26 September 2006

Robert Lawson's Revere

In the interest of efficiency, I'm using today's entry to point to the postings at Boston 1775 about Mr. Revere and I, by Robert Lawson, and what it says about the American Revolution.

Robert Lawson was one of the giants of 20th-century American children's literature, winner of both a Newbery Medal and a Caldecott Medal. He also displayed the biases of his time, particularly in the portrayals of indigenous peoples in Captain Kidd's Cat, I Discover Columbus, and They Were Strong and Good. The first two books seem to have gone out of print while the latter lives on, probably because it was one of his Medal winners, but its faults become more obvious. Of course, we can't expect an American born in 1892 and writing about his own ancestors to display the sort of understandings that comfort us today, however well he drew and wrote.

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