by Alison Lurie
NOTES
FOREWORD
1. Lurie, Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups.
2. Applegate, The Predatord, p. 14.
3. Ibid., p. 84.
THE UNDERDUCKLING: HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
1. Hans Christian Andersen, The Fairy Tale of My Life, quoted in Wullschlager, Hans Christian Andersen, p. 20.
2. William Bloch, quoted in Wullschlager, Hans Christian Andersen, p. 7.
3. Wullschlager, Hans Christian Andersen, p. 4.
4. Ibid., p. 135.
5. Andersen, Fairy Tales and Legends, p. 355.
6. Ibid., p. 205.
7. H. C. Andersen’s Levnedsbog, edited by H. Topsoe-Jensen, quoted in Wullschlager, Hans Christian Andersen, p. 29.
8. In eighteenth-century France, however, there had been a vogue among aristocratic women for elaborate fairy tales of the sort associated with Charles Perrault and Madame d’Aulnoy, the author of “Beauty and the Beast.”
9. Andersen, Fairy Tales and Legends, p. 107.
10. Edvard Collin, quoted in Wullschlager, Hans Christian Andersen, p. 109.
11. Letter to Edvard Collin, quoted in Wullschlager, Hans Christian Andersen, p. 110.
12. Andersen, Fairy Tales and Legends, p. 69.
13. Ibid., pp. 273–74.
14. Wullschlager, Hans Christian Andersen, pp. 70–71.
15. Journal for May 4, 1841, quoted in Wullschlager, Hans Christian Andersen, p. 200.
16. Wullschlager, Hans Christian Andersen, p. 6.
17. Ibid., p. 34.
18. Ibid., p. 215.
19. Ibid., pp. 49–50.
20. Ibid., p. 179.
21. Ibid., p. 5.
22. Andersen, Fairy Tales and Legends, p. 116.
23. Ibid., p. 226.
LITTLE WOMEN AND BIG GIRLS: LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
1. Alcott, Little Women, p. 179.
2. See Brumberg, “Something Happens to Girls,” p. 30.
3. Alcott, Little Women, p. 227.
4. Ibid., p. 228.
5. Ibid., p. 390.
6. Ibid., p. 267.
7. Ibid., p. 446.
8. Elbert, A Hunger for Home, p. 210.
9. It is not true, as often asserted, that every girl identifies with Jo. Though many do, an informal survey of several hundred students at Cornell over the past thirty years has turned up many who related most closely to Meg, Beth, or Amy.
10. Alcott, Little Women, p. 164.
11. Ibid., p. 13.
12. Jo, however, is not allowed to continue writing the sort of popular and sensational adult stories, full of sex and violence, that her creator published. Under the influence of her future husband, Professor Bhaer, she feels “horribly ashamed” of them and throws them all into the fire.
13. Alcott, Jo’s Boys, p. 50.
14. Elbert, A Hunger for Home, p. 242.
15. Hollander, “Portraying ‘Little Women’ Through the Ages,” p. 11.
16. Alcott, Little Women, p. 14.
17. Ibid., p. 184.
THE ODDNESS OF OZ
1. See especially Carl S. Vogel’s very interesting and perceptive analysis of Oz as a feminist, anti-romantic world in “The Amazonia of Oz,” The Baum Bugle.
2. Hearn, The Annotated Wizard of Oz, p. 12.
3. Carpenter, L. Frank Baum, p. 25.
4. Gardner and Nye, The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was, p. 47.
5. Carpenter, L. Frank Baum, p. 4.
6. Gage, Women, Church, and State, p. 13.
7. Matilda Gage Web site, p. 5.
8. Baum, The Tin Woodman of Oz, p. 156.
9. Baum, Glinda of Oz, pp. 21–22.
10. Baum, Ozma of Oz, pp. 96–98.
11. Baum, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, p. 26.
12. Ibid., p. 141.
13. Baum, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, p. 340.
14. Beckwith, “The Oddness of Oz,” p. 87.
15. Ibid., p. 82.
16. Baum, The Tin Woodman of Oz, p. 31.
17. Ibid., p. 277.
18. Ibid., p. 278.
19. Ibid.
20. Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, p. 7.
21. Ibid., p. 12.
22. Wagner, She Who Holds the Sky, p. 7.
23. Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz, p. 85.
24. Ibid., p. 89.
25. Ibid., p. 170.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., pp. 282–83.
28. Baum, The Lost Princess of Oz, p. 266.
29. Baum, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, p. 137.
30. According to some critics, the Oz books have always especially appealed to gay men and boys, who identify with the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, whom they see as homosexual friends; with Tip, the boy who becomes Ozma; or with the Cowardly Lion as played by Bert Lahr in the MGM film in a somewhat camp manner. At the Oz centennial in Bloomington, Indiana, the scholar Dee Michel, who is writing a book about the subject, gave an enthusiastically received talk on the topic.
31. Chaston, “If I Ever Go Looking for My Heart’s Desire,” p. 212.
32. Baum, Glinda of Oz, p. 13.
33. See Carpenter, L. Frank Baum, p. 134.
IS ANYBODY THERE? WALTER DE LA MARE’S SOLITARY CHILD
1. De la Mare, Memoirs of a Midget, p. 16.
2. Letter to Henry Newbolt, 18 February 1905, quoted in Whistler, Imagination of the Heart, p. 26.
3. Whistler, Imagination of the Heart, p. 25.
4. De la Mare, “Rupert Brooke and the Intellectual Imagination,” 1919, reprinted in Pleasures and Speculations, p. 179.
5. De la Mare, Pleasures and Speculations, p. 176.
6. De la Mare, The Listeners and Other Poems, pp. 69–70.
7. De la Mare, “Maria-Fly,” in The Magic Jacket, p. 75.
8. Bremser, “The Voice of Solitude: The Children’s Verse of Walter de la Mare,” p. 66.
9. Whistler, Imagination of the Heart, p. x.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., p. 122.
13. Ibid., p. 67.
14. Ibid., p. 36.
15. Quoted in Whistler, Imagination of the Heart, p. 199.
16. Whistler, Imagination of the Heart, p. 183.
17. De la Mare, Memoirs of a Midget, p. 267.
18. Ibid., p. 209.
19. Ibid., p. 33.
20. De la Mare, “The Wharf,” The Connoisseur, pp. 283–306.
21. Whistler, Imagination of the Heart, p. 338.
22. Ibid., p. 299.
23. De la Mare, Peacock Pie, p. 8.
24. Ibid., p. 12.
25. Whistler, Imagination of the Heart, p. 338.
26. De la Mare, “Willows,” in On the Edge, pp. 79–80.
27. Ibid., pp. 69–70.
JOHN MASEFIELD’S BOXES OF DELIGHT
1. Masefield, Collected Poems, p. 27.
2. A former student of mine who has become a professional astrologer believes that the split between Masefield’s public and private selves was due to his having been born exactly at midnight. If you are born at midnight, he claims, your outer self is the exact opposite of your inner self, while if you are born at noon, they are identical. In this context, it is interesting that Masefield’s most haunting children’s book is called The Midnight Folk.
3. Hoffman, Sewanee Review, pp. 402–3.
4. Ibid., p. 394.
5. Ibid., p. 395.
6. Ibid., p. 394.
7. Ibid., p. 403.
8. Spark, John Masefield, p. 45.
9. Lamont, Remembering John Masefield, p. 9.
10. Ibid., p. 14.
11. Masefield, So Long to Learn, p. 10.
12. Ibid., p. 9.
13. Ibid., p. 10.
14. Babington-Smith, John Masefield, p. 17.
15. Masefield, So Long to Learn, p. 17.
16. Masefield, New Chum, pp. 170–76.
17. Babington-Smith, John Masefield, p. 32.
18. Ibid., p. 40.
19. Quoted in Sternlicht, John Masefield, p. 101.
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20. Masefield, Martin Hyde, p. 1.
21. Ibid., pp. 75.
22. Ibid., pp. 66.
23. Ibid., pp. 66–67.
24. Ibid., pp. 165.
25. Ibid., pp. 222–23.
26. Ibid., pp. 299–300.
27. Masefield, Jim Davis, p. 175.
28. Ibid., p. 5.
29. Masefield, The Midnight Folk, p. 140.
30. Ibid., p. 38.
31. Ibid., p. 45.
32. Lamont, Remembering John Masefield, pp. 11–12.
33. Masefield, The Box of Delights, p. 83.
MOOMINTROLL AND HIS FRIENDS
1. W. Glyn Jones, Tove Jansson.
2. Jansson, Moominsummer Madness, p. 28.
3. Jansson, Moominland Midwinter, p. 52.
4. Jansson, The Exploits of Moominpappa, p. 43.
5. Jansson, Moominpappa at Sea, p. 186.
6. Ibid., p. 7.
7. Ibid., p. 100.
8. Ibid., pp. 13–14.
9. Ibid., p. 25.
10. Jansson, Tales from Moominvalley, p. 123.
11. Ibid., p: 141.
12. Jansson, Moominvalley in November, p. 29.
13. Ibid.
14. Jansson, Tales from Moominvalley, pp. 46–47.
15. Jansson, Comet in Moominland, pp. 29–30.
16. Ibid., p. 180.
17. Jansson, Finn Family Moomintroll, p. 131.
18. Ibid., p. 135.
19. Jansson, Moominpappa at Sea, p. 137.
20. Ibid.
21. Jansson, Tales from Moominvalley, p. 14.
22. Ibid., p. 16.
23. Jansson, Moominvalley in November, p. 75.
DR. SEUSS COMES BACK
1. Theodor Seuss Geisel, quoted in Morgan, Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel, p. 81.
2. The number of rejections for And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street varies from one account to another; Seuss himself once said that he could never remember whether it was twenty-seven or twenty-nine.
3. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat, p. 61.
4. Nel, “Dada Knows Best,” pp. 150–54.
5. Cott, Pipers at the Gates of Dawn, p. 28.
6. Philip Nel, however, suggests that Mayzie’s flower may be a visual metaphor for the imagination, and if so, the point of the story is that her original ideas are exploited by a money-grubbing agent (“Dada Knows Best,” p. 180).
HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES
1. Fenton, “Keeping Up with Salman Rushdie,” p. 33.
2. Ibid.
3. Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, p. 18.
4. Ibid., p. 26.
5. Ibid., p. 15.
6. Ibid., p. 79.
7. Ibid., p. 153.
8. Ibid., p. 102.
9. Ibid., p. 161.
10. Rushdie, in The Wizard of Oz, BFI Film Classics.
11. As Iff the Water Genie points out, the Hoopoe is a figure from ancient Near Eastern tales, where he “is the bird that leads all other birds through many dangerous places to their ultimate goal” (Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, p. 64).
12. Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, p. 107.
13. At one point, in an echo of Through the Looking-Glass, Haroun finds himself “standing in a landscape that looked exactly like a giant chessboard” (Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, p. 73).
14. Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, p. 185.
15. Ibid., p. 35.
16. Ibid., p. 37.
17. Ibid., p. 73.
18. Ibid., p. 129.
19. Ibid., pp. 192–93.
20. Ibid., pp. 82–83. The reference, apparently, is to the best-selling but rather simplistic children’s stories by Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, which feature a flying helicopter called Budgie.
21. Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, p. 155.
22. Wolf, “Haroun and the Sea of Stories,” p. 43.
THE PERILS OF HARRY POTTER
1. Time, p. 72.
2. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, p. 56.
3. Ibid., p. 66.
4. Ibid., p. 118.
5. The most striking exception to this rule occurs in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series, in which the wicked, power-mad figure is female.
6. Interview in Time, p. 73.
7. Slate, 24 August 1999.
8. New York Times Book Review, p. 39.
9. Slate, 25 August 1999.
10. Zipes, “The Phenomenon of Harry Potter,” pp. 170–89.
11. Arms, Pokemon and Harry Potter, p. 74.
12. Abanes, Harry Potter and the Bible, p. 6.
13. Ibid., p. 137.
14. Ibid., p. 260.
15. Ibid., p. 66.
16. Ibid., p. 130.
17. Ibid.
18. Carvajal, “Marketing ‘Narnia,’” p. 3.
19. Abanes, Harry Potter and the Bible, p. 241.
20. Lewis, The Last Battle, p. 154.
21. The British title of the book is Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone; the American edition substituted “Sorcerer” for “Philosopher” on the questionable assumption that most American readers know nothing about the history of alchemy and think of philosophy as dull.
WHAT FAIRY TALES TELL US
1. MacDonald, The Light Princess, p. 69.
2. DeMorgan, “A Toy Princess,” p. 153.
3. Carter, “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon,” p. 49.
4. Irving, “Rip Van Winkle,” p. 82.
5. Hawthorne, “Feathertop,” p. 272.
6. Baum, “The Glass Dog,” p. 41.
7. Sandburg, Rootabaga Country, p. 9.
8. Ibid., p. 37.
9. Yolen, “The River Maid,” p. 131.
BOYS AND GIRLS COME OUT TO PLAY: CHILDREN’S GAMES
1. Opie, The People in the Playground, p. 15.
2. Ibid., p. vii
3. Ibid., p. 25.
4. Ibid., p. 183.
5. Ibid., p. 57.
6. Ibid., p. 22.
7. Ibid., p. 175.
8. Ibid., p. 181.
9. Ibid., p. 15.
10. Ibid., p. 81.
11. Ibid., p. 126.
12. Ibid., p. 35.
13. Ibid., p. 84.
14. Ibid., p. 35.
15. Ibid., p. 181.
16. Ibid., p. 109.
17. Ibid., p. 54.
18. Ibid., p. 19.
19. Ibid., p. 105.
20. Ibid., p. 43.
21. Professor Thorne uses the verb lurk more than once, suggesting—perhaps unconsciously—that unpleasant linguistic and sociological truths tend to lie in wait for the researcher like muggers or predatory beasts.
22. Thorne, Gender Play, p. 4.
23. Ibid., p. 2.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid., p. 97.
26. Ibid., p. 24.
27. Ibid., p. 99.
28. Ibid., p. 27.
29. Opie, People in the Playground, p. 1.
30. Thorne, Gender Play, p. 18.
31. Opie, People in the Playground, p. 7.
32. Ibid., p. 8.
33. Ibid., p. 108.
34. Ibid., p. 7.
35. Thorne, Gender Play, p. 92.
36. Opie, People in the Playground, p. 9.
37. The fact that she chooses this term rather than “borderplay” may be an indication of how serious and perhaps exhausting she considers the interactions of children.
38. Thorne, Gender Play, p. 64.
39. Ibid., p. 66.
40. Ibid., p. 72.
41. Ibid., p. 74.
42. The same magical device is also widely used by children in fortune-telling, after answers to possible questions have been written on its various surfaces.
43. Thorne, Gender Play, p. 83.
POETRY BY AND FOR CHILDREN
1. Opie, I Saw Esau, p. 118.
2. Ibid., p. 35.
3. Ibid., p. 11.
4. Ibid., p. 62
5. Ibid., p. 58.
6. Ibid., p. 2
6.
7. Ibid., p. 146.
8. Ibid., p. 95.
9. Ibid., p. 153.
10. Hall, The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse, p. xxiv.
11. Ibid., pp. 7–8.
12. Ibid., p. 6.
13. Ibid., p. 163.
14. According to recent research, however, the poem was in fact probably written by Henry Livingston, Jr. See Kirkpatrick, “Whose Jolly Old Elf Is That, Anyway?”
15. Hall, The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse, pp. 232–33.
16. Ibid., p. 165.
17. Ibid., p. 262.
18. Ibid., p. xxiii.
LOUDER THAN WORDS: CHILDREN’S BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS
1. This particular rhyme, which has annoyed many children, inspired James Thurber’s now-famous parody in Fables for Our Time:
Early to rise and early to bed
Makes a man healthy and wealthy and dead.
2. This is also true, of course, of illustrations to fairy tales, where it makes more sense: witches and dragons, giants and ogres, belong to the past.
3. Arthur Rackham, however, dresses most of his children in the fashions of his own time, the early twentieth century, though the adults seem to have bought their clothes a hundred years earlier. The effect is to suggest that contemporary children, the presumed readers of the verses, have somehow wandered into a much older world.
4. The collection was originally published in 1947, without Sendak’s pictures.
5. Opie, I Saw Esau, p. 85.
6. Ibid., p. 47.
7. Ibid., p. 48.
8. Ibid., p. 45.
ENCHANTED FORESTS AND SECRET GARDENS: NATURE IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
1. Grimm, “Mother Holle,” p. 134.
2. Ibid.
3. Brown, Goodnight Moon, unpaged.
4. Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, p. 262.
5. Ruskin, King of the Golden River, p. 11.
6. Ibid., p. 29.
7. Twain, Tom Sawyer, p. 121.
8. Grahame, Wind in the Willows, p. 50.
9. Ibid., p. 9.
10. Ibid., p. 15.
11. Ibid., p. 59.
