Elizabeth Orton Jones at work in her studio

One afternoon, a year ago last February, Elizabeth Jones came to tea. It was quite an occasion, for although we had known her incarnate, so to speak, for a comparatively short time, we were very much at home with her because of our long and intimate friendship with Ragman of Paris, Maminka’s Children, and Twig. Deirdre’s first pet-names for Steven came from Elizabeth Jones: “My sweet raisin, my little mouse, my rather small beetle.” And Steven had felt such an immediate kinship with Elizabeth that he spoke of her as “ our Miss Jones,” and behaved with her as if she were his own age.

On this particular afternoon she told us she was having a little difficulty in finding the right models to sit for the drawings of “Toys whose shapes I know” in Rachel Field’s Prayer For A Child. She had lived with the text and let the pictures grow in her mind until she knew precisely what she wanted: toys that had been really loved by some child, but were not so worn and tired that they’d lost their shape and color. She needed one woolly one, a good friend for sleeping with; one small one, the right size to fit into a child’s hands; one toy of wood or paper; and one “good old soul of a doll.”

Deirdre and Steven went upstairs, and if we’d been noticing particularly we might have thought they’d grown tired of our party. Presently they came down again, and with them came Prowlie, the second-generation teddy bear; Teddy Wear-wee, his inseparable companion; Salisbury, the small gray rabbit from England; the big Swedish wooden spoon known as the “tuvebon,” Steven’s favorite plaything from the time he could almost have been picked up in it; and Abigail, the Brown County pioneer doll handed on to Deirdre years ago by someone who had loved her dearly, and now Steven’s cherished friend and confidante. All of these were piled into Elizabeth’s lap. Elizabeth examined them gravely, asked a few questions about their ancestry (this out of understanding of their owners’ pride, not from concern with their social fitness), and then said, “Of course!” So they all went home for a long visit with “our Miss Jones.”

The next week the Duff children came down with measles, and the companions of the nursery began to be missed rather badly through the tedious feverish nights. There was much talk of how the toys were faring, whether Miss Jones remembered to put them to bed comfortably, and if they were homesick at all. But before the expected appeal came to have them brought home, there arrived a most enchanting letter with a beautiful colored picture of the toys sitting in Miss Jones’ studio chair, and a long account of the trip to Highland Park, of being tucked in for the night under warm blankets, and of Miss Jones’ pussy, Piley, who “makes a noise like a little washing-machine.”

After that, until the spots were all gone and the two Duffs restored to a state of unrelenting vigor, we talked endlessly about the book Miss Jones was making, wondering if all the pictures would be as lovely as the one she’d made of the toys, and growing more and more excited at the prospect of seeing a finished product in which we’d had a little share.

Well, we did see all the pictures before they went off to the printer, and found them so full of “innocent beauty and childlike truth” that it seemed almost impertinent to try to put our feeling about them into words. Then, just at Thanksgiving, the book itself arrived, with Hannah’s sweet little kneeling figure on the jacket and inside on the fly-leaf this inscription:

For Deirdre and Steven Duff—bless them. And bless their dear Prowlie, their dear Abigail, their dear wee Salisbury, their dear Teddy Wear-wee, and their dear spoon—who so graciously consented to be in this book, and who were such a help and such a comfort.

With love and with thankfulness,

ELIZABETH ORTON JONES

Thanksgiving Day, 1944.

Prayer For A Child was not, for our children, so much a beautiful new book as a beautiful new experience, a visible linking up of the Unseeable with the seen and felt and known. Their own deep sense of thankfulness for the comfortable, everyday simplicities of food and sleep, companionship and security, was expressed for them in the words of Rachel Field’s prayer and made infinitely alive and intimate by Elizabeth Jones’ pictures. It gives us much happiness to know that “other children far and near” have felt the same response, and that their elders have recognized the value and beauty of the pictures in Prayer For A Child by awarding to the creator the Caldecott Medal.

Years ago, when Deirdre Duff first read Maminka’s Children, she hazarded the opinion that “Miss Jones must be a very special kind of person to make such a wonderful book.” Miss Jones is a very special kind of person, so special that you’d never single her out from a crowd as having the unmistakable aura of the artist. She is a person.

The first time I ever saw her to know who she was, I recognized her right off because in the first place I was looking for her — it was at a performance of Gladys Adshead’s Brownies, Hush! for which Elizabeth had done the pictures; and in the second place she was so unmistakably the same kind of Jones I’d known in her brother and sister, who had been students in my husband’s classes some years before. Only, whereas Tom and Annette are strikingly dark as to eyes and hair, this Jones has the lovely russet-brown look of her mother, very attractive with her small, delicately modeled features — the straight nose, chin square and firm without being aggressive, and a mouth that never smiles by itself but helps with the lighting up of her whole face when she is amused or pleased. It isn’t easy to describe the appearance of someone who has such mobility of expression; talking or listening, laughing or serious, she has always an animation that is never tiresome because it is so honest and spontaneous. A quite unpretentious person, this Miss Jones, who nevertheless is a positive presence when she’s there, and always leaves behind her a sort of sparkle.

To say that she is at her best with children might seem to suggest that she withholds something from her grown-up friends, and this is not so. She is a thoroughly satisfactory companion, informed and responsive, full of lively imaginativeness, stimulating ideas and penetrating common sense. But in her relationship with a child there is a subjective understanding, a subtle sympathy that creates an immediate at-homeness. I am inclined to think that this accounts for a good deal of her success at making books for children because it comes from her ability to identify herself with the child she once was and has never lost.

One of my pleasantest occasions with Elizabeth Jones was an evening when we sat by the fire drinking coffee and wandering from one subject to another with fine disconnectedness until she began to tell me about herself as a little girl. Several times since, I’ve thought about some episode or another that she described, and have wondered, “Now what book had that in it?” — only to remember that it was part of the Autobiography of Elizabeth Jones as told to Annis Duff in the dead of night.

There was small Elizabeth, living in a little house — “oh, a very little house” — by the side of a deep ravine. A narrow bridge led across to where the road was, and the grand piano had to be carried over by several staggering men. She had no companions of her own generation until she was nearly six, but Pantzy and Mamie, the Bohemian girls of the household, gave her their love and care and companionship then, and for many years after Tom and Annette joined the family circle. She lived in the kitchen, she says, listening to their colorful tales, hearing their songs, watching them dance, and seeing them cook the wonderful Bohemian food.

Elizabeth glows with a sort of wondering delight as she tells about their radiant and untiring happiness in devising pleasures for a responsive child: the tiny doll’s dress, begun at suppertime, and brought for her to see in all its embroidered beauty by a blink of lamplight long after midnight, and left for her to find like a dream come true in the morning; the miraculous appearance in the kitchen one evening (when Pantzy had mysteriously disappeared upstairs) of an old Bohemian beggarman who with complete rightness proved to have known Mamie’s family in the Old Country, and told fine tales of their life and times; and—what later became one of the most delightful episodes in Maminka’s Children — the making of the Christmas bread, which is traditional in the Jones family to this day, though Pantzy and Mamie long ago carried their gift of happiness to other spheres.

When Elizabeth was about five, her family moved to a more spacious house, and she was given a beautiful walnut bed with a broad polished headboard, so that she might learn to enjoy and respect beautiful things. She had at this time a rather glamorous night-life of her own devising. Partly from loneliness, and partly from imagination clamoring for an outlet, she created a setting in which her home was an orphanage presided over by one Miss Brown. Every bedroom was a dormitory with rows of beds down each side, each bed having a headboard perfect for use as a blackboard. Each night when she’d been left alone to go to sleep, Elizabeth played with her equally orphaned companions. Night was the time for lessons: arithmetic, reading, grammar, spelling, and finally, and best of all, drawing. For this Elizabeth took a piece of chalk to bed, and just before she went to sleep she would draw a picture on the sleek headboard, and first thing in the morning she would rub it out. One morning her mother, coming in to close the window, found the chalky adornment still there. A mild reproof, combined with practical instruction as to the relative merits of chalk and olive-oil in the care of fine furniture, provided Elizabeth with a new kind of situation for her nocturnal adventures, and her prestige was greatly heightened among her shadowy companions.

Like many children gifted with imagination, Elizabeth thought herself “different,” and had no means of discovering whether or not her school friends felt as she did about books, or made response to the beauty all around. So she was all bottled up and lived in a state of bewilderment, badly needing a like-minded companion, but not quite knowing how to reveal her need.

When her brother and sister were of an age to be away from home, the three spent their summers in a little house built for them on their uncle’s plantation in Virginia. Here, free to pursue her own pleasures in congenial company, Elizabeth found a satisfying outlet for imaginative energy. A beagle-hound was their favorite playmate, and the Jones children talked a private jargon known as Beagle Language. Elizabeth at this period made a practice of setting difficult tasks for herself — reading the Bible all through, staying up all night, or making a dictionary of Beagle Language. She usually accomplished what she set out to do, and if the immediate results were not always essentially practical, the strengthening of her determination and ability to carry through an appointed task doubtless served her well in the fulfillment of her intention to develop skill and understanding as an artist.

“When did you find you wanted to be an artist?” I asked her — a silly question, now I come to think about it. She naturally couldn’t answer with any definiteness, but supposed she must have settled on drawing as the most satisfactory of her gifts when she realized that in spite of having had much music at home all her life—her father and mother are both gifted musicians — she didn’t want it as a career. When, after completing her work at the University of Chicago, she studied first at the Art Institute of Chicago and later at the School of Fine Arts at Fontainebleau, she discovered that there were people who felt and thought and saw as she did. “They talked about beauty right out loud! It was wonderful!”

Then she went to Paris, to study with Camille Liausu. “And when,” I asked, “ did you begin to draw children?” She said that she was working in the studio one day, fearfully tense and serious, when M. Liausu told her to get her coat and go out into the park. “Don’t take pencils or paper. Don’t do anything. Just watch the children playing and then come back and see if you can get some movement into your drawing.” She watched one child; she watched two children; she watched groups of children. And then she went back and drew something of what she had seen, and it was good.

She spent other and more days watching children and getting them down on paper. She came home to the United States and had a one-man show of color etchings of children at the Smithsonian Institute. And she wrote and made pictures for a little book called Ragman of Paris. I remember reading the closing chapter of it, reprinted in the May/June Horn Book in 1937, and thinking what a jolly book it would be for my six-year-old son — if I had a six-year-old son. It all came back to me the other day as I watched Steven crouching down to talk to a prowling pussy in the woodlot, and later heard him explaining that he was looking for the pussy’s green whisker.

Maminka came along before our son did, and when I think of Deirdre’s shouts of laughter as we read the chapter about the big noodle, I can scarcely wait until Steven is ready for it, too. Then there was Twig, funny and wistful and very spacious in its understanding of a child’s strength in imagination; and Small Rain, to me the most perfect of all books of Bible literature for children because of the quality of sheer joyousness that shines in all its pages. This quality is a reflection of Elizabeth herself, whose own “joyous inner wisdom” sees the eternal verities as a perennial source of happy well-being, and knows that children should have them so.

With every new book, Elizabeth Jones shows a greater sureness of technique, a finer, freer, lovelier expression of her delight in “clear-eyed, soft-faced, happy-hearted childhood, and the coy reticences, the simplicities and small solemnities of little people.” When first we used to read Prayer For A Child and look at the pictures, every time we came to “Bless the hands that never tire,’ Steven would add; “Bless the hands of our Miss Jones.” So say all of us. Hands that can bring into concrete form the vision and beauty and humor of Elizabeth Jones’ particular kind of seeing from the top of her own particular hill have a great gift to bestow on the children of this world.

This article, originally published in July 1945 issue of The Horn Book Magazine, is part of our Caldecott at 75 celebration. Click here for more archival Horn Book material on Elizabeth Orton Jones and Prayer for a Child.

The post “Our Miss Jones” appeared first on The Horn Book.

*Read at the Awards Luncheon when the Caldecott Medal was given to Elizabeth Orton Jones for her illustrations in Rachel Field’s Prayer for a Child (Macmillan).

There was once a little girl who found it very puzzling to say “thank you.” The words were too small for the feeling, the feeling too big for the words. She would slip away — crawl under the piano or under the dining room table and sit there in silence, with the big feeling inside her…Oh, to crawl under a table right now! The feeling is very big — thank you!

Much of the big feeling is that I am in no wise worthy. The Caldecott Medal — full-sized — for me? Surely it should be in miniature, for me! I do not consider myself an artist. Not yet. The very word “artist,” to me, carries with it a little vision of the state of having arrived. I think of being an artist as an achievement I may work toward my whole life and even then not arrive. Though I should like to be able to say, right out loud to myself, on the morning of my 99th birthday, “Old girl, you are an artist!” The same applies to the word “author.” And as for “author-artist”…! Whenever I am asked, point blank, what my profession is, I carefully avoid those words and answer, “I draw pictures. I write stories.”

I suppose I could answer, “I make books — for children.” But would the person to whom I was giving the answer understand that that little statement works both ways, that the reverse of it completes the truth? I make books—for children. That’s only half the truth. For as soon as a book I have made is in children’s hands, they shoot back into my hands the makings of another book. It’s very like a game of “catch” — a magical, never-ending game of “catch.” I make books — for children: children make books — for me. There’s the complete truth.

In a sense, I am standing before children at this moment as surely as I’m standing before you. In another sense, I am talking to children through you. What do they think of all this? Is it with their consent that I receive the Caldecott Medal, full-sized, and the full-sized honor that goes with it?

It would be difficult to talk directly to them about the honor. The meaning of honor is singularly lacking in their particular way of looking at things. And, for the most part, the extent of their knowledge of reward is finding it in the doing. As for the medal itself, if I were to pass it around among them, they would be interested, of course. Very interested. They would look at it, feel of it, turn it upside down and rightside up. They would say, “It’s pretty!” And then they would say, “What’s it for?” It would be difficult to talk to children about the use of the medal. In fact, it is difficult to talk to children — period! — unless what you say has something to do with something they know about. Has the Caldecott Medal something to do with something they know about? Of course it has. Drawing.

It is not difficult to talk to children about drawing, for they are fellow-indulgers, all. To them, drawing is as natural a part of everyday life as eating or sleeping or washing your neck — far more natural, usually, than the latter. To them, drawing is not tied and bound to talent, nor to theory, nor to technique, nor even to subject matter. To them, the possibilities of drawing are by no means limited to things visible. To them, it is no more unusual to sit down and draw a picture of God than it is to sit down and draw a picture of a potato. To them, drawing a picture of how happiness feels on a bright sunny morning doesn’t present any more of a problem than drawing a picture of Daddy’s blue overalls hanging on the line.

When the manuscript of Rachel Field’s Prayer for a Child came to me in the mail, one bright sunny morning, with Doris Patee’s suggestion that I draw pictures to go with it, I knew at once that I should like to try.

I sat down with the little prayer. It was not new to me. I had already read it in the Memorial Horn Book for Rachel Field. I already loved it. There is a difference, though, between reading something to take into yourself to keep and reading something to take in and then give out again through your own interpretation.

I remembered, the first time I read it, how it seemed to breathe — as things written for a particular child often do. Rachel Field wrote the prayer for her little girl, Hannah. It was Hannah who had caused it to breathe.

I wondered. Who was I to make pictures for Hannah’s prayer? I didn’t know Hannah. I had never met Rachel Field actually — only through her books. What kind of pictures did she see when she first read the prayer to Hannah? What kind of pictures did Hannah see as she listened? What kind of pictures was I going to draw for Hannah and other children to look at?

For a long time I sat with Hannah’s prayer.

“Bless this milk and bless this bread.” — I thought of my old silver cup and how it used to feel to my hand, heavy with milk and cool and shiny.

“Bless this soft and waiting bed…” — I thought of the blue and white patchwork quilt made by Mamie, with pictures from Mother Goose and from Æsop on it. I got my old silver cup out of the cupboard and polished it. I got the blue and white patchwork quilt down from the shelf and unfolded it.

“Through the darkness, through the night, let no danger come to fright my sleep…”…I ran to the window seat and knelt there, to feel again how it used to feel looking out into the dark sky.

I had no little girl. The little girl closest to me was the little-girl-I-used-to-be.

“Bless the toys whose shapes I know;” — I got out the toys I had kept and put away in cardboard boxes.

I’d have to pretend. I’d pretend that I and the little-girl-I-used-to-be were two separate people. I’d pretend we both lived in my studio. She would go to sleep and wake up, get dressed and undressed, think thoughts and dream dreams in my studio. While I drew.

“Bless the lamplight, bless the fire…” — I would try to draw the quiet, comfortable happiness a child feels at bedtime. I would try to draw the change of thought that comes softly as a change of breeze at the end of a day — when everything in the outside world begins to fade, and everything that means home, especially what is a child’s very own; begins to shine with nearness and dearness and familiarity.

“Bless the hands that never tire in their loving care of me.” — I would try to draw security.

“Bless my friends and family.” — I would try to draw companionship.

“Bless my father and my mother…” — I would try to draw love.

“Bless other children far and near, and keep them safe and free from fear.” — I would try to draw the feeling of fellowship that exists, without the necessity for a San Francisco Conference, among all children.

“So let me sleep and let me wake in peace and health, for Jesus’ sake…Amen.” — I would try to draw the confidence a child feels in being sure of the presence of God.

All this I would try to draw.

I couldn’t actually see all this, of course. Not with my eyes. I couldn’t actually see the little-girl-I-used-to-be. So a real little girl came to pose for me. Her job was to pretend she lived in my studio. She pretended very well. There was no milk in the cup; the piece of bread was a pad of paper; she had to get undressed and go to bed at eleven o’clock in the morning. But such things are not at all puzzling when there’s a reason. And pretending is as good a reason as any.

I found that the toys whose shapes the little-girl-I-used-to-be knew were simply too worn out to pose. So I put them back in their cardboard boxes and administered anesthetic in the shape of more moth balls, to insure their well-earned rest. I went uptown and looked around in the stores. But I couldn’t buy what I was looking for; not for any amount of money. Only after a long life of being much-slept-with does the real character of toys begin to show. I gave voice to my need one day while taking tea with a friend. The children of the house happened to be present, but seemingly paying no attention. After a while, however, the little boy who lay on his stomach on the floor, drawing, left his picture and ran upstairs. His sister followed. In a very few minutes they were down again, and my lap was filled with what I had been looking for. Their most cherished toys — the ones always taken on long trips — the ones always slept with — were hereby offered me to take home to keep as long as I needed them. I got up in the night, that night, I remember, and went into the studio and lit the lamp. There were the toys, patiently waiting out the first night they had ever been separated from their owners. Prowlie, the teddy bear, had his arm around Abigail, the rag doll, in whose lap sat Salisbury, the rabbit. Gentle patience and utterly selfless loyalty showed, if anything ever showed in Prowlie’s shoebutton eyes, in the smudge which was Abigail’s nose, in the patch which covered Salisbury’s whole behind. Prowlie seemed to be saying, “Of course they’re all right, Abigail. Don’t worry! Whatever this is, we’re doing it because they want us to, remember. Whatever is expected of us, we must do it well.” With a feeling of truly humble respect, I went back to bed.

Drawing is very like a prayer. Drawing is a reaching for something away beyond you. As you sit down to work in the morning, you feel as if you were on top of a hill. And it is as if you were seeing for the first time. You take your pencil in hand. You’d like to draw what you see. And so you begin. You try.

The result depends on a good many things. On how much you know about drawing, for one. If you don’t know much, the picture isn’t very good. Good or bad, however, it is never what you tried to draw. The picture is never what you saw from the top of your hill. Never. But if somebody — a grownup or a child, a little old beggarwoman or a king — anybody! — can, by looking at your picture, catch a glimpse of what you saw…if somebody — anybody! — can in that way understand what you tried to draw, then — likening drawing to a prayer again—your prayer has been answered.

I have a picture — or, rather, a postcard print of a picture — at which I am very fond of looking. It is a picture of a whole countryside of little hills, with a wide blue sky above. And on top of each little hill sits a child, singing. I like to look at that picture and think: Every child in the world has a hill, with a top to it. Every child — black, white, rich, poor, handicapped, unhandicapped. And singing is what the top of each hill is for. Singing — drawing — thinking — dreaming — sitting in silence…saying a prayer.

I should like every child in the world to know that he has a hill, that that hill is his no matter what happens, his and his only, for ever. I should like every child in the world to know that what he can see from the top of his hill, when he looks down and around, is different from what can be seen from the top of anybody else’s hill — that what he can see when he looks straight up is exactly what everybody else, looking straight up, can see, too.

I should like, if you don’t mind, to accept the Caldecott Medal, and the honor that goes with it, as a trust. I should like to try to express my gratitude for that trust on every page of every book I’m ever to make — for children.

This article, originally published in the July 1945 issue of The Horn Book Magazine, is part of our Caldecott at 75 celebration. Click here for more archival Horn Book material on Elizabeth Orton Jones and Prayer for a Child.

The post Elizabeth Orton Jones’s Caldecott acceptance speech appeared first on The Horn Book.

INGRI AND EDGAR PARIN D’AULAIRE, Author-Illustrators
Abraham Lincoln (Doubleday)

“Deep in the wilderness down in Kentucky there stood a cabin of roughly hewn logs. It was a poor little cabin of only one room. But the flames flickered gaily on the hearth….In this cabin lived a man named Thomas Lincoln with his wife and his little daughter, Sally. And here it was that his son, Abraham Lincoln, first saw the world on a Sunday morning (in February). It wasn’t much of a house in which he was born, but it was just as good as most people had in Kentucky in 1809.” A young assistant in the children’s room of a large city branch said when she had finished looking at it, “How the refugee children will love this book!” The d’Aulaires have told the story of Lincoln well and their pictures are bound to interest children and to be interesting and arresting to grown-ups.

reviewed in the May 1939 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1941

ROBERT LAWSON, Author-Illustrator
They Were Strong and Good (Viking)

A country made up as is ours of many different racial strains may well take pains to see that its children are conscious of their heritage. Robert Lawson has made an unusual contribution to such an objective in this boylike record of his own ancestors. His fine line drawings accompanied by short, straightforward text give a picture of these forebears who are a pride to him, not because of wealth or position but because of character. “They were strong and good.” The touch is a light one — you can trust Robert Lawson to bring his glinting humor into play — but none the less is the book a bit of social history out of the family album.

reviewed in the November 1940 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1942

ROBERT MCCLOSKEY, Author-Illustrator
Make Way for Ducklings (Viking)

The Boston Public Garden has never appeared in more attractive guise than in this engaging book. The story of the family of ducks, raised on the Charles River and brought back to the pond in the Garden, through the traffic of city streets by its anxious mother is founded on fact as many Bostonians can testify. Robert McCloskey’s unusual and stunning pictures will long be a delight for their fun as well as their spirit of place.

reviewed in the November 1941 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1943

VIRGINIA LEE BURTON, Author-Illustrator
The Little House (Houghton)

In the most fascinating picture book of the season, Virginia Lee Burton tells the story of a Little house which wins its way into the very center of our heart. Stunning pictures in color show the changing scene of summer and winter, as the house watches the sun rise and set, and lights begin to twinkle in the nearby city, until she felt the city grow up around her, step by step. Both city and country children will study these pictures with absorption, for there is much exciting detail in them. Besides the seasonal sports and activities of children who played around the house, there is the panorama of the passers-by, in horse-drawn vehicles at first, and then in every kind of motor car you can think of. The pictures are full of life and movement, of work even more than play. And in the end we have the joy of seeing the little house, now shabby and forlorn, move back into the green and sunny country, where the stars shine over her at night. This is the best of Virginia Lee Burton’s books, so far, and we predict for it a long and favored life.

reviewed in the November 1942 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1944

JAMES THURBER
Many Moons (Harcourt)

Illustrated by Louis Siobodkin. A charming picture book about an imperious ten-year-old princess who wanted the moon, and what her father did to get it for her. The Lord High Chamberlain, the Royal Wizard, the Royal Mathematician were all called upon in vain, and at last it was the Royal Jester who helped the princess find her own answer to the troublesome demand. Louis Slobodkin’s many lovely pictures have an important share in making a distinguished book of this amusing fairy tale — the first book James Thurber has written for children.

reviewed in the September 1943 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1945

RACHEL FIELD
Prayer for a Child (Macmillan)

Pictures by Elizabeth Orton Jones. This childlike prayer, written for Hannah, has been printed before, but not in illustrated form, as a book by itself. A realistic, unsentimental picture on each page makes the meaning of the phrases more clear to little children, closer to daily life. This is a choice book for a reverent mother to use at home with a young family.

reviewed in the January 1945 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1946

MAUD AND MISKA PETERSHAM, Author-Illustrators
The Rooster Crows (Macmillan)

“A Book of American Rhymes and Jingles.” Counting-out and rope-skipping rhymes bring up visions of generations of American children, in the playground and the street; familiar finger-plays and folk-jingles recall the nursery and the home. “Mother may I go out to swim?” and “Star Light, Star Bright,” come back to the memory as easily as “Yankee Doodle.” The Petershams have made delightful pictures, in soft harmonious colors, with plenty of humor for these and many other rhymes that American children chant freely. They have made a beautiful book and the publishers have given it clear large type for young readers.

reviewed in the March 1946 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1947

GOLDEN MACDONALD
The Little Island (Doubleday)

Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. In some of his most brilliant and exciting pictures Leonard Weisgard shows the changes that the seasons bring to a little island out in the ocean. The rhythmic story tells of the kitten who came ashore from a sailboat and found out the secret of being an island from a wise and talkative fish. A picture book of great charm.

reviewed in the January 1947 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1948

ALVIN TRESSELT
White Snow Bright Snow (Lothrop)

Illustrated by Roger Duvoisin. Lovely full-page pictures in color convey the joyous feeling of beauty and wonder and frolic that comes to little children when snowflakes are in the air. The text describes some of the work snow brings to grown-ups.

reviewed in the November 1947 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1949

BERTA AND ELMER HADER, Author-Illustrators
The Big Snow (Macmillan)

Lovely pictures in color and in black and white show the different animals of the woods getting ready for winter after they see the wild geese flying south. Here are the cottontails eating plenty of food, the chipmunks busy with their store of nuts; bluejays and cardinals, robins and pheasants, all preparing to stay with the mice and the deer, thinking they are ready for the winter. Then  come the snow in all its whiteness and heavy abundance, the need of the wild creatures and the feeding of the birds by two kindly folk in the country.

reviewed in the November 1948 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

These reviews of 1940s Caldecott Medal–winning titles are part of our Caldecott at 75 celebration. Click here for more archival Horn Book material on Elizabeth Orton Jones and Prayer for a Child.

The post Horn Book reviews of Caldecott Medal winners, 1940-1949 appeared first on The Horn Book.

Huckleberry mountain library — the only rural library in Henderson County, North Carolina — is open for two hours every other Sunday afternoon to the mountain children, and was to be open on December 23. Packages of books from three of my publishers arrived on the 22nd, just in time for library day.

The library is a small log building, with a rock chimney at one end, sitting at the foot of the mountain, shaded by long-leafed pines. There had been three deep snows — more than this locality experiences in an entire winter — so the low-hung branches of the pine trees and the roof were white and glowing in the bright winter sun.

The children always come early, the young librarian, an educated mountain girl, said. The hours are from two to four, but often they are there by one-thirty. She has to open the door as soon as she gets there and keep it open, even at the risk of being very cold because the open door is a sign of welcome. If the children see the door closed, they may turn around and go home!

Through the weekdays, the building is unheated. So we went over early, to put up some greens and a little Christmas tree, and to get a fire started. Some young pine trees had been cleared out of the woods near by, and these Stephen chopped up. We had brought some dry wood, kindling and newspapers with us. The fireplace was filled with snow, and the chimney was very cold, so in spite of all our efforts, we never did get what you would call “a roaring fire” or any noticeable amount of heat in the room.

Wood is a problem. The mountains are full of it, but there is no one to chop it, and so there is no wood to buy. The Library Association (members of the Huckleberry Art Colony, active here in the summers) have tried to get the local people to do something toward “their library” and at one time suggested that each child bring a stick of wood each time he came. But it did not work. The children would pick up a dead branch as they walked along and bring that. Dead branches do not make good firewood. So what is gathered is usually what the librarian goes out and chops herself — and that is apt to be too green to burn.

The children looked so pretty as they came down the road across the snow. They were all dressed in their best — their coats and caps and mittens of bright colors — and had their hair neatly combed. They did not look ragged or tousled as they usually do at home. I was struck by the beauty and sweetness of their faces. Their natural shyness and quietness make their sweetness all the more appealing. There is a large proportion of redheads among them, evidence of a strong Scotch strain. They are apt to be small for their age. A boy, who looked to me to be about six, told me he was ten and in the fifth grade. Their clothes were pretty but not warm. The girls had thin cotton dresses on under their light summer-weight coats. Some (especially a group who had come all the way down the mountain) came in shaking and shivering, and their bare legs were blue with the cold.

We all huddled up as close to our feeble fire as we could. I told the boys to leave their caps on to keep their heads warm. When the door was kept closed, we began to warm up a little, but while we were keeping it open for possible late-comers, it was like trying to heat the whole out-of-doors.

The librarian was late and when she came in she was surprised to see a crowd of children all settled by the fire — some on chairs and a bench, others on empty nail kegs and the rest on the floor, examining the new books I had brought. There was little articulate expression, but if you could have seen the bright, eager look on the children’s faces, you would have understood what these bright, clean books meant to them. Most of the books already in the library are secondhand, and very much used, if not worn out.

We had a lovely time together. For an hour and a half we forgot how cold we were, and the children listened with rapt attention while I talked to them about books and pictures. Most of them were young, so I showed them Mr. Small, and talked of his many adventures, because I find that Mr. Small has an almost universal age appeal. Or, perhaps I should say that he is ageless! The oldest boy in the group, who looked to be fifteen or sixteen, listened as closely as the youngest, a four-year-old. He gave no indication, either direct or implied, that the books were too young for him. He was particularly interested to learn how Pilot Small made the airplane go.

The shyness of the mountain children before a stranger means almost complete inarticulateness. I have never seen or talked to such a well-behaved group of children before. There was no squirming or restlessness, but complete and undivided attention. Their lips spoke few words, but their eyes spoke volumes, and there were many spontaneous laughs. They work hard — I have seen them feeding the stock, working in the fields, and carrying their innumerable buckets of water — and they have few pleasures at home. In many homes, no games are allowed. They are repressed by parents at home and by teachers at school. Their lives are dumb and colorless. What a bright and happy world, in contrast to their own, they will enter through books! No wonder they are avid for them. No wonder they broke out now and then in spontaneous bursts of laughter!

A few were stony-faced throughout. One, a fat-faced girl of about eleven, showed no sign of emotion the entire time. I would have given a great deal to know what she was thinking. And one little four-year-old girl sat solemnly on her older sister’s lap, her lips pressed tightly together, solemn and scared, not a smile the entire time. I tried my best to rouse her to some kind of response, but failed. I was glad to see her go home with Spring Is Here clutched tightly in her fist; and her older sister, ten, with Let’s Play House.

The Little Farm came closest to them, because it touched their own experience. They have all milked cows, fed chickens and pigs, picked apples, helped in the fields, etc. They roared over the picture of bringing the cow in from the pasture. One girl forgot herself and burst out: “Some cows is jest stubborn and won’t go where you want ’em. You have to send the dog atter ’em!” One boy said he picked apples, but they were green ones and gave him a stomach-ache. When they saw Farmer Small chopping wood, they laughed most of all. I asked: “Do you boys chop wood?” and the girls broke in: “We chop wood too!” One said: “I help my brother with the crosscut saw.” Getting in wood is probably one of their most constant and disagreeable chores, but to them it was the funniest picture in the book.

While refreshments were passed around — candy, nuts and cookies — the children turned in the books they had brought back, and made their selections to take home, chiefly among the new books, of course.

A twelve-year-old boy — a neighbor who is less shy because he is getting acquainted — bragged boldly, “I can read five books in a week!” He selected an old-fashioned book about a pioneer boy, and I glanced over the pictures with him. One showed a boy, knife in hand, trying to catch a wild turkey. I said, “He’s going right after the turkey, isn’t he?” Charles laughed and said: “Looks like the turkey’s comin’ right atter him!”

There is no limit to the number of books they can take. Some take only one, others take three or four at a time. Their parents start reading them, too, often aloud to the younger children; or the older children read them aloud to the younger. Then sometimes, the librarian said, they will come and ask for a book for mother. She said that often the younger children choose a book simply by its color and often get books too old for them, and she doesn’t want them to get discouraged. So I went over all their books and made a selection for “easiest reading.” We cleared two of the lowest shelves for these, and now she can direct the younger children to them, with, we hope, happier results in selection.

Not all the mountain children within walking distance come for books. One mother, who is so religious she won’t have checkers or any other game in the house for her nine children, says she does not want them to read because it interferes with their work. Many of the families weave rag rugs, making use of “loopers” of knit stocking material, obtained from a textile mill as waste. These circular knit loops have to be looped together and rolled into large balls, and even four-year-olds can do it. The older children take turns weaving the rugs, if there is only one loom. If they have more than one loom, all nine children are expected to weave rather than to read. But a book found its way even into this home. It was a real joy to me, upon entering the cheerless, dark, low-ceilinged room, to see a little girl squatting by the fireplace, reading a library book!

There are other parents who are eager for their children to have books. Three families combined and sent a small gift, with a Christmas card and a note of thanks, to the young librarian. I was told that this was the first spontaneous sign of appreciation coming from the mountain people themselves.

The children were shy in their thanks and goodbyes. A fourteen-year-old girl really spoke for the group. She told me she was “mighty glad to meet me” and to know that I could write books and draw pictures too! She thanked me for coming, wished me a Merry Christmas, and asked me to come and visit her on the top of the mountain.

As I watched the children go, I looked up to see the winter sun setting behind the mountain, and I was happy in the thought that books will bring them wider horizons. Books will help them, as nothing else can, to see beyond the mountains to a world much larger than their own. As the young librarian’s cheerful voice rang out over the snow, in the customary parting greeting of the mountain people, “You-all come back!” I knew that they would come back, again and again, to live in the wonderful world of books.

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