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.