The Arnold Lobel Family (A Side Story in The Short History of Picture Books)

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The “Cre­ator’s Notes” sec­tion of *A Brief His­to­ry of Pic­ture Books* only con­tains thir­teen entries due to space lim­i­ta­tions. I will grad­u­al­ly add more here as a kind of after-sales ser­vice. ^_^

The fol­low­ing con­tent is main­ly from “The Pow­er of Child­hood,” with slight updates.

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Arnold Lobel’s resume – from “The Pow­er of Child­hood”, com­plet­ed by: Huang Jian­ping

 

Lobel’s Fables — Calde­cott Medal Win­ner

 

Arnold Lobel’s mas­ter­piece “Frogs and Toads” series

 

Arnold Lobel’s mas­ter­piece from “I Can Read,” includ­ed in the Chi­nese edi­tion of the “Owl’s Tears Tea” series.

 

The Lobel fam­i­ly has quite a sto­ry.

Arnold Lobel pub­lished a humor­ous pic­ture book called *Ming Lo Moves the Moun­tain* (1982) when he was forty-nine years old (five years before his death). The sto­ry is clear­ly adapt­ed from the ancient Chi­nese fable *The Fool­ish Old Man Who Moved Moun­tains*, but with sig­nif­i­cant struc­tur­al changes. The pro­tag­o­nists are now a cou­ple, and the wife makes the ini­tial sug­ges­tion, advis­ing her hus­band Ming Lo to ask the vil­lage’s wise man—in Jew­ish cul­ture, this would like­ly be the rab­bi of each set­tle­ment. The wise man’s advice is rem­i­nis­cent of the meth­ods in *Grand­ma Sheep Who Hates the Night*, such as cut­ting down trees to smash or bang­ing on dish­es. The cou­ple tries all the obvi­ous­ly fool­ish meth­ods with­out a sec­ond thought, and of course, none of them work. The clever man resort­ed to his last trick: he had the Mingluo cou­ple car­ry all their belong­ings on their backs, face the dread­ed moun­tain, close their eyes, and dance the Moun­tain Mov­ing Dance. The basic steps of the dance were to step back­ward one step at a time. They danced like this for many hours before open­ing their eyes. The Mingluo cou­ple did exact­ly as instruct­ed, and sure enough, the moun­tain was final­ly “moved” away!

 

Cov­er of “Mingluo Yis­han”

    This is still one of Arnold’s sig­na­ture stories—seemingly sil­ly yet full of wisdom—and it like­ly stems from some real-life expe­ri­ence he had.

 

Arnold Lobel

Ani­ta Lobel

    Arnold and his wife Ani­ta were not only a mar­ried cou­ple, but also excel­lent part­ners. They were class­mates at Pratt Insti­tute, per­haps not meet­ing in class or not notic­ing each oth­er, but their shared love of the­atri­cal per­for­mance led them to meet and fall in love in the acad­e­my’s dra­ma club. A quick glance at the time­line reveals how quick­ly their rela­tion­ship pro­gressed: they met in 1955, grad­u­at­ed in 1955, mar­ried in 1955, and their daugh­ter Adri­ana was born in Decem­ber 1955! This young Jew­ish cou­ple, fresh out of school with a daugh­ter, strug­gled to build their careers while sup­port­ing their fam­i­ly. A few years lat­er, their son Adam was born. The young cou­ple ini­tial­ly worked in adver­tis­ing design and free­lance tex­tile design, but both felt these weren’t tru­ly their call­ing, and when oppor­tu­ni­ties arose, they both turned to chil­dren’s book illus­tra­tion and cre­ative writ­ing.

The cou­ple’s first self-writ­ten and self-illus­trat­ed books had two things in com­mon: first, both ben­e­fit­ed from the encour­age­ment of Susan Carl Hirschman, an edi­tor at Harper’s Books at the time, whose help Ani­ta lat­er men­tioned in the pref­ace and after­word of her auto­bi­og­ra­phy; sec­ond, both were relat­ed to their small fam­i­ly. Arnold’s *Mr. Mas­ter’s Zoo* was inspired by a fam­i­ly vis­it to the zoo, with mate­ri­als col­lect­ed on the spot; Ani­ta’s debut chil­dren’s book, *Sven’s Bridge*, was inspired by a fam­i­ly trip to a folk muse­um in New Eng­land. Ani­ta recalled that she grad­u­al­ly com­plet­ed the man­u­script after Arnold had fall­en asleep with the two chil­dren dur­ing the trip. The Lobels shared a stu­dio, tak­ing turns car­ing for the chil­dren and cre­at­ing, much like a fam­i­ly work­shop.

 

Orig­i­nal cov­er of “Siwen’s Bridge”

Orig­i­nal cov­er of Mr. Mas­ter’s Zoo

 

Arnold’s writ­ing cer­tain­ly ben­e­fit­ed great­ly from fam­i­ly life. His daugh­ter, Adri­ana, lat­er recalled that the idea for “Frog and Toad” orig­i­nat­ed from a con­ver­sa­tion between father and daugh­ter dur­ing a vaca­tion. That sum­mer, they were vaca­tion­ing near Mount Ver­non in New York State—coincidentally, the place where E.B. White was born and raised. His daugh­ter brought back a toad from the wild, and Arnold casu­al­ly remarked, “Your frog is great!” Adri­ana, who was then fas­ci­nat­ed by ani­mals, explained to her father in detail how to dis­tin­guish between frogs and toads. Soon after, the sto­ry of Frog and Toad, which would lat­er cap­ti­vate count­less read­ers, was born. Of course, Arnold was actu­al­ly telling a sto­ry about two good friends, but he felt that using human fig­ures would­n’t be as effec­tive or fun. Instead, he used two amphib­ians that are eas­i­ly con­fused by most peo­ple: the one who likes to stay in the mud is the toad, who always seems a bit pes­simistic, while the frog is like an ath­lete, always full of ener­gy. This made the sto­ry between the two par­tic­u­lar­ly enter­tain­ing. Arnold lat­er explained that col­or illus­tra­tions at the time required col­or sep­a­ra­tion, with each illus­tra­tion need­ing four col­or plates. Work­ing on a sin­gle paint­ing for a long time would be incred­i­bly bor­ing for the artist if it was­n’t enjoy­able! To put it blunt­ly, would­n’t it be much less work to paint green frogs and toads?

 

Biol­o­gists’ illus­tra­tions of frogs and toads

 

Inter­est­ing­ly, many British and Amer­i­can read­ers lat­er dis­cov­ered homo­sex­u­al ten­den­cies in their inter­pre­ta­tion of the rela­tion­ship between the frog and the toad. This stemmed some­what from spec­u­la­tion about Arnold’s pri­vate life. He died of AIDS in Decem­ber 1987. While the pos­si­bil­i­ty of infec­tion through injec­tion or oth­er means can­not be ruled out, it still inevitably leads to spec­u­la­tion about his sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, though there was no pub­licly stat­ed fact on the mat­ter. Years lat­er, accord­ing to Don Shevy, a New York art and the­ater crit­ic, Adri­ana con­fessed to him at a solo exhi­bi­tion that they lat­er dis­cov­ered her father was a clos­et­ed gay man. Today’s read­ers seem unfazed by this; on an Arnold enthu­si­ast web­site, users unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed that Arnold was actu­al­ly bisex­u­al. Clear­ly, this does not dimin­ish their love for Arnold.

Adri­ana Lobel is a high­ly influ­en­tial fig­ure in New York’s the­ater and arts cir­cles. An active stage design­er since the 1980s, she is also a painter, hold­ing a solo exhi­bi­tion in Jan­u­ary 2010. She and her broth­er Adam co-pro­duced the suc­cess­ful musi­cal *Frog and Toad*, which received three Tony Award nom­i­na­tions in 2004, with Lobel her­self receiv­ing a nom­i­na­tion for Best Orig­i­nal Score. Adam is a musi­cian liv­ing in Boston, where he and his sis­ter man­age their father’s estate and works. Adri­ana’s hus­band, Mark Linn-Bak­er, a promi­nent and accom­plished actor in the Amer­i­can enter­tain­ment indus­try, also par­tic­i­pat­ed in the musi­cal. He is said to be a devot­ed fan of the *Frog and Toad* sto­ry, and upon meet­ing Adri­ana and learn­ing she was Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger’s daugh­ter, he was over­joyed and like­ly fell hope­less­ly in love with her from that moment on.

The cov­er of Anna’s New Coat

    Let’s talk about Ani­ta Lobel. She’s actu­al­ly the most inter­est­ing mem­ber of the fam­i­ly. Chi­nese read­ers aren’t very famil­iar with her; cur­rent­ly, only one book illus­trat­ed by her, *Anna’s New Coat*, has been import­ed to main­land Chi­na. Although the sto­ry may not nec­es­sar­i­ly take place in a Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, it inevitably evokes Jew­ish cul­ture, which is cer­tain­ly relat­ed to this artist. The sto­ry is set right after the end of World War II, a peri­od Ani­ta is most famil­iar with and has the most to say about.

Ani­ta was born in 1934 into a wealthy Jew­ish fam­i­ly in Poland. Her father, Leon Kem­pler, owned a suc­cess­ful choco­late fac­to­ry and report­ed­ly pos­sessed a large col­lec­tion of furs and jew­el­ry. Her moth­er employed a group of ser­vants and a nan­ny to care for Ani­ta and her broth­er. As suc­cess­ful busi­ness­men, the Kem­pler fam­i­ly employed local Pol­ish work­ers to avoid appear­ing too Jew­ish. The nan­ny, known as Ninya, was a devout Catholic. Had life con­tin­ued as nor­mal, Ani­ta, this “lit­tle princess,” might have been pam­pered, received a high­ly aris­to­crat­ic edu­ca­tion, and entered into a mar­riage of equal social stand­ing… But the Ger­man inva­sion of 1939 destroyed every­thing. At the age of five, she wit­nessed the hor­rif­ic scenes of loot­ing and mas­sacre. Her par­ents were sent to a ghet­to and a con­cen­tra­tion camp. Ninya, the nan­ny, dis­guised the two chil­dren as her own, hid­ing them in the coun­try­side and lat­er in a con­vent, where the nuns cared for them. He remained hid­den until 1944 when Nazi sol­diers dis­cov­ered him and sent him to the Plasov con­cen­tra­tion camp.

This was a tru­ly ter­ri­fy­ing child­hood expe­ri­ence. After hear­ing about Ani­ta’s ordeal, many peo­ple urged her to write it down. How­ev­er, Ani­ta was always reluc­tant to write it, prob­a­bly because it was a mem­o­ry she did­n’t want to eas­i­ly revis­it. But in 1998, when she was a 64-year-old grand­moth­er, she final­ly agreed to write it down and pub­lish it. The pub­lish­er of this book, *No Pret­ty Pic­tures: Chil­dren in War*, was Green Wil­low Books, found­ed and man­aged by Susan Hirschman. In the book, Ani­ta express­es her deep­est grat­i­tude to Susan.

Ani­ta’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy cov­er

    Some­what sur­pris­ing­ly, this lit­tle book recount­ing those hor­rif­ic years is quite sim­ple and straight­for­ward, nar­rat­ed entire­ly from a child’s per­spec­tive. There are no dra­mat­ic scenes, no intense sad­ness or hatred on the sur­face; instead, it’s filled with the unique feel­ings of child­hood and an ever-present curios­i­ty. For exam­ple, the Jew­ish girl’s appre­ci­a­tion of the beau­ty of the Catholic church (which lat­er led her to a pas­sion for paint­ing and music); the immense sense of secu­ri­ty she felt hold­ing the stat­ue of the Vir­gin Mary and Child giv­en to her by her nan­ny; even the sis­ter’s inex­plic­a­ble sense of accom­plish­ment at being able to find her way through the infa­mous Auschwitz con­cen­tra­tion camp dur­ing their trans­fer to Ger­many. For some rea­son, read­ing this sto­ry remind­ed me of the Ital­ian film *Life Is Beau­ti­ful*.

Ani­ta and her broth­er were for­tu­nate; they were res­cued by a Swedish Red Cross res­cue team in 1945 and tak­en to Stock­holm. The kind Swedes helped them recov­er, cared for them, and sent them to school. Ani­ta imme­di­ate­ly fell in love with every­thing Swedish, and she became mad­ly in love with school, almost every sub­ject, but of course, her great­est loves were draw­ing and read­ing. 1945 was also the first year of Astrid Lind­gren’s Pip­pi Long­stock­ing series, and Ani­ta became obsessed with Pip­pi, enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly illus­trat­ing the sto­ries. In 1947, the image of the Vir­gin Mary and Child that Nin­ja had giv­en them seemed to have worked again; the sur­viv­ing Kem­plers arrived in Stock­holm and were reunit­ed with their two chil­dren. The fam­i­ly, sep­a­rat­ed by war and mas­sacre, was mirac­u­lous­ly reunit­ed!

In 1964, when Ani­ta wrote her first chil­dren’s book, “Sven’s Bridge,” she ded­i­cat­ed it to the Swedish peo­ple who res­cued and helped her, the peo­ple who built the bridge of recon­struc­tion that would for­ev­er be etched in her heart.

 

(Argenti­na)

 

 

 

The fol­low­ing is a sto­ry about Arnold Lobel, “The Frog and the Toad For­ev­er,” a screen­shot from “The Pow­er of Child­hood” by Huang Jian­ping.

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