Mr. Bunny Goes to Washington

I spent much of last night flip-flopping on whether to attend the Anti-Inaugural Ball. But any anti-Bush racket is worth participating in, and so I ventured out solo in the cold and ended up at Judson Memorial Church. Witnessed red-state vs blue-state wrestling, drag versions of nuns dancing on the altar, and a lesbian version of Tammy Wynette singing “She put the cunt back in country…” Yep, in a church. That’s how blue NYC can get.

Shocker! A children’s book writer getting political! Shouldn’t I have spent the night cuddling with my teddy bear?

It seems an unspoken rule that writing for children be apolitical, and so many assume that we who write these stories are apolitical as well, to the point that we are living in Whimsy-land. In the Hunt-edited Children’s Literature: An Illustrated History, the point is made that children’s literature of the post-World War I era was quite escapist, and this provided a stark contrast to the Modernist movement that was sweeping “adult” literature. Case in point: Winnie-the-Pooh came out the same year as The Great Gatsby.

But as Leonard Marcus’s Ways of Telling reveals, writers for children (specifically here picture book artists) are aware of the world, and have very complicated thought-processes. Marcus’s interview questions steered the responses away from clichés, and so we get quite unexpected stories. I loved the Sendak interview, of course, but I was most surprised by the voices of James Marshall and William Steig – they struck me as beautifully tragic, though humor masks most of their troubles.

Many of the writers Marcus interviewed lived through personal and historical turbulences, and true, very few of these troubles surface in their work for children. But to hear them speak doubts about the world, to express criticisms of themselves and others gives their work another dimension. Perhaps we readers choose to see their works as one-dimensional, whimsical, when in fact, something tumultuous is hidden underneath? Or could it be that the bigger machinery that produces children’s literature demands books for the young to be kept shallow, uncritical? Or critical only to a certain extent, because we assume children can handle oh-so-little, being such innocent lambs?

Okay – I’m guilty of such short-sightedness. Only lately have I seen that children’s literature is not always about play…or rather, I’ve come to realize that play can be political, an expression of childhood’s power. This past year, I’ve been relearning respect for children and children’s literature, and it’s frightening how much I have to unlearn…Michael Rosen’s poetry is the primary agent of my liberation. Ack! It will take another blog entry to explain this. I’m exhausted…these blue-state balls can get pretty wild.

(True story: I was at the subway on the way to class when I saw Leonard Marcus waiting for the train. I was too embarrassed to introduce myself, but I stuffed myself in the same boxcar that he got into, in the hopes that either I would muster up the courage to strike a conversation with him, or he would recognize me from CLNE 2004 and he would strike up a conversation with me. But then I had to get off. When the doors were closing, we kinda caught one another’s eyes and I just assumed he recognized me. I shouted, “Are you Leonard Marcus?” He nodded, and tried to keep the doors from closing with one hand. But the doors slid shut anyway, and I just waved and shouted, “I love your work!” I’m pretty sure I made his day, teehee.)

(Another true story: I saw Art Spiegelman walking down E 8th St. one afternoon. His hair was shorter than I remembered, but I confirmed it was him because I saw a sketchbook stuck at his back pocket. Awesome! But of course, me too shy to say hello. What if he bit my head off? My heart would have been broken.)

Last Word:

I’ve just let them out!
Pick up your pen, and start,
Think of the things you know – then
Let the words dance from your pen.

Leslie Norris
From The Thin Prison