Astronomy as a Moral Issue

Confirming how you can find anything on the internet, here are pages about unscientific depictions of the Moon in children's books, and another page of accurate depictions. Clement Hurd's pictures for Goodnight Moon rise to the top of the class.

Meanwhile, over at Apostrophe Catastrophe, the debate rages on about Margaret Wise Brown's missing comma and whether "goodnight" should be two words.

Runaway Bunny source material

Last month I wrote of my fondness for The Runaway Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown, with pictures by Clement Hurd, over more recent “I Love You More Than That Other Book” books for new parents and young children.

In his 1992 biography of Brown, Leonard S. Marcus writes that the inspiration for this book came from a Provençal love song. The lines he quotes are:

If you pursue me I shall become a fish in the water
And I shall escape you.
If you become a fish, I shall become an eel.
If you become an eel, I shall become a fox
And I shall escape you.
If you become a fox, I shall become a hunter,
And I shall hunt you...

The closest equivalent in the British tradition seems to be a ballad called “The Twa Magicians,” collected by Francis James Child in the late 1800s.

The lady stands in her bower door,
As straight as willow wand;
The blacksmith stood a little forebye,
Wi hammer in his hand.

“Weel may ye dress ye, lady fair,
Into your robes o' red;
Before the morn at this same time,
I'll gain your maidenhead.”

“Awa, awa, ye coal-black smith,
Woud ye do me the wrang
To think to gain my maidenhead,
That I hae kept sae lang!”

Then she has hadden up her hand,
And she swam by the mold,
“I wudna be a blacksmith's wife
For the full o' a chest o' gold.

“I'd rather I were dead and gone,
And my body laid in grave,
Ere a rusty stock o' coal-black smith
My maidenhead shoud have.”

But he has hadden up his hand,
And he sware by the mass,
“I'11 cause ye be my light leman
For the hauf o' that and less.”

[FIRST CHORUS:]
O bide, lady, bide,
And aye he bade her bide;
The rusty smith your leman shall be,
For a' your muckle pride.

Then she became a turtle dow,
To fly up in the air,
And he became another dow,
And they flew pair and pair.
[FIRST CHORUS]

She turn’d hersell into an eel,
To swim into yon burn,
And he became a speckled trout,
To gie the eel a turn.
[FIRST CHORUS]

Then she became a duck, a duck,
To puddle in a peel,
And he became a rose-kaim’d drake,
To gie the duck a dreel.
[FIRST CHORUS]

She turn’d hersell into a hare,
To rin upon yon hill,
And he became a gude grey-hound,
And boldly he did fill.
[FIRST CHORUS]

Then she became a gay grey mare,
And stood in yonder slack,
And he became a gilt saddle,
And sat upon her back.

[SECOND CHORUS:]
Was she wae, he held her sae,
And still he bade her bide;
The rusty smith her leman was,
For a' her muckle pride.

Then she became a het girdle,
And he became a cake,
And a' the ways she turnd hersell,
The blacksmith was her make.
[SECOND CHORUS]

She turn’d hersel’ into a ship,
To sail out ower the flood;
He ea'ed a nail intill her tail,
And syne the ship she stood.
[SECOND CHORUS]

Then she became a silken plaid,
And stretch’d upon a bed,
And he became a green covering,
And gain’d her maidenhead.
[SECOND CHORUS]

Brown might not have known of this version or any like it. Still, her book's source material seems to have been at bottom about snobbishness and rape, and all the magical transformations laced with sexual innuendo. But she produced a reassuring bedtime story out of it.

Incidentally, Clement Hurd’s picture-book work, along with his wife’s and son’s, is on exhibit at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum through 23 July.

Runaway sales and Runaway Bunny

Canada's National Post ran an article this month on Love You Forever, by Robert Munsch, illustrated by Sheila McGraw. I'm too old to have had this book as a child, and, since I'm not a parent, no copies have been pressed on me by eager friends and relatives. I know Love You Forever from checking it out in bookstores and from hearing it periodically described by children's-book fans as either wonderfully affecting or creepy and maudlin.

I found the Post's article interesting on multiple counts. I hadn't known that Munsch also wrote The Paper Bag Princess. I thought it significant that the manuscript disquieted his usual publisher; this book wasn't an easy sell. Finally, the National Post states that ten million copies of the book have been sold in Canada--a country with only slightly over thirty-two million people.

Love You Forever is part of a genre that I recall hearing an editor (quoting her publisher) call the "I Love You More Than That Other Book" books. Though they take the form of kids' picture books, these titles rack up big sales numbers as gifts for adults. Not that children don't respond to their words if they sense those words have emotional meaning for the adults in their lives. But these books offer words for parents. Love You Forever, Maryann Cusimano Love and Satomi Ichikawa's You Are My I Love You, Nancy Tillman's On the Night You Were Born, and other examples are in the parents' insistent voices.

All of which made me think about the "I Love You More..." book that I grew up with: grandma of them all, Margaret Wise Brown's The Runaway Bunny, with pictures by Clement Hurd. Why does The Runaway Bunny work so well as a story for children? [And of course it must be better than more recent books; did I mention that I grew up with it?] The mother rabbit is just as loving as the mothers in those other books. She's just as persistent as the mother in Love You Forever, who climbs into her grown son's bedroom at night (that's the part some people find maudlin and creepy).

What's different is that the young bunny, not the momma, drives the action. The bunny tries out autonomy by running away, or at least pretending to. The bunny exercises his imagination by dreaming up new hiding-places, producing fantasy fiction for toddlers. And yet the reassuring mother rabbit is always there.