniofacial surgery. An important step in cosmetic surgery was liposuction described by Y.G.Illouz. More recently, French teams performed the first allotransplantation of the face and of the upper limbs.

Tai and Karens, Karens and Thais Old and New Cross-Cultural Narratives in and around Chiang Mai (and beyond in Thailand)

This paper discusses changes in the narratives of Sgaw and Pwo Karen regarding their neighbours, in particular Tai or Thai people. Prior to the nineteenth century, Karen narratives comprised a range of non-diachronic accounts teaching the young how to behave, explaining natural phenomena, and accounting for the relatively lower status the Karens found themselves in relation to their neighbours, such as the Tais, who ruled kingdoms. Among the most popular narrative themes was that Karens were orphans who, through their own foolishness, lost direct access to divine wisdom. This began to change in the nineteenth century when Karens began identifying American missionaries as their lost White brother who had the golden book of the god, Ywa, with the result that many Karen became Christians. But this was not the greatest recent change for Karen narratives. As Thailand adopted a countrywide education system in the early-1900s, non-Thai minorities such as the Karen were written out of the narrative. This highly nationalistic system also assimilated many Karens. Instead of continuing to believe themselves orphans, they have taken on Thai attributes and began writing histories of themselves in ways similar to how contemporary Thais write history.

Books Received

Books Received Mark I. West Artist to Artist: 23 Major Illustrators Talk to Children about Their Art. Edited by David Briggs, Courtney Palmer, and Kiffin Steurer. New York: Philomel Books, 2007. A project of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, this anthology features brief essays by twenty-three contemporary illustrators of picture books. Among the illustrators included are Mitsumasa Anno, Quentin Blake, Nancy Ekholm Burkert, Leo Lionni, Jerry Pinkney, Alice Provensen, Maurice Sendak, Chris Van Allsburg, and Rosemary Wells. Each essay includes relevant illustrations. Although these essays are intended for children, there is much in this book that would be of interest to adult readers. A Boy Named Shel: The Life and Times of Shel Silverstein. By Lisa Rogak. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2007. In this lively biography of Shel Silverstein, Lisa Rogak tells the stories behind the creation of Silverstein's famous children's books, including The Giving Tree, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and A Light in the Attic. However, she also covers his adolescent years in Chicago, his career as a cartoonist, his contributions to country music, and his relationship with his daughter, who died at the young age of eleven. Rogak is more interested in covering details of Silverstein's life than she is in discussing his literary works, but for readers who want to know more about the man who penned some of the most popular poems ever written for children, this biography is an excellent place to start. Golden Legacy: How Golden Books Won Children's Hearts, Changed Publishing Forever, and Became an American Icon Along the Way. By Leonard S. Marcus. New York: Golden Books/Random House, 2007. The release of this homage to Golden Books was timed to coincide with the sixty-fifth anniversary of the publication of the first Little Golden Book, which came out in 1942. Leonard Marcus provides a detailed and lavishly illustrated history of the Golden Books. As he explains, some of the major authors and illustrators in the children's literature world got their starts with Golden Books, including Margaret Wise Brown, Feodor Rojankovsky, Richard Scarry, and Garth Williams. Psychoanalytic Responses to Children's Literature. By Lucy Rollin and Mark I. West. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008 (paperback edition). [End Page 207] McFarland published the original hardback edition of this book in 1999, but it is now releasing a paperback edition that is appropriately priced for use as a text in children's literature courses. This book includes psychoanalytic interpretations of numerous children's books, including James and the Giant Peach, Harriet the Spy, The Wind in the Willows, Charlotte's Web, Pinocchio, and The Prince and the Pauper. [End Page 208] Copyright © 2008 Children's Literature Association

‘Casting Anchor in the Harbour of Religion’: The Peregrination of Humfrey Leech (1571–1629)

The title of this paper is taken from a work written in 434 A.D.: the Commonitorium of Vincent of Lerins. Leech considered this a ‘golden book’; we will see later the significance of Vincent for Leech, while Leech's life will perhaps illuminate his own age. Calling himself ‘Peregrinus’, Vincent wrote: ‘whereas I was at one time involved in the manifold and deplorable tempests of secular warfare, I have now at length, under Christ's auspices, cast anchor in the harbour of religion’. His aim was to pass on the teaching of the Fathers and to give guidance ‘for distinguishing the truth of the catholic faith from the falsehood of heretical pravity.’

Jodocus Lommius's Little Golden Book and the History of Diagnostic Semeiology

This paper traces the nature and fortunes of Lommius' Medicinal Observations of 1560, its relationship to ancient authors, its two-and-a-half centuries of fame, and its fall. Originating as an accessible manual of diagnosis for municipal authorities, it emphasized the observable aspects of illness and downplayed the role of humors and hidden causes. As a result, it both heralded and served the trend to symptom-based nosology. Eventually, as disease concepts shifted from symptoms to organs, Lommius was eclipsed by the next epistemic fashion: positivistic organicism. The multiple editions of this work invite us to reconsider the sustained influence of ancient writers, including Celsus, in medical pedagogy and semeiology, as well as the timing and location of the development of nosological concepts of disease. Class considerations and the proclivities of twentieth-century scholarship contributed to the obscurity of this book in our time.

Images of the Woman Reader in Victorian British and American Fiction (review)

Reviewed by: Images of the Woman Reader in Victorian British and American Fiction Jennifer Phegley (bio) Images of the Woman Reader in Victorian British and American Fiction, by Catherine J. Golden; pp. xi + 287. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003, $55.00. Catherine J. Golden'sbookexamines representations of women as readers in nineteenth- century novels and illustrations from England and the United States. The purpose of her study is to "examine concurrent competing visions of the woman reader" in order to "spark further scrutiny of the complexities of our own reading habits as well as those of the Victorians" (14). This book clearly owes much to Kate Flint's The Woman Reader, 1837– 1914 (1993). Like Flint, Golden contends that the woman reader is a "recurrent and multifaceted theme in fiction and book illustration," one that is constantly shifting and impossible to pin down (4). In expressing the need to consider the figure of the woman reader not simply for her reading practices but for her significance as a cultural phenomenon, Flint and Golden intend to move beyond the reader-response approaches of Janice Radway's Reading the Romance (1984), Elizabeth Flynn and Patrocinio Schweickart's Gender and Reading (1986), and Sarah Mills's Gendering the Reader (1994), all of which focus on the ways readers respond to texts rather than on the ways readers are constructed within them at a particular historical moment. Building on Flint's approach, [End Page 171] which studies representations of women in periodicals, scientific treatises, novels, and paintings, Golden seeks to provide a transatlantic context for the phenomena of the woman reader. Golden's book is divided into three parts: a historical overview of women's reading in a transatlantic context; analyses of fictional representations of women's reading, particularly women as model readers, prophetic readers, intellectual readers, and corruptible readers; and an exploration of the role book illustrations play in constructing various "types" of women readers—isolated, interrupted, social, and dutifully domestic. Golden frames her book with an overview of the intense anxiety surrounding "the reading habit," particularly for women. She rightly identifies the debate over women readers as a transatlantic phenomenon that was spurred by advances in printing technologies, the expansion of the reading public, the wider availability of educational institutions for women, and the rise of women's reading clubs and literary societies. Golden outlines a variety of arguments for and against women's reading. These include claims that women should read for educational purposes, socialization, and individual enrichment; it was also argued that biological and medical factors affecting women could lead to potentially dangerous side effects of reading, including over-consumption of fiction, addiction, immoral behavior, and increased sexual appetite. Golden claims that "The polar ideologies that fueled the reading debate form a collage of women readers. Dire images of girls consuming novels in secret and dying with diseased minds appear alongside inspiring pictures of women reading independently, in clubs, or in the family parlour, gaining confidence and valuable life lessons" (42). Golden examines such contradictory representations of women readers in fictional works including Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868), Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (1814), Mary Elizabeth Braddon's The Doctor's Wife (1864), Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), Mona Caird's The Daughters of Danaus (1894), George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (1860), and Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (1881), and in illustrations for books such as Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures Under Ground (1864), Charles Dickens's David Copperfield (1850), Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (1892), and William Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1848). Golden focuses as much on the books women characters read as she does on their reading bodies and minds. Her analysis thus charts an interesting but sometimes unsatisfying genealogy of the books with which the characters are engaged. We learn, for example, about the history and resonances of Jane Eyre's idiosyncratic reading of Thomas Bewick's History of British Birds (1804), Jo March's use of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678) as a touchstone, and Maggie Tulliver's interpretation of Daniel Defoe's The History of the Devil (rev. 1819...

Blood Mother/Milk Mother: Breastfeeding, the Family, and the State in Antonio De Guevara's "Relox De Principes (Dial of Princes)"

IN The Origin of the Milky Way Tintoretto paints Juno's lactating breasts creating the galaxy (Figure 1). In this scene, Jupiter attempts to guarantee the immortality of his son born of the mortal Alcmene by holding Hercules to suck on the sleeping Juno's breast. She awakens however, and her spilled milk gives rise to the Milky Way and to lilies on earth. While this painting points to the fascination lactating women held for artists of the day and to the power to create and nurture life, it also problematizes the role of the father at this stage of the child's life. Indisputably, breastfeeding is an area exclusively reserved for women.1 Yet, in this work and many of the Renaissance treatises on how to raise a family, the father appears as a persuasive force in determining the child's best interests. How does this authoritative figure exercise his dominant role within the family structure? How is he able to govern the family politic even at the stage when the child's principal needs can only be fulfilled by the mother, either blood mother or milk mother (a term used to designate the relationship between wet nurse and child)? Is it possible that breastfeeding forced men to concede at least some of the child-rearing authority to women and extend to them an independence that in other developmental stages was not granted? In the Relox de Principes (Dial of Princes), Antonio de Guevara attempts to define the father's role in the traditional family structure. While the rules he lays down for marriage, pregnancy, and the child's education clearly point to the male as the authority figure whose decisions are incontestable, Guevara struggles to locate the father in an equally important role during the child's breastfeeding years. Antonio de Guevara (1481-1545) is an overlooked Renaissance figure.2 Bishop of Guadix in Granada and later of Mondonedo in Galicia, commissioner for the Inquisitor General, official chronicler and travelling companion of Charles I (Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire), he formed part of the main political circles of the day. Guevara was also a prolific writer, whose writing played an important role in the development of Castilian literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and was admired and translated all over Europe in his lifetime. In 1529 Relox de principes, which is an expanded version of his already famous Libro aureo de Marco Aurelio (Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius), is published and immediately becomes the favorite book of Charles I and later of his son, Philip II. In fact, according to Quentin Skinner, following the Bible the Relox is the most widely read book in sixteenth-century Europe (215). Guevara's manual for the education of princes was first published at a time when Charles I was struggling to unify Spain, a country whose customs, coinage, language and political institutions varied from one territory to the next. The Relox is divided into three books. The first explains how to be a successful Christian prince; the second, how the male reader should interact with his wife and raise his children; and the third describes the virtues of a prince. Located between two books dealing with the prince's role in governing the state, Book II's position within the text points to Guevara's attempt to link the needs of the state with the needs of the family. It is only natural that Guevara would take a patriarchal view of the state and family and that he would feel entitled to speak on those subjects with authority because he himself was part of a patriarchal structure in a church that held enormous sway in Spain. The Holy Office of the Inquisition-an institution that was an instrument of royal policy and politically subject to the crown-regulated matters on family interaction. Although Alfonso el Sabio's Siete Partidas included laws that regulated family structures, including the role of the wet nurse and characteristics she should possess, official public policy on family values yielded to the provincial fueros. …

In response to: Professor Cassileth's manuscript on “Alternative and Complementary Cancer Treatments,” featured in The Oncologist 1996;1:173-179.

Abstract Alternative and complementary therapies differ importantly, and the distinction between the two is crucial for clinical oncologists. “Alternative” or unproven therapies are treatments used independent of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. They can be dangerous directly and also by delaying patients' receipt of mainstream care. In contrast, complementary therapies typically are adjuncts to mainstream medicine. They can provide symptom control and noninvasive palliation with minimal side effects, improve patients' well-being and enhance cancer medicine. Complementary therapies represent a desired addition and balance to technologically sophisticated cancer care.

Who, What, When, and Where: A Review of the Golden Book of the Olympic Games

Who, What, When, and Where: A Review of the Golden Book of the Olympic Games

Literature Is Not All That Glitters

Literature Is Not All That Glitters Hernan Vera (bio) and Carol Reinermann (bio) Bibliography of the Little Golden Books, compiled by Dolores B. Jones. Bibliographies and Indexes in American Literature, Number. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987. In 1987, Western Publishing celebrated the printing of the billionth Little Golden Book by reissuing the imprint's best-seller, The Poky Little Puppy, by Janette Sebring Lowrey, which was among the first twelve titles that inaugurated this series in September 1942. The marketing success of Little Golden Books stands in stark contrast, however, to its failure to be accepted as serious children's literature. Little Golden Books are regularly ignored by reviewers, librarians, and teachers. As Selma Lanes points out in "All That's Golden is Not Glitter," one of the very few essays to have been written about the books, they are dismissed as not being books at all but, rather, mere "products" or "merchandise," and, even worse, artistic "treachery" or literary "junk food." Though more than eight hundred different titles in over a dozen languages have been published in the series, making them, arguably, among the most accessible children's books in the world, only one has received any special recognition from the children's book community. I Can Fly by Ruth Krauss (illustrated by Mary Blair), which was designated an "Honor Book" in the New York Herald Tribune's 1951 Spring Book Festival. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the first bibliography of the Little Golden Books, an indispensable tool for research on this series, did not appear in print until 1987. Perhaps the major difficulty of the bibliographer's task arises from the sheer popularity of the series and the many editions that a number of the books have gone through in their publication histories. But Jones's Bibliography provides a comprehensive list of all Little Golden Book titles from the beginning of the series in 1942 through 1985. Included are the titles issued in the Little Golden Book format itself as well as those issued in the various subseries that have appeared over the years, such as Giant Little Golden [End Page 208] Books, Little Golden Activity Books, and Walt Disney Books. The bibliography contains exhaustive information, along with numerous indexes that help the researcher to negotiate the often complex and extensive publication histories of many of the Little Golden Books and their relatives. These multiple listings make it possible to locate a group of works by the same author or illustrator quickly and also to determine the order of publication of a sequence of books. One of the factors that has sustained the commercial success of the Little Golden Books has always been their inexpensiveness; they sold for a quarter in 1942, and the highest priced volume in 1988 was still only $1.29. In spite of their low price, however, the production quality of the books has remained relatively high, since basic costs weigh less on each copy than on those of smaller editions. With their sturdy covers and bright illustrations, Little Golden Books are designed for younger children; but, as Selma Lanes has noted, they have an immediate appeal to all ages—in part because, over the years, some of our better illustrators and authors (among them, Margaret Wise Brown, Trina Schart Hyman, Ruth Krauss, P. L. Travers, Leonard Weisgard, and Garth Williams) have contributed works in the series. By examining Little Golden Books as cultural artifacts, we can identify and explore those ideas which have been passed along to a large proportion of the population—children—at stages in their development when they are most malleable and sensitive. Because these books are largely commercial undertakings (unlike folk and fairy tales) they appeal to what their publishers believe is a relatively simple, conventionally accepted and therefore salable moral standard. Compare, for instance, the anarchic lack of rewards for virtue in "Little Red Riding Hood" with the 1945 Little Golden Book Tootle the Engine (text by Gertrude Crampton and pictures by Tibor Gergely). In The Lonely Crowd, David Riesman analyzed Tootle the Engine in order to demonstrate how many important attitudes and values can be transmitted through such seemingly unimportant literature for children. As countless...

Wizards of Oz

Wizards of Oz Jerome Griswold (bio) The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, pictures by W. W. Denslow, edited by Michael Patrick Hearn. New York: Critical Heritage Series (Schocken Books), 1983. The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, pictures by Michael Hague. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982. Others might say what I say: Michael Hearn taught me how to read The Wizard of Oz. After the book, the place to turn was Hearn's The Annotated Wizard of Oz (Clarkson Potter). Until now the next step was to find the works listed in that volume's bibliography. Schocken's new critical edition of The Wizard makes this last step obsolete. In place of my sheaf of photocopies, I can now substitute this single volume which collects in one place all the criticism I had to acquire through hours of labor in the library. Here are most of the works listed in the earlier bibliography together with some new additions (for example, Brian Attebery's section on Oz in his Fantasy Tradition in American Literature). Those familiar with Oz criticism will find many standard works here: the anecdotal and personal essays (usually of first encounters with Oz) by James Thurber, Gore Vidal, Ray Bradbury, and Russel Nye; the treatises by Wagenknecht, Bewley, Sackett, and Littlefield which argue (much too seriously, in my opinion) that Oz is a utopia. There are two sections containing material fresh to me: one prints four essays that chronicle the petulant rejection of Oz books by librarians; the other section contains both an important essay by Baum ("Modern Fairy Tales") and Hearn's own intelligent gloss on it ("L. Frank Baum and the Modernized Fairy Tale"). Finally, there is one thing I missed: for nearly everyone (except, perhaps, subscribers to The Baum Bugle) the book and the MGM movie are so inextricably entwined in memory that they seem like, say, two versions of "Little Red Riding Hood"; I would have been pleased to have found an essay or two about them. [End Page 205] Schocken's Wizard is the first volume of their new Critical Heritage Series which, apparently, will follow the pattern of Riverside's Critical Editions—it will print the text followed by a collection of commentaries. Without the text and the pictures, the volume would make a handy casebook; as it is, the book belongs on the scholar's and enthusiast's bookshelf. Its price ($19.95) will probably prevent its adoption in the classroom, unless an inexpensive paper edition is made available; even then, teachers may prefer Dover's edition of The Wizard which has color plates of Denslow's pictures instead of the black-and-white reproductions that appear here. My opinions are less decided in the case of the new Wizard of Oz illustrated by Michael Hague. So, let me simply chronicle my reactions to it as an individual still in the process of making up his mind. First, there was resistance. My images of the book's characters and landscapes are enduring ones that have been given me by the MGM movie and Denslow's pictures, and who was Hague to upset this? Wasn't he the presumptuous fellow who wandered into the domain of Arthur Rackham and Ernest Shepard to give us "new and improved" illustrations for The Wind in the Willows? But then an urge for fairmindedness set in. Honestly, didn't I find many of the pictures lovely and interesting? Was I resisting the charm of the book like an old fogey with idées fixes? Isn't it easy to snigger at the new and dismiss the work as a Golden Book writ large? Then a compromise suggested itself. Perhaps Hague was someone like Mercer Mayer when the latter did a "Beauty and the Beast." Both were yeomen with considerable gifts, still learning, but doing far too much in the business of illustrating to acquire depth. After patronizing, it occurred to me that what I actually felt was that something was missing. Whimsy had always been a part of Denslow's pictures (and an even greater part of the work of John R. Neill in the subsequent Oz books), but it was...

Cricket (review)

Reviewed by: Cricket J. C. Furnas (bio) Cricket Volume 1, Number 1, 01, 1973(Pilot issue: regular publication commences September 1973). To be published monthly except June, July and August. Annual subscription, $10.00; single copy, $1.50. Open Court Publishing Company, 1058 Eighth Street, La Salle, Illinois 61301. A man recommending this magazine to me said it was the first high-standard magazine for children since St. Nicholas dwindled away in the 1930's. Having [End Page 229] been reared on St. Nicholas in its great pre-1920 phase, I had some misgivings when beginning to make Cricket's acquaintance. I lost them halfway through. The thing is downright enjoyable. As it happens, research for my own work has recently taken me through a run of St. Nicholas in representative good years. For my money, Cricket assays considerably better—level of quality better sustained, art work handling a wider variety of idioms, editorial imagination expertly eclectic and cordially amusing without too much cuteness, as in the little drawings-with-dialogue at the bottoms of pages in which crickets and assorted fellow insects discuss what goes on in the matter printed above. Comparison must allow for the age levels of Cricket's intended audience not going beyond twelve, I should judge, whereas St. Nicholas aimed at youngsters well into their teens. Ordinarily that difference would have been to Cricket's disadvantage, dooming its content to easy-steps-for-little-feet mawkishness. Actually zest and thump and stimulating reachings toward growth-experience come through on a most gratifying number of pages. Difference in editorial policy is diametric. St. Nicholas relied on previously unpublished material. One reason for Cricket's high quality and a good omen for its future is that most of its content consists of extracts from very good books for children published over the past few decades. Such cream-skimming can be very rewarding, and works out as well here for children as it did in good reading for adults in the old Golden Book magazine of pre-World War II days. A child nibbling at this first Cricket will find friends in T. S. Eliot, Isaac Bashevis Singer . . . and feel them as friends with the same spontaneities as the less augustly renowned but mostly admirable writers of the rest of the content. Another good omen is the harkback to St. Nicholas in "The Cricket League" department asking readers to do stories or poems on . . . well, this month on "anything spooky or scary: ghosts, skeletons, witches, bats . . . hoots, boos, sighs, grins . . . " or drawings in that same mood in any color so long as it's black. The St. Nicholas League of my day was print-proving ground for Edna St. Vincent Millay, Stephen Vincent Benét, Rachel Carson, and so on. Could be this time, too. J. C. Furnas J. C. Furnas, prolific writer of volumes and articles on social history, is best known to those in children's literature for his Voyage to Windward: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson. Copyright © 1973 Francelia Butler

The Prophet Louis Ducos Du Hauron and His Marvelous Moving Picture Machine

Ducos du Hauron was a remarkable man by any standard: photographer; inventor in the field of color reproduction, 3-D photography, and motion pictures; pianist of concert level. He was born December 8, 1837, in Langon, Department of Gironde, France. His father, being a low-level career officer of the government, had to move his family about a good deal. These uprootings and the fact that Louis had poor health (something which handicapped him throughout life) did little to help his formal education. Much of this was, indeed, private instruction at home. He did not take a university degree. He died at Agen Perigord (109 kilometers from Toulouse) on August 31, 1920, at the age of 83. Ducos wrote many papers, most on 3-color reproduction, including one on reducing 3-color to 2-color. During his lifetime, he was granted seventeen French patents. Most of these are related to color reproduction, but the list includes one for a windmill, one on stereoscopy, several on anamorphic optical devices, and two related to motion pictures. The second, #259,399, applied for August 29, 1896, was titled New optical combinations, which eliminate entirely all intermittance of lighting in photographic moving pictures (tableaux). Many medals and prizes came to him, among them: Paris exposition silver medal (1878); Paris exposition diploma of the Golden Book (1889); Janssen medal of the French Photographic Society (1897); and Officer of the Academy (1899). In 1912 he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor on the occasion of the Expositions of Rome, Dresden, and Turin. Now to the matter in hand: the patent of 1864. Five references to Ducos, at least three of which are likely to be seen by anyone interested in the early history of the motion picture, are what set me to the task of finding out more about him: Gordon Hendricks,

Review: The Giant Golden Book of Biology, by Gerald Ames and Rose Wyler

Review: <i>The Giant Golden Book of Biology</i>, by Gerald Ames and Rose Wyler

The golden book of chemistry experiments (Brent, Robert)

The golden book of chemistry experiments (Brent, Robert)