Over the years, I've written about children's books that were revised.
A few days ago I compiled links about revised books (some are mine and some are from others who work in children's literature) and inserted them in my post about A Fine Dessert. Today, I'm putting them on a stand-alone page. If you know of other changes, do let me know. This set of links will eventually appear at Teaching for Change.
We are rarely told why these books were changed, and we're rarely told when the change itself is made. Some changes are no-change, really, because the ideology of the book (writer?) is still there, beneath the words that get changed. Some changes--like the ones in picture books--are significant. All of them are, nonetheless, important to know about.
- Apr 21, 2009. They Were Strong and Good for 1940 by Peter Sieruta at Collecting Children's Books
- Nov 1, 2009. Edit(s) to 1935 edition of Little House on the Prairie by Debbie Reese at American Indians in Children's Literature
- Sep 19, 2010. Censoring Ideology (about Doctor Dolittle) by Philip Nel at Nine Kinds of Pie
- Sep 22, 2010. Social Change and Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Everby Lisa Wade at Sociological Images
- Jan 10, 2011. Changing "Injun" to "Indian" in Tom Sawyer by Debbie Reese at American Indians in Children's Literature
- Apr 3, 2013. Joan Walsh Anglund's The Brave Cowboy by Debbie Reese at American Indians in Children's Literature
- Jan 5, 2014: Travers (author of Mary Poppins): "I Lived with the Indians..." by Debbie Reese at American Indians in Children's Literature
- Oct 1, 2015: Big News about Hoffman's Amazing Grace by Debbie Reese at American Indians in Children's Literature
- Nov 20, 2015. A Beloved Classic: 95% Less Offensive by Elizabeth Bird at School Library Journal
- Nov 11, 2015. Ladybug Girl in Headdress? Gone! by Debbie Reese at American Indians in Children's Literature
- Nov 13, 2015. Revisions to The Case for Loving by Debbie Reese at American Indians in Children's Literature
This weekend at the Children's Literature Symposium at Florida State University-Sarasota, I'll be giving a talk about the illustrations of Indians in books that won the Caldecott Medal. I've been doing research on the books, reading some of them for the first time, and re-reading others.
One that I am re-reading is Robert Lawson's They Were Strong and Good. Published in 1940, it won the Caldecott that year. The book opens with a Foreword that reads:
This is the story of my mother and my father and of their fathers and mothers.
Most of it I heard as a little boy, so there may be many mistakes; perhaps I have forgotten or mixed up some of the events and people. But that does not really matter, for this is not alone the story of my parents and grandparents, it is the story of the parents and grandparents of most of us who call ourselves Americans.
So, Lawson tells us,
They Were Strong and Good is a family history of sorts. His disclaimer is interesting---it leaves me with many questions. The cover of the book shows us his parents and grandparents:
and the end pages (pages just inside the front and back cover) show us the same people. This image is from Peter D. Sieruta's blog, Collecting Children's Books, where he's got an essay on They Were Strong and Good. His essay title is
"They Were Strong and Good Enough for 1940." In 1994 a revised edition was published. In the revised one, the phrase "Indians--tame ones" was changed. The phrase "tame ones" was omitted. That wasn't the only part of the book that was changed. Its language with respect to African Americans was also changed. Beverly Slapin
wrote about the changes a few years ago, and Jean Mendoza
shared some pointed questions about the original text. Please take time to read what they said.
As I studied
They Were Strong and Good yesterday, I honed in on this page:
The text that goes with the page places that image in Minnesota. In the foreground are an Indian man and woman who have been given a pie and are being chased away. But who is chasing them? The young girl behind the African American woman is Lawson's mother. Lawson was born in 1892, so I'm guessing the year for that story is roughly 1872, assuming his mother gave birth to him when she was 20 years old. So... Minnesota in 1870s. Slaves? That gave me pause, so I started digging in to Minnesota history and slavery. Right away I found
I might just be processing this wrong, but it looks like you assume the scene takes place in the 1870s, and yet also assume the African-American woman was enslaved. That seems pretty unlikely, regardless of the region (although goodness knows that economic and racist practices in the South kept slavery alive in all but name for many African-Americans). Given the probable date, what seems much more likely is that she's a paid domestic servant.
You could be right, Laughingrat. Lawson didn't call her a slave. That was my question. I started to dig in and saw the work Lehman is doing. It seemed to confirm my thought that she was a slave, but I've got to dig in some more.
It might be possible to figure out how old Lawson's mother was, too, if the genealogy is recorded anywhere (census records and so forth).
According to http://books.google.com/books?id=PtjKpgdZS00C&pg=PA76, his father was a "young teenager" when the Civil War broke out, which would make him anything up to 44 when Robert was born. So perhaps it's not so unlikely that his mother was more like 30 at his birth rather than 20.
Helen Schinske
It is a great story for the little kids about the grandfather and grandmother. It is a good way to let them know their ancestors. I would prefer to tell this also to my nephews and niece.