A Thousand Shades of Twilight

The Children's Wonder Book in Colour

 

(Illustration by Leslie S Haywood in 'The Children's Wonder Book in Colour', Oldhams. This reprint 1948.)

True to Ostrich-form, I only recently found out about the whole CPSIA issue in relation to pre-1985 children's books in the US (thanks to Magic Jelly!). You will see that I have added a nifty widget (how I love the word "widget") in the sidebar of this blog. That widget includes a link to a dedicated Flickr group with some interesting discussion. Even if you do not have much interest in the issue per se, I hope you enjoy scrolling through the many lovely illustrations contained therein.

I cannot get technical here as I cannot bring myself to study the intricacies of The Law involved. The Law causes my eyes to glaze over. It causes me to slouch, stupefied with lolling head, drooling as I scratch at the floor with my overlong neanderthal arms. Why I chose to work in the profession, I will never really know. Let us just say that it was an overreaction to being on the dole.

Anyway, enough about me and my erratic life-decisions. The very whiff of a thought that people may be destroying children's books for fear of breaking The Law has given me one rather large pang that it is difficult to dislodge.

My mother was what was known in the 70's as a Teacher-Librarian (does that not just sound so very 70s?). For this I am eternally grateful. It was her job to encourage imagination. And, despite the fact that there have been many times when my over-active imagination has caused me no end of angst, I am pleased  that she made such an effective job of it. Even though I rebelled in my teens and pretty much stopped extra-curricular reading, I have since developed a distinct fondness for those worthy, gentle library days. I have also gravitated to other Librarian-Spawn. About four or five of my closest friends had Librarian mums. We have a shared language of Dress-up days, Learning Resource Centres and The Bullerby Children. We joke about the fact that, while all the other nut-brown Little Aussie Tearaways were playing Space Invaders, Frogger and Galaga, we were being force-fed all that Quality Children's Literature, growing pale of face and softer of muscle by the day. I still blame my somewhat inexplicable and peculiar Victorian bent on too much E Nesbit as a child.

So, this whole unseemly palaver has made me turn my mind to my favourite illustrators. As much as I would like to say that I fully appreciated the following at the time, here's to some illustrators that I have discovered as a grown up:

Mary Blair

Alice and Martin Provensen

Brian Wildsmith

Sakura Fujita

Carl Yates

Ed Emberly

Ivan Gantschev

Charles Harper.

And finally, here is to those illustrators that had the most impact on me as a youngster. When asked that dreadful, unconscionable question "What would you like to be when you grow up?" my second, more acceptable choice (after "Prima Ballerina", naturally) was "An author who illustrates his own books." I never really thought of it this way until now, but the folks below were my heroes. My footy players. My rock stars:

(in no particular order):

Maurice Sendak

Charles Keeping

Pauline Baynes

Ron Brooks

Robin Jacques

Mark Allan Stamaty

Eric Carle

Raymond Briggs

Roger Duvoisin

Ezra Jack Keats

Edward Gorey

Brian Froud.

 

Just saying their names makes me happy.

Of babies and bunting

  

(Image from '1000 Quaint cuts from books of other days')

Dear Patient M and I spent our Friday and Saturday nights this weekend studiously making bunting for a forthcoming social event. Yes, bunting. That's right. Flags on a string.

I had been inspired after happening upon three metres of lovely, yet overpriced, designer bunting in some chi-chi little shop that I would usually avoid like the Plague. After that fleeting encounter, my thoughts of bunting began to border on the maniacal. Wanting, instead, ten metres of bunting at a greatly reduced price, I had a lightbulb moment which involved a vision of me, scissors, a stapler and metres of polka-dotted loveliness in hand, making my very own Bunting Supreme. It was all very 'Project Runway'. At that moment, I also realised that I was, indeed turning into my father. My father is the type of man who, allegedly, used to turn the collars of his shirts around and re-sew them to "get more wear out of them." Shelling out clams for anything causes him considerable anguish. He loves nothing more than to "make do".

Anyway, the upshot of all this enlightenment was that we spent considerable time in the type of shops that made me fear I was perilously close to being lured into the racy underworld of Scrap-booking. These were the type of shops that could give one nightmares about horrible dolls (called Matilda) with no facial features wearing colonial bonnets that would make Holly Hobbie think twice. The type of shops which feature a whole rack of chicken-fillet type 'breast inserts'. At Adelaide's seediest department store (which shall remain elusively Green-White-and-Black), I politely enquired of a pleasant-looking 20-something shop assistant whether or not said store still had a haberdashery section and where it might be located. A mutually embarrassing moment ensued in which she coloured, smiled (pleasantly) and muttered, 'I'm sorry, I don't know what that is..' I say 'mutually embarrassing' because I instantly felt like the man who put the 'fud' in fuddy duddy. Whatever 'fud' may be.

It made me realise how, increasingly, I have retreated into my little old-fashioned dream world and lost touch with the world 'out there'. I have been retreating for years. Retreating into ludditeism and nostalgia and anti-social-ism. It even dawned on me that I have  reverted to dressing how I did when I was in my 20s (i.e. like somebody's grandfather. Or great-grandfather. Some wag once scribbled the word "Gramps" next to a photo of me in my own photo allbum. True story..). And, as you well know, I spend my Sundays in twilight reveries and, ever so thoughtfully, inflict them upon you on a regular basis.

On the upside, one of my dearest friends, Mistress C, gave birth to her first child a few days ago. I am so, so happy that little HGM came out safe and sound. It was lovely chatting in the hospital room with the friends I remember as teenagers and our current loved ones, HGM sleeping all the while, bundled up in a snug triangle of blankets. The late afternoon sun streamed in, it was autumn, we were overlooking a park, it was the weekend, everything felt just right.

Although, in the past, I have seriously considered fathering my own children, (and would never say never to, well, ANYTHING, really..), lately I suspect that it is highly unlikely that it will happen. Dear Patient M is my new family and that is more than I ever imagined. But I am happy to play the slightly remote, bemused and old-fashioned haberdashery-loving uncle in the lives of my friend's children. If they will have me. I am, after all, one of my (now adult) niece's Fairy Godfathers.

All of this got me thinking what I would hope for these kids in the brave new world that awaits them. What morsels of dubious wisdom could I impart? Nothing novel or earth shattering, of course, and by no means an exhaustive list, but here goes, kids:

1. Do not define yourself or other people by what they do for a living. Unless you live in Hollywood where you find yourself to be one of those nauseating types who say in interviews 'I am so blessed. I love going to work every day, I get to lick Brad Pitt on the face every 5 minutes' (or whatever it is they do in the racier talkies nowadays), there is a very good chance that you will not spend every day feeling fulfilled by your job. Deal with it. Find the rebels and have a laugh. Make your lunch hours count. Write a masterpiece on work time.

2. I hope that you do not understand the expression "coming out". I hope that there will be no closet to come out of. I hope that you fall about laughing at the thought that, in the olden days, folks had to make grand, nerve-wracking pronouncements about their sexuality. That said, you may want to, for your own edification, research quaint and charming terms such as 'haberdashery'. Perhaps also look into 'feminism' and 'auteur'. I would like to see all three return with a vengeance.

3. Nothing, neither good nor bad, lasts forever. Think about death every day. Get used to the idea. Mark occasions and passings. And celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. No pretext is too flimsy to bring out the bunting.

4. Of course you are not unloveable. Just stop that nonsense. At once.

Oh, and I hope you learn to "make do". You are certainly going to have to. But just remember: If you learn to make 'do', you can also learn to relish the pleasure of occasionally making...how should I put this?...'don't'.

You know what I mean.

PS And, at the risk of sounding shamelessly self-promotional, always remember to look up. And smile.*

*And to remember that Autumn is the best month, and to watch 'La Regle du jeu' on a regular basis and to listen to 'Baby it's you' by Promises and jump about without inhibition and...

 

The Mysteries of Childhood #1

It's been a strange old week. There has been much time spent clenching my fists and muttering  "for fuck's sake" at the ridiculousness of things. However, I have not resorted to booze, as much as there is an edge that I would loving taking off. Before I get too self-congratulatory or pious, I must point out that I am on antibiotics which has made the decision not to drink a bit of a non-decision. Anyhow. I've noticed in the past that when I have a break from alcohol, I am prone to bizarre, trifling and most probably unreliable memories flooding in from all directions, apropos nothing, occasionally at the most inopportune of moments. It may also have something to do with the fact that we are experiencing the last few weeks of winter and there are the occasional bursts of cold sunlight that fill me with wist.

Today, as I was hanging out the washing in my usual desultory manner, I was taken back to a time and place where life still held some measure of mystery to me. When I was a young child, my family lived in another State, in a house full of unruly children. My father worked at a school and we lived on the campus. There seemed to be more odd and troubled young people coming in and out of our lives than I remember later on.

I feel a bit sheepish about posting the juvenilia of a person that I do not know, so I will simply refer to her as The Artistic Girl. She was a very peripheral person in our lives, but the drawing below made a very big impact on my 6 year old self. I would return to it and fret over it furtively, wondering why on earth a person would commit such a thing to paper. It appeared, after all, in the school yearbook in 1976, surrounded by less confronting paintings of abstract, geometric swirls, lovesongs to Jesus and haiku about daisies. But something about this image both repelled and fascinated me. And I associated it with everything that was 'artistic'. I later went to artschool and any residual mysteriousness about artists soon evaporated. To say it was a bathetic experience would be putting it mildly.

Anyway, I've often wondered what became of The Artistic Girl. An internet search only turned up a much younger woman artist in Alaska by that name. The only other evidence I have that she ever even existed is a drawing that she did in my parents' Visitors Book. It was a less grim image than this one but still made an impression. I recall that it was a pen drawing of a half human/half animal creature lying happily semi-naked under a tree. She would have been about 15 or 16 at the time. I seem to recall that there was something unusual about her domestic situation, that for some reason she did not live with her parents. Which to me at that age made her like something out of a fairy tale, a romantic form of orphan. I have also carried an impression that I remember hearing she was 'troubled' in some unspecified way. Looking at this drawing, it would be easy to speculate as to the nature of that trouble. But I honestly don't know.

I don't know why I'm hankering for a lost sense of mystery all of a sudden. It feels strange to think how no one would ever guess the small things from childhood that any one of us carries with them and the impact they have. But on crisp quiet evenings like tonight everything and nothing seems mysterious to me.