Masters of the Art of Storytelling for Children (V)

Con­tin­ued from the pre­vi­ous chap­ter:Mas­ters of the Art of Sto­ry­telling for Chil­dren (Part 4)

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Vir­ginia Lee Bur­ton and her Lit­tle House

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The process of cre­at­ing pic­ture books for Vir­ginia Lee Bur­ton must have been quite enjoy­able because she had two amaz­ing col­lab­o­ra­tors: her two sons.

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Ini­tial­ly, she did­n’t under­stand the val­ue of these two col­lab­o­ra­tors, and sim­ply pur­sued her pic­ture book cre­ation out of sheer pas­sion. In high school, she had tak­en both paint­ing and dance. Although she was pas­sion­ate about and excelled at paint­ing, she was even more drawn to bal­let. Upon grad­u­at­ing in 1928, she planned to join a tour­ing bal­let com­pa­ny. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, her father’s leg was bro­ken in an acci­dent, forc­ing her to stay home to care for him, end­ing her “danc­ing career.” How­ev­er, this also led to a part-time job pro­vid­ing musi­cal sketch­es for news­pa­pers, where she dis­cov­ered anoth­er tal­ent. In 1930, she enrolled at the Boston School of the Muse­um of Fine Arts, and a year lat­er, she mar­ried her instruc­tor, George Demetrius. They soon moved to Fol­ly Bay, Mass­a­chu­setts, where they remained until the birth of their two sons. Besides car­ing for her chil­dren, Vir­ginia devot­ed her­self to two oth­er pur­suits: cre­at­ing pic­ture books and teach­ing tex­tile pat­tern design. Few peo­ple know today that she also found great suc­cess in the lat­ter endeav­or, grad­u­al­ly estab­lish­ing her­self as a “Fol­ly Bay Design­er.”
Cove
The group of artists used print­mak­ing tech­niques to print pat­terns on linen tex­tiles. The group did not dis­band until Vir­gini­a’s death.

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Vir­gini­a’s first pic­ture book was a com­plete fail­ure, reject­ed by thir­teen pub­lish­ers. She was con­fi­dent in her artis­tic tal­ent, but why was her work reject­ed? Near­ly des­per­ate, she recalled her eldest son’s reac­tion to the story—he’d yawned pro­fuse­ly and fall­en asleep halfway through. Sud­den­ly, she real­ized the secret:A true pic­ture book should be the prod­uct of coop­er­a­tion between adults and chil­dren. The usu­al­ly con­ve­nient way is for adults to coop­er­ate with chil­dren sin­cere­ly and humbly.
 
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The pic­ture books she cre­at­ed in the next ten years were all the result of her col­lab­o­ra­tion with her two sons, among which “The Lit­tle House” is an immor­tal clas­sic.

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“Lit­tle House” may have orig­i­nal­ly stemmed from a moth­er’s urge to teach her two sons about the con­cept of time. But how could such an abstract con­cept be con­veyed through visu­als? Mak­ing invis­i­ble things (like time and emo­tions) vis­i­ble to chil­dren is the mag­ic of pic­ture books. And so, the famous lit­tle house appeared, ordi­nary yet endear­ing, its door a nose, its steps a mouth, its win­dows like talk­ing eyes. The lit­tle house remained fixed in its spot with­in the paint­ing, watch­ing the sun rise and set, the moon wax and wane, and the sea­sons change. Thus, the con­cepts of a day, a month, and a year were nat­u­ral­ly com­plet­ed. But what remained? The most chal­leng­ing con­cept of “age”? This, too, was no chal­lenge for the clever artist moth­er. She asked the lit­tle house to remain where it was, while horse­less car­riages (cars) arrived, fol­lowed by bull­doz­ers and road rollers, build­ing roads. Then came build­ings, small towns, trams, sub­ways, ele­vat­ed rail­ways, and final­ly sky­scrap­ers and metrop­o­lis­es… until the lit­tle house could no longer see the sun, moon, or stars, and could no longer dis­tin­guish between day and night. The Lit­tle House bears wit­ness to the trans­for­ma­tion of a rur­al vil­lage into a met­ro­pol­i­tan city. While the author’s words offer no judg­ment, the painter’s inten­tions seem to be cap­tured in the lit­tle house­’s expres­sion. This is a chil­dren’s sto­ry, and it sug­gests a reas­sur­ing end­ing: the lit­tle house, relo­cat­ed to the coun­try­side far out­side the city, final­ly smiles hap­pi­ly.

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spring

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autumn

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More than six­ty years lat­er, when we reread this clas­sic pic­ture book again and again, it feels like more than just a dia­gram explain­ing the con­cept of time to chil­dren. It feels more like a strange prophe­cy, hap­pen­ing all around us every day. Peo­ple today need to be warned by works like “Avatar,” which are so intense­ly stim­u­lat­ing, but com­pared to “Lit­tle House,” it lacks the rich­ness of its con­tent.

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Vir­ginia was­n’t done yet. She was prepar­ing a work span­ning even longer time peri­ods, which was­n’t com­plet­ed until 1962. This was “The Sto­ry of Life,” a five-act play on the his­to­ry of nat­ur­al life, begin­ning with the Earth­’s cre­ation and con­tin­u­ing through the artist’s own time. This mas­ter­piece, a mas­ter­piece of pic­ture books, took her eight years to com­plete and was lat­er hailed as the cul­mi­na­tion of her art and life.

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Inside page of “The Sto­ry of Life”

Vir­ginia Lee Bur­ton died of lung can­cer in 1968 at the age of 59. She pub­lished only sev­en pic­ture books in her life­time, but she is rec­og­nized as a mas­ter of pic­ture books in the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can chil­dren’s books.

To know what hap­pens next, please wait for the next episode.

Mas­ters of the Art of Sto­ry­telling for Chil­dren (VI)

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High­light 1Although Vir­ginia Lee Bur­ton is a female painter and writer, her pic­ture books are some of the most pop­u­lar works that Amer­i­can fathers read to their chil­dren (or moth­ers read to their boys). Do you know why? This is thanks to her two sons. With their help, this moth­er’s works are filled with many ele­ments that are espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar with lit­tle boys. Just look at the pic­tures and you will know -
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Side Sto­ry 2Fol­ly Cove Design­ers, found­ed by Vir­ginia Lee Bur­ton
Although the group of design­ers dis­band­ed after her death, some of them still per­sist to this day and have opened unique shops. If you are inter­est­ed, you can still vis­it them.

Web­site:http://www.sarah-elizabeth-shop.com/

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Side Sto­ry 3What became of this pic­ture book mas­ter’s two sons? They had such an amaz­ing moth­er, and their father was said to be even more amaz­ing. Their moth­er recalls that when she was 21, she heard that the painter and sculp­tor was an incred­i­ble teacher, so she trav­eled a long way to attend his week­end class­es to learn art. But that spring, they got mar­ried! Don’t you think he was amaz­ing?

Haha, I won’t keep you in sus­pense.

Their eldest son, Aris­tides Bur­ton
Demetrios is real­ly amaz­ing. He is one of the most famous sculp­tors in the Unit­ed States today. His works are all over the coun­try. Just look at the web­site below to see how amaz­ing he is:
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Their sec­ond son, Michael
Demetrios must have loved play­ing since he was a child, and he is also very good at busi­ness when he grows up. He hap­pened to be par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in Chi­na. He said that he has trav­eled and vis­it­ed many places in Chi­na and is keen on build­ing theme parks in Chi­na. Accord­ing to the infor­ma­tion,He is reg­is­tered in Los Ange­les Intra-Asia
Pres­i­dent of Enter­tain­ment Com­pa­nyAfter 2006, the com­pa­ny was prob­a­bly renamed Chi­na TransIn­fo Tech­nol­o­gy
Corp. It is almost cer­tain that they played a role in the estab­lish­ment of Fuhua Amuse­ment Park in Weifang, Shan­dong.

Vir­gini­a’s son has arrived at our doorstep! Isn’t that fun?