Masters of the art of storytelling for children (a little tail)

Mas­ters of the art of sto­ry­telling for chil­dren(one) (two) (three) (Four) (five) (six) (sev­en) (eight)

I fin­ished this arti­cle, “Mas­ters of the Art of Sto­ry­telling for Chil­dren,” just before Chil­dren’s Day. It was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten at the request of a mag­a­zine seem­ing­ly unre­lat­ed to chil­dren’s books, but since it hap­pens to be a top­ic I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of, I final­ly man­aged to squeeze some time out of my already lim­it­ed sched­ule. Once again, there’s always time for what you enjoy.

Ini­tial­ly, I had a rather ambi­tious list: Beat­rix Pot­ter, Mary Hol­ly Eiss, Vir­ginia Lee Bur­ton, Leo Lion­ni, Eric Car­le, Mau­rice Sendak, Dick Bruna, Janosz, Shel Sil­ver­stein, Dr. Seuss, Yoko Sano, John Burn­ing­ham, Antho­ny Brown, David Wiesner—fourteen in all. Actu­al­ly, all of them were pic­ture book cre­ators I hap­pened to be famil­iar with (for those I was­n’t, please for­give my igno­rance). They were all “self-writers”—storytellers, and I hap­pened to know a lit­tle about the sto­ry behind one of their works that par­tic­u­lar­ly touched my heart.

At first, I did­n’t real­ize how huge this project was. I did­n’t real­ize that it would take at least a day or two to sort out the infor­ma­tion before writ­ing each per­son­’s short sto­ry, and then it would take anoth­er day or two to orga­nize each per­son­’s pic­ture infor­ma­tion. In com­par­i­son, the time spent on typ­ing is neg­li­gi­ble :)

More­over, com­pared to typ­ing, search­ing, orga­niz­ing, and savor­ing the sto­ries of these mas­ters is so much more enjoy­able in its own right. I often can’t help but won­der how hap­py it would be if I could just be lazy and be a read­er… Final­ly, after fin­ish­ing my work on Sendak, I’ve decid­ed to call it a day. I’m real­ly run­ning out of time and ener­gy. Haha, I’ll save the rest for next year.

I used the word “mas­ter” very care­ful­ly in this arti­cle; I would­n’t casu­al­ly assign it to any­one. I once heard guqin play­er Gong Yi explain the term, and I deeply agree. He refused the title, stat­ing that he was sim­ply an expert in guqin (so call­ing him a “guqin play­er” is per­fect­ly accept­able). An “expert” spe­cial­izes in a sin­gle task, such as sell­ing tick­ets on a bus or at the entrance of a movie the­ater. After years of prac­tice, they’ve mas­tered the art of per­form­ing, and that’s when they become experts. So, what con­sti­tutes a mas­ter? They should­n’t sim­ply spe­cial­ize in a sin­gle skill or exper­tise, but rather pos­sess a pro­found accu­mu­la­tion and cul­ti­va­tion of their entire lives. This might sim­ply be the accu­mu­la­tion of count­less seem­ing­ly triv­ial expe­ri­ences, but when they sud­den­ly burst into a unique light, they embody the entire­ty of life’s expe­ri­ence. As Yoko Sano said, “I can only say that I express and burn every­thing in my life in my work.”

Based on my cur­rent lim­it­ed knowl­edge and care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, I believe that the fig­ures list­ed above can all be called “mas­ters of pic­ture book art.” When they tell sto­ries for chil­dren, they tru­ly draw on their entire life expe­ri­ences. What is par­tic­u­lar­ly amaz­ing is not the superb skills of their art (which is of course beyond doubt), but the mag­i­cal pow­er they seem to pos­sess, which allows them to com­mu­ni­cate seam­less­ly with young chil­dren!

Regard­ing the peo­ple I didn’t have time to intro­duce this time, I’ve actu­al­ly com­piled some of their infor­ma­tion before, and the links are list­ed below:

About Dick Bruna——

The uni­ver­sal lan­guage of chil­dren around the world (from “101 Books That Will Cap­ti­vate Chil­dren”)
Inter­view with Dick Bruna, the illus­tra­tor and cre­ator of Miffy

Miffy Pic­ture Book Read­ing Guide (Pic­ture Ver­sion)
The secret of Miffy’s suc­cess
Chil­dren’s first book: start­ing with Miffy
Exper­i­men­ta­tion is the twin broth­er of chance: from “Miffy” to “Micro Psy­cho­analy­sis”

About Janos——

Janos pic­ture books in Chi­na

Janosz’s World
* Not long ago, while com­mu­ni­cat­ing with a Ger­man illus­tra­tor and pic­ture book researcher who came to Bei­jing, I got to know more about Janosch and learned that he is indeed a high­ly respect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive fig­ure in the Ger­man chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture world. In the words of that schol­ar: A genius like him who can write and draw by him­self is very rare even in Ger­many.

About Yoko Sano——


Yoko Sano returned to Bei­jing in May 2007 to look for her for­mer res­i­dence
[Review] Record of Yoko Sano’s 2007 Bei­jing Read­ers’ Meet­ing

While wait­ing for spring in the ancient cap­i­tal, I miss a woman who is in a for­eign coun­try…

About Dr. Seuss——

[Note 16] Read­ing Dr. Seuss to your child before bed? Be care­ful!

About John Burn­ing­ham——

John Burn­ing­ham

[Study Ses­sion Shar­ing] John Burn­ing­ham, Works and Relat­ed Mate­ri­als

About David Wis­ner and Antho­ny Brown –

David Wis­ner

Antho­ny Brown

[Read­ing Ses­sion Shar­ing] Infor­ma­tion about David Wis­ner’s “The Three Lit­tle Pigs”

[Study Ses­sion Top­ic] How to read sto­ries from pic­tures in pic­ture books?

Final­ly, let’s talk about Sil­ver­stein——

The alter­na­tive genius uncle Shel Sil­ver­stein
Sil­ver­stein was a man who was par­tic­u­lar­ly reluc­tant to dis­cuss his per­son­al life, often specif­i­cal­ly plead­ing with the media to avoid men­tion­ing it in their reports. There­fore, offi­cial infor­ma­tion about his life is incred­i­bly scarce. What’s even more sur­pris­ing is that (I had­n’t noticed before) although his pic­ture books and poet­ry col­lec­tions are huge best­sellers and have tru­ly moved many adults and chil­dren, in the pile of Eng­lish pic­ture book research mono­graphs I’ve col­lect­ed, there are very few men­tions of Uncle Shel and his works. Only one chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture schol­ar briefly touched on his con­tri­bu­tion to chil­dren’s poet­ry, and anoth­er psy­cho­an­a­lyst dis­cussed his work “The Giv­ing Tree” in detail. Appar­ent­ly, he was both­ered by the fact that the end­less­ly devot­ed apple tree in the work was referred to as “She,” a female char­ac­ter, and devot­ed con­sid­er­able space to dis­cussing issues sur­round­ing gen­der rela­tions.

But even so, there are actu­al­ly many anec­dotes about Uncle Schell. For exam­ple, when he was asked by his friends to cre­ate chil­dren’s books, his main job was to draw car­toons for Play­boy mag­a­zine, and he had already become famous for this. It was indeed the founder of the adult mag­a­zine, Hugh Hefn­er, who dis­cov­ered his tal­ent and saved him from sell­ing ice cream on the street, so the two of them were once very close.
For exam­ple, the friend who enlist­ed him to illus­trate chil­dren’s books turned out to be Tom­my Unger, anoth­er mas­ter­ful pic­ture book artist and win­ner of the Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen Award for illus­tra­tors. His books, “The Three Rob­bers” and “Crick­et Tow­er,” have been pub­lished in Chi­na. Uncle Shel recalls that Tom­my prac­ti­cal­ly dragged him to Harper’s. He had no faith in his abil­i­ty to illus­trate chil­dren’s books. But the Harper’s edi­tor took an imme­di­ate lik­ing to him, with an air of “If you can do it, you can do it, even if you can’t,” and he had to agree to give it a try. Thus, his first book, “A Shoot­ing Lion,” was born, fol­lowed the fol­low­ing year by “The Giv­ing Tree.”

That edi­tor was the famous Ursu­la. She was deter­mined to have Uncle Sher illus­trate chil­dren’s books in 1963, the year “Where the Wild Things Are” was pub­lished. Ursu­la often men­tioned Sil­ver­stein in her let­ters, always pre­fix­ing his name with “the great Sher”—a tes­ta­ment to her admi­ra­tion for him. She described the great Sher as always so poised and radi­ant, as if he had just hit a win­ning streak at a game of jig­saw. Occa­sion­al­ly, she would write him per­son­al­ly about pub­lish­ing mat­ters, but she would also jok­ing­ly ask at the end if he’d been hang­ing out with the “bun­ny girls” in Hefn­er’s famous pool late­ly.

The ded­i­ca­tions in each of Sher’s books have their own sto­ry, but with so few clues, most of it is guess­work. For exam­ple, “The Giv­ing Tree” is ded­i­cat­ed to Nicky, his girl­friend at the time and the moth­er of his daugh­ter. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, she died young, leav­ing the lit­tle girl to live most­ly with her aunt and uncle. “Who Wants a Cheap Rhi­no” is said to be ded­i­cat­ed to them. That girl lat­er died of a seri­ous ill­ness before turn­ing 12. The poet­ry col­lec­tion “Light in the Attic,” pub­lished before her death, is ded­i­cat­ed to her—“To Shanna”—Shanna being Sher’s daugh­ter. The name is said to be Hebrew.

By the way, I used to think Uncle Sher was black, from look­ing at his pho­tos, lis­ten­ing to his poet­ry and singing. Lat­er I learned for sure that he was white, and a true Jew. I know noth­ing about Sher’s par­ents, but I do know that he lat­er had a son.

The Giv­ing Tree is undoubt­ed­ly his most famous and best-sell­ing book, but its ini­tial response was luke­warm. The first print run of 7,000 copies took a full year to sell, and the print run only steadi­ly increased over the first few years before it sud­den­ly explod­ed in pop­u­lar­i­ty. Ini­tial­ly, the let­ters the edi­tors received were main­ly from pas­tors who said they had just told the sto­ry in a ser­mon and that every­one was deeply moved…

It’s easy to feel like cry­ing when read­ing the sto­ry of “The Giv­ing Tree”, but lis­ten­ing to Uncle Shel singing “The Giv­ing Tree” can make peo­ple feel par­tic­u­lar­ly calm and intox­i­cat­ed…

Click to play Shel Sil­ver­stein’s “The Giv­ing Tree”

Appen­dix: Lyrics of “The Giv­ing Tree”

The Giv­ing Tree
Once there was a giv­ing tree who loved a lit­tle boy
And every­day the boy would come to play
Swing­ing from her branch­es sleep­ing in her shade
Laugh­ing all the sum­mer hours away
And so they loved and oh the tree was hap­py
Oh the tree was glad

But soon the boy grew old­er one day he came and said
Can you give me some mon­ey, tree
To buy some­thing I’ve found
I have no mon­ey said the tree
Just apples, twigs and leaves
But you can take my apples, boy
And sell them in the town
And so he did and oh the tree was hap­py
Oh the tree was glad

But soon again the boy came back and he said to the tree
I’m now a man and I must have a house that’s all my own
I can’t give you a house she said
The for­est is my house
But you may cut my branch­es off and build your­self a home
And so he did and oh the tree was hap­py
Oh the tree was glad

And time went by and the boy came back with sad­ness in his eyes
My life has turned so cold he said I need sun­ny days
I’ve noth­ing but my trunk she said
But you may cut it down
And build your­self a boat and sail away
And so he did and oh the tree was hap­py
Oh the tree was glad

And after years the boy came back both of them were old
I real­ly can­not help you if you ask for anoth­er gift
I’m noth­ing but an old stump now
I’m sor­ry boy she said
I’m sor­ry but I’ve noth­ing more to give
I do not need very much now just a qui­et place to rest
The boy, who whis­pered with a weary smile
Well said the tree an old stump is still good for that
Come boy she said sit down
Sit down and rest a while
And so he did and oh the tree was hap­py
Oh the tree was glad