Ezra Jack Keats, No Starving Artist

A couple of weeks ago I took a week off regular blogging and reposted edited pieces from an old series of posts on author/illustrators of classic children’s literature. There’s one more, and it didn’t seem right to leave it languishing alone in the archives, so I’m reposting it today. 

Ezra Jack Keats was the first author, some say, to write children’s picture books that take place in an urban setting. I don’t know if he was the first one to give us picture books featuring African-American children as main characters, but he would certainly be one of the first. Do you know Peter, the little boy of The Snow Day and other Ezra Jack Keats stories?

To us, Keats’ Caldecott Award winning The Snowy Day seems like the most uncontroversial of children’s stories, but it wasn’t without critics when it was first published in the early 1960s. The primary complaint was that the book contained stereotypical black characters. I don’t see it. Yes, little Peter’s family lives in the inner city, but Ezra Jack Keats was born and raised in Brooklyn, and lived there almost his whole life. He was simply using the setting he knew best.

Ezra Jack Keats was born to Polish Jewish immigrants on March 11, 1916. His name at birth was Jacob Ezra Katz, but he changed it after WWII because he was afraid anti-Semitism would keep him from succeeding as an artist.

Young Jack was always drawing and his parents were very proud of his artwork, but his father was also concerned that he would need to learn another skill in order to earn an income. So Mr. Katz bought tubes of paint to bring home for his son, but told him he had received them from a starving artist in exchange for a bowl of soup in the coffee shop where he worked. Later, Jack Keats said his father had been “[m]y silent admirer and supplier. He had been torn between his dread of my leading a life of hardship and his real pride in my work.”

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Beatrix Potter, Unconventional Woman

Another repost from a an old series of posts on a few of the author/illustrators of classic children’s literature.

Although Beatrix Potter’s upbringing might sound a little odd to us, for her time and social class, it was fairly typical. Both her mother and father inherited a fortune, and although her father was a lawyer, he didn’t work much because he had no need to earn an income. Beatrix lived a rather isolated life, playing only with her younger brother. She had no formal schooling, but was educated at home by governesses, which meant, in Beatrix’s case, that she was mostly left alone to pursue her own interests.

Beatrix was eight years old when she sketched these caterpillars It’s in her interests that she shows us she wasn’t an ordinary girl. She and her brother grew up surrounded by animals and plants—dogs, rabbits, frogs, salamanders, and more as pets, and large gardens and moors for roaming. They spent their time together studying, sketching—and even dissecting—the birds and animals and insects they found. When I was younger, I didn’t enjoy typical girl activities, either, but little Beatrix Potter took things a lot further than I thought to go. I can’t help but admire her for that.

As she grew into young adulthood, Beatrix’s passion became mycology, the study of fungi. She collected fungi, dissecting, painting, and drawing them. Her hope was that her detailed illustrations would be used in a textbook, but that didn’t happen. She also developed a theory about the germination of mold spores, and her uncle Henry, who was a noted chemist, presented a paper she wrote on this to the Linnaean Society of London. Her theory was rejected out of hand by the all-male society, because, according to every biography I’ve read, she was an amateur and a woman.

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Louis Slobodkin, Sculptor and Storyteller

Another repost from a an old series of posts on a few of the author/illustrators of classic children’s literature.

Louis Slobodkin was the illustrator of one of my favorite children’s books, The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes. Before he was an illustrator of children’s books, Slobodkin was a sculptor.

His statue of the young Abe Lincoln (right) was done for the 1939 New York World’s Fair, but it was never exhibited there. Instead, 

when the Slobodkins arrived at the Fair on opening day to inspect the installation, they were informed by a doorman: “‘Taint here any more.” The shocking word quickly went round that workmen had demolished the statue on order of Theodore Hayes, Executive Assistant to the Federal Commissioner for the World’s Fair, Edward Flynn. Five days later, Slobodkin told The New York Times that, according to a source in Washington, his sculpture had indeed been set upon with sledgehammers, reportedly because a lady who “lunched with Flynn” had not found it to be in “good taste.” (source)

It’s hard for me to imagine, looking back, what it was about Slobodkin’s young Abe that the woman found not in good taste. What could it be? That it was a bit exaggerated, and not entirely realistic? And why would anyone think it was a good idea to destroy it? I feel better knowing that the destruction of the Rail Joiner caused plenty of controversy, even drawing Eleanor Roosevelt, who was disheartened by what happened to the statue, into the fray.

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