Adult Learning From Picture Books

Get ready for FerdinandCore!

Dame Sophie: Dame Karen, would you like to share with the class the bit of Instagram magic you worked this week? Dame Margaret and I found it particularly charming and relevant!

Dame Karen: Why thank you! The Dames Instagram is off to a roaring start indeed thanks to Dame Margaret’s runaway hit Beyonce x Newsies mashup and it made me realize I did not know how to do a Story nor a Reel and so I made a little assignment for myself to try and figure them out. I’ve been thinking a lot about Ferdinand as in The Story of, the classic children’s book from the gloriously named Munro Leaf in which the titular bull prefers sitting under a cork tree and enjoying flowers as opposed to ripping and roaring about with his fellow youngsters. As we all know, shit is heavy and hard right now and I’ve found myself needing to rest even more than usual. In trying to put a positive spin on my lethargy, I thought about ol’ Ferdinand, a story I loved as a kid despite being more of a ripping, roaring type myself at the time. Then I made myself laugh thinking about Ferdinand as an influencer, “Ferdinand is mother,” etc. and thus #FerdinandCore was born. 

Dame Sophie: I love this re-imagining of Ferdinand as a king of self-care. I was struck by the really apt softness of the illustrations, paired with your captions. The use of “Unbothered” is so of this moment, and yet it’s also exactly what Ferdinand is. As long as he isn’t getting stung by a bee, there’s nothing in this world that can trouble him. He’s got fresh air, sunshine, lovely flowers to smell, shade from the cork tree, what man or beast could ask for more? I’d forgotten about how much softness is right there in the illustrations, too. Robert Lawson’s style (present in abundance in two of my favorite childhood chapter books, Rabbit Hill and Ben & Me, which he wrote and illustrated) is lush in a way I don’t often associate with what I think was pen-and-ink. Every line seems to be curved, Ferdinand’s facial expressions are practically beatific. And yet they’re so witty, too! The cork tree Ferdinand sits under grows literal corks for wine bottles, as if to suggest that humans designed our wine bottle necks to make use of the corks that nature had evolved to provide for us.  

Dame Karen: I loved the cork tree illustrations so much and still do! It turns out that Ferdinand is also a powerful anti-fascism symbol, making him even more of a relevant role model in these exceedingly trying times! This was news to me, but apparently when The Story of Ferdinand was released in 1936, it was seen as “pacifist propaganda” meant to criticize Spanish general and later dictator Francisco Franco. It was banned in Spain at the time and burned by Nazis as “degenerate democratic propaganda”! 

Dame Sophie: Well then, I’m for it 1000%! Now I’m enjoying thinking about The Story of Ferdinand and Guernica being two very different (but, I hope, equally effective and rightly beloved) works of political art.

I want to get back to Ferdinand as an icon of rest. I was thinking about picture book characters who I see cropping up all the time on Instagram. I think you’ve hit on something at a just-right time, in part because I would like to let Frog and Toad have a rest and a compatriot to help them out as fully embraced-by-Instagram avatars of R&R. Those guys are everywhere and shouldn’t have to shoulder so much of the load of reminding everyone that slower, smaller, less agitated things and ways of being aren’t by definition passive or empty. Rest is an activity, too.

Dame Karen: Excellent point! Ferdinand and his peaceful ilk also serve as a nice equal-and-opposite companion to Richard Scarry’s Busytown, which I’ve also noticed is enjoying a welcome and delightful Moment on the internet. 

Dame Sophie: YES. Like you, I love Busytown so, so much, but because sharing Busytown images is a nostalgic endeavor, it flattens and reduces the scope of what we can see in a fuller canon of mid 20th century picture books. My go-to example of this process is usually classic rock radio; you can prise that format from my cold, dead hands, because I love hopping in the car with total confidence that I can look forward to hearing five songs in a row that I know all the words to, BUT. I also know darn well that there were many, many artists on the radio in the 70s other than the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, solo Beatles, and Fleetwood Mac, but there's scarcely any evidence of that on terrestrial classic rock radio! In picture books, this flattening is super-obvious when you’re shopping for board books – the classics that are readily available at your larger bookstores are so often pretty simple Caldecott winners of yore or books that don’t really work as board books but are published in that format because they’re so popular in their regular trim size. (Hi, you can take the girl out of librarianship, but not the librarianship out of the girl.)

So tell us, what picture books or illustrators would you recommend to your fellow dDames Nationals looking to branch out when thinking of classic illustrations that can be repurposed in these chaotic and exhausting times?

Dame Karen’s favs:

I was so obsessed with Dahlov Ipcar’s The Cat At Night when I was little that I often slept with it under my pillow. It’s just one of her many beautiful books which tend to focus on animals, Maine, and mythology. 

I think Maira Kalman’s gorgeous, whimsical yet knowingly sophisticated books are perhaps more for adults than children? I could be wrong, though — parents and others who have shared her books with children, please weigh in! 

I still get a kick out of David Macaulay’s painstakingly intricate architectural illustrations in books like Cathedral, Castle, and Mill and appreciate the almost meditative act of taking the time to appreciate each tiny detail. 

Dame Sophie’s picks:

Wanda Gág’s Millions of Cats poses logistical issues (how will the little old man and little old woman feed so many kitties?) but I usually think of it as a story about people who learn that the more creatures they love, the more they can love.

It’s Raining, Said John Twaining is a book of Danish nursery rhymes translated into English (by its illustrator, N.M. Bodecker, what an all-rounder), and if you think that’s niche, just wait til you learn that it was published in 1973 and is out of print. But hear me out! Used copies are available at reasonable prices, and that blog post I linked above includes a bunch of digitized illustrations. The facial expressions! The color schemes! The distinct moods suited to each poem! This was probably the beginning of my lifelong love for books in translation to English, and is so delicious to read aloud, which is something that readers of all ages love (see also: audiobooks & even some podcasts). A great reminder that revisiting favorite childhood activities in adulthood is a great way to reconnect with and identify things that bring you joy.

Frog and Toad are great and I will brook no hateration whatsoever of those gentle homebodies & queer icons, but they deserve a bit of breathing room, no? I’ve been feeling lately that the Internet over-relies on them as mentors of rest and managing a broad spectrum of emotions. How about another of Arnold Lobel’s creations, A Holiday For Mister Muster, in which the titular protagonist experiences adversity after pouring his heart and soul into organizing a restorative beach day for his zoo animals, then puts himself in a time out, has a milkshake, and gathers his thoughts to salvage the day. It’s a sweet, low-key gem.

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