Today in “Things We Didn’t Know We Needed But Probably Don’t Deserve”: Even though he’s been dead for five years, we’re getting a new picture book from the king of weird children’s literature, Maurice Sendak.

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Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

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We are in the middle of the holiday of Chanukah, festival of freedom and rededication, of the courage to speak truth to power and to embody the Jewish value of preserving light against the darkness of oppression.  We are also approaching the presidency of Donald Trump, an apparent titanic failure of America’s identity as a haven to the reviled, persecuted, or disadvantaged of the world.  If you are interested in reading to a young person this holiday season, you may enjoy along with her a relatively recent picture book by Richard and Tanya Simon, illustrated by Mark Siegel, Oskar and the Eight Blessings.  If you don’t have a young person to read to, but you are intrigued by a work which introduces Eleanor Roosevelt, Superman, and Count Basie to the holiday commemorating the rededication of the Temple, here is the book for you.

The story, with minimal text and muted colors, is set in 1938, on Christmas Eve, the seventh day of Chanukah.  Oskar is a Jewish refugee child, sent by his parents to New York City to find the haven of his Aunt Esther’s apartment. His journey requires that he navigate a strange maze of metropolitan night, during which he meets, not the frightening ghosts of Christmas past, but the real life figures who will become ghosts of a comforting future.  Count Basie whistles a jazz duet with him outside of Carnegie Hall, Eleanor Roosevelt kindly winks at him, and a benevolent news vendor, himself a visual representation of the Depression era “forgotten man,” gives Oskar a free copy of Action Comics Number 1, along with the empowering (and of course Jewish) spirit of Superman.

The illustrations feature New York scenes that promote nostalgia for a past that may not have existed for every immigrant; few Jews fleeing the Holocaust were allowed entry, due to the punitive immigration quotas, the suspension of which Eleanor’s husband Franklin refused to make a priority.  Yet the scenes are real, from Carnegie Hall to Herald Square, to Aunt Esther’s apartment on West 103rd Street, where, in a momentary confusion of memory, she calls Oskar by his father’s name. Oskar’s father is back in Europe, having experienced the terror of Kristallnacht and selflessly sent his son on to safety without him.  The book includes a map, and an afterward explaining the story’s origin in both history and fantasy.

The threat of darkness and inhumanity are unfortunately now very real in our country, even as the historical circumstances are different and possible responses may be different, as well.  Superman will not be sufficient, nor will remembering Eleanor Roosevelt’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights or Count Basie’s universal expression of musical brilliance.  Oskar and the Eight Blessings sets the call for freedom and justice in the particular setting of a New York City nighttime and reminds us of fleeting priorities which we can still reclaim as Americans, and pass on to our children. To quote the Christmas tree seller who lifts Oskar off the sidewalk as he falls, “Back on your feet, son.”

Image via Macmillan

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My recent article criticizing the historical omissions and misleading voice of the illustrated children’s book, A Year of Borrowed Men, generated a number of passionate responses. Pajama Press itself, an independent Canadian publisher which receives grants from noted government foundations supporting the arts, published a defense of their book on their website. Since they took my article and the depth of feeling it produced quite seriously, I would like to clarify my disappointment at the way this book presents a catastrophic era in history to the most receptive and vulnerable audience possible, young children.

First, I am certainly not suggesting that the book be banned, pulled from shelves, or removed from circulation. I am totally opposed to that approach when readers and educators fear the possible effects of a work of literature intended for children or young adults. I appreciate that Pajama Press welcomes dialogue.

Their response states that the author could not have provided a context for the narrative because the story was related “from a child’s perspective, and it would have been potentially irresponsible to force in perspectives that weren’t hers.” This is a rather inadequate explanation, particularly because the book includes an explanatory afterword about the author’s mother and her family’s experience during World War II, and even includes family photographs, lending a documentary tone to this framing of the narrative.

Therefore, when Michelle Barker states with seeming authority that “The consequences of disobeying the rules were grave: you could be put in prison,” children do not learn about any alternative choices, such as those who did resist, or of any of the reasons why the Nazis had been able to seize control of Germany. The fact that men in the author’s mother’s family had been conscripted and that she suffered losses is a tragedy, but it is a tragedy which developed for reasons which she chooses to avoid discussing.

In addition, by using the term “irresponsible” to describe a different direction the book could have done, one which could have included essential explanations that might have allowed a much more historically valid account to develop, the representatives of Pajama Press succeed in shifting the blame.

They imply that those readers asking for greater accuracy and sensitivity are not taking great care by insisting that children be truthfully introduced to the past, but that it rather makes them “irresponsible.” The story may be told from a child’s perspective, but it is far from a transcribed oral history. The book employs metaphor and carefully arranged phrases that certainly do not represent a mere recital of a child’s experience. At any rate, the author’s mother narrated these events later in her life, as an adult. She had undoubtedly come to realize that her childhood experience had been defined in a fundamentally limited, even untruthful, way by her own mother. The fact that her mother felt forced to do so because of threatening circumstances does not change the fact that her original stories, and the literary form they assume in Barker’s book, were divorced from reality.

At the time of liberation, not only had the exhausted remnant of the Jewish people been thoroughly dehumanized, but many non-Jewish slave laborers and residents of Nazi occupied Europe were malnourished and ill. If Barker’s German family had fed their “borrowed men” so much that they appear in the illustrations to be as strong and healthy as the family members, they were a rare exception. That does not invalidate her family’s experience, but in a book which purports to narrate historical events it is dishonest to avoid any mention of their situation’s anomalous nature.

Finally, the German people were defeated, and subsequently occupied by American, French, British, and, in this book, Soviet armies. It is well known that the Soviet occupiers were not sympathetic to the defeated German people, and that they even committed atrocities. Nonetheless, the Russian army, along with those of the other Allies, ultimately defeated Hitler. Pajama Press failed to respond to my interpretation of one of the book’s most disturbing sections, in which the final liberation of the “borrowed men” is compared to the sadness of loss at the farm, as Russian soldiers released livestock, ending the plenty the German family had known. After all, the luxurious quantities of food described by the child narrator were provisions that fed the Nazi regime: “We had milk and butter, meat, eggs, and produce to sell to people in the nearby city. But it was a lot to take care of.”

A child narrator cannot be expected to understand the bitter depth of irony in this statement, but that should not allow an adult with more complete knowledge and understanding to present it with nothing but sympathy. Michelle Barker has lovingly related her own family’s personal story, in a way which is deeply loyal, and yet far too distorted to be of value as a book for young readers.

Thank you to Pajama Press in displaying real interest in having this conversation.

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Those who are strangers to the world of children’s literature might be surprised at the controversy engendered by recent books which appear to misrepresent members of marginalized books, or to silence them through their infrequent appearance in books for young readers.

One example of this experience is the reception of the imaginative and artistically bold work by award winning author and illustrator Emily Jenkins and Sophie Blackall. In A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, and One Delicious Treat, they follow the preparation and consumption of a delicious dish called blackberry fool through four hundred years and a diverse group of people preparing and eating the “fine dessert.” In one scene, an African American slave and her daughter, having enthusiastically created this labor intensive culinary treat, huddle in a dark closet, eating what remains of it after their white owners have openly enjoyed it in an elaborate dining room filled with the marks of their ill-gotten wealth. Some readers were appalled, believing that the portrayal of the slaves was misleading and offensive. Others saw the illustration of mother and daughter as subverting the system of human property which, while it could oppress and degrade them, could never dehumanize them totally. The author eventually apologized for her perceived insensitivity.

Whatever you conclude about A Fine Dessert, it at least generated the controversy, and conversation, which it deserved. So why isn’t this happening to another work? This book is by a Canadian author, Michelle Barker, entitled A Year of Borrowed Men. I read a positive review of this work in The Horn Book, the distinguished journal of children’s literature widely read by librarians, authors, publishers, and teachers. The book is based on the family narrative of the author’s mother, and the “borrowed men” are French, Nazi slave labor forced to work on her childhood farm in Germany. This is not a children’s book about the Holocaust or World War II, any more than A Fine Dessert was dedicated to presenting American slavery.

Some critics of A Fine Dessert pointed to the very lack of context, of any mention of slavery, which distorted the history presented as rich and beautiful in the book. The Year of Borrowed Men is characterized by a complete vacuum of any information which might inform a child or encourage him or her to learn about the time and setting of the book. The little girl, Gerda, is informed by her mother that the workers on their farm are only “borrowed,” as their own men have been, and will be returned to their families. Of course, adults construct simple and comforting narratives for children living in threatening environments, but a book is written with hindsight and perspective. Here there is none. The farm is a happy scene of plenty, the author referring to the abundance of cows, pigs, butter, meat, and eggs available. A Christmas tree is decorated with colorful catalogue pictures and the family enjoys Tunisian salad as the smell of cloves and nutmeg, spices whose names evoke warmth and luxury, fill the farmhouse. The illustrations oddly show the workers as plump and content, becoming friends with Gerda and comforting her when, in a bizarre scene showing the author’s total obviousness to historical context, the dolls’ arms are accidentally burned on a stove. The laborers and the little girl embrace, calling one another “amis” and “freunde.” The book’s jacket flap proclaims that “the little girl proved that it isn’t so far from feinde (enemies) to freunde (friends).

The book identifies one act of supposed heroism. Gerda’s mother briefly allows the slave laborers to eat at her table, and she is admonished by police to return them to their quarters. Small acts of bravery are important, yet the book’s scenario, completely separated from the reality of Europeans starving, driven from their homes, enslaved, and slaughtered, offers no opportunity of either education or true identification with the characters.

When the Russians invade/liberate Germany, their presence is not a deliverance, although the bland prisoners are finally allowed a moment of autonomy, as they shout “Libération!” On the contrary, the narrator, Gerda, negates this final moment of freedom by reporting that the Russians opened all their barns: “Even the animals were free. Our herd of cows ran away, which meant no more milk or butter for us.” If there was any ambiguity about the book’s attitude towards the prosperity gained by a farm feeding the German army, it vanishes here. Nowhere in A Fine Dessert is “freedom” described as a negative force.

I am Jewish. I apparently have sensitivities to this material that other readers may not. Here is a sample of responses to The Year of Borrowed Men. On Goodreads, one reader reports, “I love this book because it shows the German side of suffering that took place.” Another reader suggests that it is a “sweet war story to help learn about friendship and respect.” The professional reviewer at School Library Journal sees the book as a necessary purchase “…where nuanced portrayals of family during World War II are needed,” adding the warning to “keep the tissues close by.” Canadian Children’s Book News praises the illustrations, which “convey a pastoral environment imbued with the bleakness of war,” although no bleakness is suggested until the Russians arrive.

Part of what is disturbing about the reception of the book is the unexplored idea of the mother’s brief attempt to seat the slave laborers at the kitchen table as a great act of bravery and resistance, a sufficient antidote to the evil which is not even alluded to in the rest of the story. The author writes that her mother’s farm was in “Beelkow,” presumably “Bielkow,” a town formerly in Germany but transferred to Poland after the war. Given the vague setting of the book, it is hard to determine how close this Pomeranian village was to the main Jewish community of Stettin/Szczecin, which was almost totally annihilated. Without negating the losses of her own family, Ms. Barker needs to at least acknowledge the horrific events which frame the unmediated narrative of her mother’s childhood in Nazi Germany. Has the Holocaust, in today’s environment of critical analysis of cultural and historical representations, assumed a unique status of isolation or illegitimacy?

Surely a children’s book which is set in this inferno merits at least the level of critical attention focused on A Fine Dessert.

Images via Amazon

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Today is both #ThrowbackThursday, as well as Bastille Day. So to celebrate, what’s Jewish, French, and a part of your childhood? Well, remember Madeline, the little Parisian girl of Ludwig Bemelmans’ unforgettable picture book?  Her idyllic life, visiting the zoo  and the Place de la Concorde, is only occasionally punctuated by the sadness of witnessing a wounded First World War veteran negotiate the non-accessible Paris streets. Suddenly, she is stricken with acute appendicitis. Her benevolent and practical maternal figure, Miss Clavel, wisely contacts…a Jewish doctor!

“And soon after Dr. Cohn/came, he rushed out to the phone/and he dialed: DANton-ten-six-/‘Nurse, he said, ‘it’s an appendix!’”

But not only is he a skilled diagnostician, he communicates kindness and strength:

“Madeline was in his arm/In a blanket safe and warm.”

Now, in spite of the way you may remember the story, Madeline is not an orphan, as evidenced by the beautiful dollhouse her papa sends her in the hospital, making her the object of her classmates’ envy.

In his 1954 acceptance speech for the Caldecott Award for children’s book illustration, Bemelmans explicitly revealed the origin of Dr. Cohn’s unmistakable profile. Hospitalized for a bicycle accident, the doctor who cared for him reminded him of Léon Blum, the first Jewish, and first Socialist, prime minister of France.  Bemelmans recalls meeting Blum, and warmly refers to him as “the great patriot and humanitarian Léon Blum,” revealing to readers that he is indeed the compassionate doctor who saves Madeline. (This hospital stay also provided Bemelmans with the famous memory that “… a crack on the ceiling had the habit/of sometimes looking like a rabbit”).

On Bastille Day, let’s say merci to Dr. Cohn, Léon Blum, and leaders who care for  society’s most vulnerable, including children.

Emily Schneider is a writer and educator with a special interest in children’s literature. She lives and works in NYC.

Images by Ludwig Bemelmans

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