Due to an unexpected death in the family, our production schedule has been delayed. This episode will now drop on Monday, 17 August. Thanks for understanding and enjoy this teaser in the meantime!
Robert Lawson played a role in some great children’s literature: The Story of Ferdinand, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, the Newbery Award winning Rabbit Hill. His 1941 picture book They Were Strong and Good is not one of them. Racist, isolationist, and weirdly insular, it is essentially unreadable today as anything but a historical comparand. The illustrations aren’t that great, either. Yet, it won a Caldecott and had a second print run just one month after its first edition. It’s still in print today. In this episode, we don’t go so far as to answer why–but we do address why it probably shouldn’t be.
Show Notes
Lots of books to share with you today. Happily, they’re all available on the Internet Archive or Open Library! Login required for all.
Here’s Lawson’s text. Or, y’know, Laswson:
And his Honor winning text, Four and Twenty Blackbirds:
And the text that he probably should’ve won the Caldecott for, Just for Fun:
Just for fun, here’s Mr. Popper’s Penguins:
And the text that They Were Strong and Good beat out for the Caldecott award, April’s Kittens:
Ain’t the internet grand?