A delightful and lively early childhood biography worthy of a pioneering master of picture books

Pic­ture book enthu­si­asts are cer­tain­ly famil­iar with the Calde­cott Medal—one of the world’s most pres­ti­gious and influ­en­tial awards for pic­ture books. But who exact­ly was Ran­dolph Calde­cott (1846–1886), the man whose name was bor­rowed for the award? Why was it named after him? What con­tri­bu­tions did he make to the world of pic­ture books? Who knows the answers to these ques­tions?

Writ­ing a book trac­ing the ori­gins of Calde­cot­t’s sto­ry would­n’t be too dif­fi­cult. The real chal­lenge lies in telling this sto­ry in a way that con­tem­po­rary 4–8 year olds can under­stand, con­nect­ing young read­ers with an artist who lived a cen­tu­ry and a half ago, and pre­sent­ing it in pic­ture book form. How can this be achieved? *Tom­fool­ery!: Ran­dolph Calde­cott and the Ram­bunc­tious Com­ing-of-Age of Chil­dren’s Books*, writ­ten by Michelle Markel and illus­trat­ed by Bar­bara McClin­tock, accom­plish­es this task per­fect­ly. This vivid and engag­ing bio­graph­i­cal pic­ture book recounts Calde­cot­t’s life and his rev­o­lu­tion­ary con­tri­bu­tions to pic­ture books, mak­ing it suit­able not only for young chil­dren but also for old­er chil­dren and adults inter­est­ed in the his­to­ry of pic­ture books and fur­ther research.

The book is rough­ly divid­ed into two parts: the nar­ra­tive and the ref­er­ence sec­tion. The first half, writ­ten in a tone geared towards a child audi­ence and accom­pa­nied by vivid illus­tra­tions, light­ly nar­rates Calde­cot­t’s jour­ney from a boy who loved draw­ing to an artist who rev­o­lu­tion­ized chil­dren’s pic­ture book illus­tra­tion. In intro­duc­ing his child­hood, career, and how he changed the face of chil­dren’s books through his vibrant and humor­ous illus­tra­tions, pure­ly fac­tu­al details are omit­ted, instead rely­ing more on evoca­tive lan­guage and visu­als to allow young read­ers to expe­ri­ence the sto­ry first­hand. The illus­tra­tions in this sec­tion are dynam­ic; young Calde­cott is run­ning from the very begin­ning, and even lat­er, when he sits down, whether at school or work­ing at the bank, he’s con­stant­ly draw­ing, with ani­mals seem­ing­ly leap­ing off the page. The over­all style of the illus­tra­tions is cheer­ful and live­ly.

In an inter­view, illus­tra­tor Bar­bara said that the biggest chal­lenge in cre­at­ing this book’s visu­al nar­ra­tive was mak­ing it relat­able for today’s young read­ers. After about a year of care­ful research, she found some tricks, one of which was the desk (or writ­ing desk) that Calde­cott uses in the book. It appears repeat­ed­ly through­out Calde­cot­t’s childhood—at home, at school, and at work. While peo­ple rarely use desks now, the way peo­ple used writ­ing desks in the past bears a strik­ing resem­blance to how peo­ple use com­put­ers today. Calde­cott is always draw­ing, even dur­ing class or at work, and his teach­ers or col­leagues enjoy watch­ing. Isn’t that sim­i­lar to peo­ple watch­ing you use a com­put­er today? Bar­bara makes the ani­mal fig­ures in Calde­cot­t’s draw­ings fly off the page, tru­ly “leap­ing off the page,” just like let­ting read­ers see the noisy com­put­er screen.

How­ev­er, the cheer­ful and live­ly style is only one side of this book. The lat­ter half reveals its sol­id and rig­or­ous research, includ­ing detailed anno­ta­tions, back­ground infor­ma­tion, a bib­li­og­ra­phy of Calde­cot­t’s works, and the sources of ref­er­ences used in cre­at­ing the book. This pro­vides clues for fur­ther in-depth research, allow­ing read­ers to learn more about Calde­cot­t’s life and artis­tic achieve­ments. Although this is a bio­graph­i­cal pic­ture book suit­able for read­ers as young as four or five, the author still adheres quite rig­or­ous­ly to gen­er­al­ly accept­ed aca­d­e­m­ic stan­dards, pro­vid­ing a valu­able ref­er­ence for those cre­at­ing sim­i­lar non-fic­tion pic­ture books.

In fact, even the illus­tra­tor, while try­ing to pique young read­ers’ inter­est in Calde­cot­t’s life sto­ry, also made every effort to ensure the visu­al infor­ma­tion was sol­id and rig­or­ous. Every image ele­ment in the book under­went metic­u­lous research and restora­tion. Take, for exam­ple, the scene depict­ing Calde­cot­t’s arrival in Lon­don in 1872. The illus­tra­tor had to first ensure that the build­ings in the back­ground were accu­rate to that year; for instance, Big Ben on the oth­er side of the Thames def­i­nite­ly exist­ed, hav­ing been com­plet­ed in 1859. Then there were the lamp­posts by the bridge, which she need­ed to accu­rate­ly recre­ate from pho­tographs of the time. The most chal­leng­ing part was the “diverse crowds,” where the illus­tra­tor had to depict peo­ple from all walks of life in Lon­don dur­ing the lat­ter half of the 19th cen­tu­ry: mem­bers of par­lia­ment, com­mon­ers and nobles, mid­dle-class men and women, and the low­er class­es sell­ing art or news­pa­pers on the streets, adults and chil­dren, and of course, ani­mals to add atmos­phere to the scene. This pic­ture book pos­sess­es both the rig­or of non-fic­tion edu­ca­tion­al books and the live­ly fun of fic­tion.

Bar­bara poured her heart and soul into illus­trat­ing this book, spend­ing a year on in-depth research and revis­ing the cov­er alone at least four times. But she had no regrets about this ded­i­ca­tion, because she loved the book so much. In an inter­view, she said she had a deep fas­ci­na­tion with Calde­cott (adding a note ask­ing her not to tell her hus­band). She has always con­sid­ered Calde­cott her idol, or rather, her men­tor in pic­ture book cre­ation. More­over, she found sev­er­al sim­i­lar­i­ties between her­self and Calde­cott, such as their insa­tiable love of draw­ing from a young age, their fond­ness for draw­ing cheer­ful ani­mals and dynam­ic, live­ly scenes, and their self-taught approach to chil­dren’s book illus­tra­tion…

Bar­bara’s sto­ry of becom­ing a self-taught illus­tra­tor is some­what leg­endary. The most fas­ci­nat­ing part is that when she turned 20, she was study­ing at Jamestown Col­lege (now Jamestown Uni­ver­si­ty) in North Dako­ta, but she longed to draw pic­ture books. How­ev­er, in the ear­ly 1970s, there weren’t many rel­e­vant majors to pur­sue. Bar­bara great­ly admired Mau­rice Sendak because she par­tic­u­lar­ly loved his nov­el *Mid­night Kitchen*, pub­lished a few years ear­li­er, and believed Sendak must know how to draw pic­ture books. Know­ing only that Sendak lived some­where in Con­necti­cut, she looked up his home phone num­ber in a pub­lic phone book and, “naive­ly,” called direct­ly to ask for advice. Not only did Sendak answer the phone him­self, but he also had a very pleas­ant 20-minute phone con­ver­sa­tion with the girl he had nev­er met before, telling her how to pre­pare for cre­ation and sub­mis­sion, how to pre­pare her port­fo­lio for exhi­bi­tion, and more impor­tant­ly, “don’t go to art school,” but try to learn on your own, prefer­ably by mov­ing to New York and mak­ing full use of pub­lic libraries… Not long after, Bar­bara real­ly went to New York and began her jour­ney of self-study and cre­ation of pic­ture books.

Many of Bar­bara McClin­tock­’s self-writ­ten and illus­trat­ed works, or those for which she also pro­vid­ed the illus­tra­tions, have been intro­duced to Chi­na. These include *Adele and Simon* and its two sequels, *Where Are You, Mom?*, *Mary and the Lit­tle Mouse’s Secret*, and *Noth­ing Can Stop Sophie*, as well as the eight-book “Bar­bara McClin­tock Clas­sic Pic­ture Book” series, the most famous of which are *The Gin­ger­bread Man* and *Grand­pa’s Over­coat*. Bar­bara loved and excelled at draw­ing sto­ries that tran­scend­ed time, tak­ing read­ers on a jour­ney to a spe­cif­ic place at a spe­cif­ic point in time. Such jour­neys are indeed very suit­able for pic­ture books.

It was dur­ing these trav­els that Bar­bara “met” artists like Ran­dolph Calde­cott and Ran­dolph Sendak. Her pic­ture book cre­ations have their own style, but are also deeply influ­enced by these pre­de­ces­sors. In *Child­hood at First Sight: The Pic­ture Book Era Ush­ered in by Ran­dolph Calde­cott*, near the end of the sto­ry, when she’s about to show “What exact­ly did Ran­dolph Calde­cott do?… Calde­cott achieved tremen­dous inter­na­tion­al suc­cess,” Bar­bara dis­plays some of Calde­cot­t’s paint­ings in the upper half of the page, while the low­er half uses many fig­ures to illus­trate Calde­cot­t’s impact on the world. Par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is the illus­tra­tion on the right page, where nine con­tem­po­rary pic­ture book illus­tra­tors are min­gling with chil­dren who love lis­ten­ing to sto­ries. The most rec­og­niz­able is Sendak sit­ting in an arm­chair, and the green-clad, white-haired female illus­tra­tor sit­ting at Sendak’s feet, draw­ing for the chil­dren, is like­ly Bar­bara her­self. In the illus­tra­tion, Bar­bara’s draw­ing pos­ture, espe­cial­ly the way she holds the paint­brush with her left hand, com­ple­ments the image of Calde­cott draw­ing for chil­dren on the left page. The oth­er sev­en illus­tra­tors stand­ing and read­ing in the right-hand image are report­ed­ly Calde­cott Medal win­ners, hold­ing their award-win­ning works. —Can you rec­og­nize them? (This is a bit dif­fi­cult; I myself could­n’t rec­og­nize two of them!)

Let’s talk about the author of this book, Michelle Markle. While she has­n’t had any works intro­duced to Chi­na before, she’s a very accom­plished female writer, espe­cial­ly skilled in non-fic­tion pic­ture books. She has writ­ten bio­graph­i­cal pic­ture books for fig­ures such as the French Post-Impres­sion­ist painter Hen­ri Rousseau, the British-Mex­i­can Sur­re­al­ist artist Leono­ra Car­ring­ton, the Amer­i­can union leader (who led a gar­ment work­ers’ strike) Clara Lem­ledge, and the famous politi­cian Hillary Clin­ton. This isn’t her first time writ­ing biogra­phies of pio­neer­ing fig­ures in chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture. In 2017, she pub­lished *Balder­dash!: John New­bery and the Bois­ter­ous Birth of Chil­dren’s Books* (not yet avail­able in Chi­nese). As the title sug­gests, this is a pic­ture book biog­ra­phy of John New­bery, the cre­ator of the chil­dren’s book for which the New­bery Medal is named, and its struc­ture is very sim­i­lar to this Calde­cott pic­ture book biog­ra­phy. In oth­er words, the two books are clear­ly sis­ter books.

For younger chil­dren, read­ing these two books will pro­vide an overview of New­bery and Calde­cot­t’s ear­ly life. How­ev­er, for old­er chil­dren or adults, these books offer a deep­er under­stand­ing of these two pio­neers, show­ing how they rev­o­lu­tion­ized tra­di­tion­al chil­dren’s book con­cepts and shaped the con­tem­po­rary land­scape of chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture. Regard­ing Calde­cott specif­i­cal­ly, there’s anoth­er excel­lent illus­trat­ed ref­er­ence book that’s par­tic­u­lar­ly acces­si­ble: *Ran­dolph Calde­cott: The Man Who Could Not Stop Draw­ing* by Amer­i­can chil­dren’s book his­to­ri­an Leonard Mar­cus. This book pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive overview of Calde­cot­t’s life and artis­tic achieve­ments. Through detailed research and vivid nar­ra­tion, Mar­cus demon­strates how Calde­cott trans­formed chil­dren’s pic­ture books with his inno­v­a­tive illus­tra­tion style.

Inter­est­ing­ly, I care­ful­ly com­pared the bib­li­ogra­phies of Markle and Mar­cus’s books, and found that the vast major­i­ty of them over­lapped. Their sources were very sim­i­lar, but their approach­es and nar­ra­tive styles dif­fered. Mar­cus focused on adult read­ers, telling the sto­ry from a broad­er per­spec­tive of chil­dren’s book his­to­ry.

I have also done some research on the life of Calde­cott and relat­ed fig­ures, which I have com­piled in my book *A Brief His­to­ry of Pic­ture Books*. I believe that Beat­rix Pot­ter’s *The Tale of Peter Rab­bit* is the pio­neer­ing work of mod­ern pic­ture books, but Miss Pot­ter was actu­al­ly deeply influ­enced by the three giants of Vic­to­ri­an chil­dren’s book illustration—Walter Crane, Kate Green­away, and Ran­dolph Calde­cott, espe­cial­ly Calde­cott. Miss Pot­ter once said, “If I’ve ever thought about imi­tat­ing any­one in my life, it’s Calde­cott.”“

Sad­ly, Calde­cott died of ill­ness dur­ing his trav­els before the age of 40, a tru­ly regret­table loss. There­fore, in the book I lament­ed: “Some­times I can’t help but won­der, if Calde­cott had lived to 1902 (which would have meant he was only 56 years old), would peo­ple have even noticed Miss Pot­ter’s bril­liance?”“

Although his­to­ry can­not be changed, thank­ful­ly there are pic­ture books like *Child­hood Dreams: The Pic­ture Book Era Ush­ered in by Calde­cott*, allow­ing us to redis­cov­er Calde­cott and rethink the pro­found sig­nif­i­cance of pic­ture books for us on a spir­i­tu­al jour­ney across time. Such a live­ly and joy­ful yet rig­or­ous biog­ra­phy of ear­ly child­hood enlight­en­ment is wor­thy of this mas­ter who died young but whose bril­liance remains undi­min­ished.

Writ­ten by A‑Jia on July 27, 2024 in Bei­jing