The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by DuBose Heyward

Take a look at the cover of this book. A prim and proper mother rabbit, in a shawl and billowing dress, stands with twenty-one immaculately dressed little bunnies. The title is in a traditional-looking cursive script. The background colour is a pale peach. Everything about it screams “old-fashioned”. When I picked this book up last year for the first time, I had low expectations. When I saw that it was published in 1939, I was sure it would be outdated. I could not have been more wrong. I had made the error of literally judging a book by its cover.

If there is a more progressive picture book from the 1930s, I haven’t found it. Thirty years before the women’s movement really gained traction, The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes delivered a remarkable feminist punch. Thirty years before the Civil Rights Act was signed, The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes needled away gently at racism and prejudice. And it achieved this without ever feeling preachy, without seeming like anything other than a lovable Easter story.

The premise is that every year children are delivered their Easter eggs not by one single Easter Bunny but by five Easter Bunnies, who are “the five kindest, and swiftest, and wisest bunnies in the whole wide world”. When one of the Easter Bunnies grows too old and can no longer run fast, the wise, old and kind Grandfather Bunny, who lives at the Palace of Easter Eggs, selects a new bunny to take its place.

The story surrounds one particular bunny who dreams of growing up to become an Easter Bunny. Her name is Cottontail, and she is described as “a little country girl bunny with a brown skin”, and of course she is laughed at by “all of the big white bunnies who lived in fine houses, and the Jack Rabbits with long legs who can run so fast”. They tell little Cottontail to go back to the country and eat a carrot. She grows up, gains a husband, soon has 21 little baby bunnies and is once again scoffed at.

Then the big white rabbits and the Jacks with long legs laughed and laughed, and they said, “What did we tell you! Only a country rabbit would go and have all those babies. Now take care of them and leave Easter eggs to great big men bunnies like us.” And they went away liking themselves very much.

Cottontail does indeed stop dreaming of becoming an Easter Bunny, and spends her time raising her children. When word arrives that one of the five Easter Bunnies has grown too old and will be replaced, Cottontail is sad because “she thought that now she was nothing but an old mother bunny”. Still, she gathers her children at the Palace and they watch the big white Jacks show off their skills to the wise old Grandfather Bunny. He tells them that while they are pretty and fast, they have not proven themselves either kind or wise.

But Cottontail catches his eye, and through a series of questions she proves that she is not only wise and kind, but also swift enough to chase her 21 children and gather them quickly together. She is chosen as the new, fifth Easter Bunny, and is set the most difficult, but most important delivery of all: taking an egg to a sick little boy who lives far away, across two rivers and three mountains, in a house on top of the highest peak. In trying to reach the boy, Cottontail proves herself the bravest of the Easter Bunnies, and the grandfather gives her a pair of magical gold shoes to help her.

So much about this book is unexpected for the era. This was the 1930s; once a woman got married, she stopped working. Once she became a mother, that was doubly it. She certainly didn’t re-enter the workforce when she still had children. She was probably discouraged from dreaming too big in the first place. And not only a woman, but a woman with brown skin? She could definitely not have expected to reach great heights in the workforce.

What I love about this book is the way that the characters who show prejudice – the rich white bunnies, and the male chauvinist Jacks – prove ultimately to be irrelevant. Sure, they exist, and to some degree they shape Cottontail’s thinking. Remember, she assumes after having children she is just an old mother bunny. But the wise old grandfather sees Cottontail for who she is. He is completely open-minded, and his wisdom and kindness wins out.

And it is not only the grandfather. When Cottontail joins the other four Easter Bunnies at the palace, she is welcomed completely and without judgment: “There she stood in her funny country clothes but none of the other four Easter Bunnies laughed, for they were wise and kind and knew better”. This little rabbit world is the way our society could be if our leaders were the very best available: caring, sympathetic and tolerant. Eighty years later it is a dream that seems more distant than ever. Wisdom and kindness truly are the most important qualities, yet are in depressingly short supply.

After reading this story to Heidi for the first time, I looked up the author, DuBose Heyward, to find out more about the person behind this enlightened 1930s tale. And I discovered that he was far more famous as the creator of Porgy and Bess. While the opera is most associated with George Gershwin, who wrote the music, it was based on a play by Heyward and his wife Dorothy, which was in turn adapted from Heyward’s 1925 novel, Porgy.

While Porgy and Bess has been criticised for racial stereotyping in the decades since, it was at the time a remarkable production. Set among the African-American community, it was produced with an entirely African-American cast – something that was extremely unusual at a time when black roles were often played by white performers. It was the Heywards (who were white) who insisted on this back in 1927, when Porgy was first produced. For context, that was the same year that Al Jolson wore blackface in The Jazz Singer, the first talking picture.

Twelve years later, with illustrations by Marjorie Flack, Heyward published The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, a tale that he told to his daughter Jenifer, and which was possibly based on a story he had been told by his own mother. It has never been out of print and has a passionate, cult following, yet is not as widely known as some other books of the era – for example, Flack’s The Story About Ping.

In 2013, Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy, described Cottontail as her all-time favourite character. “I see her now as a woman who re-enters the work force after raising a family — ‘leans in,’ and does it all — much better than the big Jack Rabbits,” she said. Perhaps she identified the strength of Cottontail with her own mother following the death of JFK; it is notable that the country bunny’s husband is never seen or even mentioned, after the initial statement that “by and by she had a husband”.

It is hard to disagree with Caroline Kennedy's sentiment. This is a story that I will cherish reading to both Heidi and Fletcher over the coming years — and not just at Easter. In an era when so many picture books are meaningless and disposable, it is such a treat to find one with a message so positive. And it was fitting that I made incorrect assumptions when I first saw this story. It is all about how you metaphorically can't judge a book by its cover. And you literally can't judge that by this book's cover.

Mister Dog by Margaret Wise Brown

I wonder how Margaret Wise Brown pitched this story to the Little Golden Book people?

“Well, Miss Brown, we liked The Color Kittens and The Seven Little Postmen. What have you got for us this time?”

“I’ve decided to take my next book in a slightly different direction. Picture this. A hairy, Republican nudist – no, it’s okay, stay with me – convinces a little homeless boy to come and sleep with him. It has a wonderful moral.”

Perhaps not. Nevertheless, that’s more or less what happens in Mister Dog, surely one of the most peculiar picture story books in existence. It begins with a depressed-looking mutt pouring milk on his cornflakes, dressing-gown gaping open at the front. Why go to the trouble of wearing a dressing-gown and slippers in the morning when you leave the house in the nude? And is that a bone in your pocket or are you just happy to see us? Oh. Oh, it literally is a bone in your pocket.

He certainly doesn’t look happy to see us. In fact, he looks like the weight of the world is on his shoulders. Either that or he’s had a massive night and needs hair of the dog rather than cereal and strawberries. Check out the front cover at the top of the page. Look at his eyes. Has Mister Dog has seen disturbing things that he cannot unsee? Or is that something stronger than tobacco in his corncob pipe.

The dog’s name is Crispin’s Crispian. We are told that “he was named Crispin’s Crispian because he belonged to himself”. Okay, so he answers to nobody. An admirable sentiment. But then, if his name is Crispin, why is he called Crispin’s Crispian? Why not Crispin’s Crispin? Where did the “a” come from? And if his name is Crispian, why is he not Crispian’s Crispian? He probably dreamed it up after a session on that pipe.

But the best part is when we are told that Mister Dog is "a conservative". That is a direct quote. And note the italics. It is a word that Margaret Wise Brown wishes to define. “He liked everything at the right time – dinner at dinner time, lunch at lunchtime, breakfast in time for breakfast, and sunrise at sunrise, and sunset at sunset. And at bedtime he liked everything in its own place – the cup in the saucer, the chair under the table, the stars in the heavens, the moon in the sky, and himself in his own little bed.”

Yeah, you gotta watch those damn liberals, they’ll move sunset to the morning just to keep the unions happy. It’ll be a two-hour working day. Only Eisenhower will keep the stars in the heavens and the moon in the sky. A vote for Adlai Stevenson is a vote for chaos.

Still, it’s a rather quaint 1952 view of conservatism. What might the 2016 version say?

“Crispin’s Crispian was a conservative. And not a pathetic thumb-sucking moderate. A proper Tea Party-loving, Trump-voting, gun-toting far right conservative. He liked everything at the right time, which was whenever he damn well wanted. He liked everything in its own place – the cup in the saucer, the chair under the table, and the Mexicans in Mexico, south of the wall.”

Margaret Wise Brown died the same year this was published, and I can’t decide if she was an eccentric genius or a nut-job. She is best known for Goodnight Moon, which was haunting and strange, but Mister Dog is at least a little warmer, thanks to Garth Williams’ fun illustrations. Williams was probably best known for illustrating the classic versions of Charlotte’s Web and the Little House on the Prairie series.

Yet for all the peculiarities (and there are a LOT of them), Mister Dog has a very valid message. Its subtitle is “The Dog Who Belonged to Himself”. He answers to no human family and asks nothing of the state. He is clearly a classic conservative lover of small government.

One day, Mister Dog meets a little boy who is fishing in a stream. “Who and what are you?” Mister Dog asks. The boy replies: “I am a boy, and I belong to myself”. Note that the boy does not introduce himself by name but as “a boy”. Yet another oddity. Mister Dog is glad, and invites the boy to come and live with him. The boy agrees, with an alarming lack of due diligence.

Then they went to a butcher shop – "to get his poor dog a bone," Crispian said. Now, since Crispin’s Crispian belonged to himself, he gave himself the bone and trotted home with it.

Note the direct quote. Why would Mister Dog say he wanted “to get his poor dog a bone”? He should say “to get my poor dog a bone”. Who edited this stuff? Anyway, then the little boy prances off happily with Crispin/Crispian, blissfully unaware that soon he will be tidying a dog’s living room. They make dinner at Mister Dog’s house and each of them, in Brown’s words “chewed it up and swallowed it into his little fat stomach”. Then boy and dog sleep in side-by-side beds.

The moral of this story is clear: your life is your own, and don’t let anyone else rule it. Mister Dog belongs to himself. The boy belongs to himself. They both act on free will. If the boy can be easily convinced to come and do chores then, hey, that’s just Mister Dog’s good fortune.

For all of Margaret Wise Brown’s oddities, I think she knew how to tap into the brain of a child. The word “belong” resonated with me. As a child, I heard it often. I “belonged” to my parents and my friends “belonged” to theirs. “Who does such-and-such belong to?” adults would ask each other. This never sat well with me, for I felt that nobody owned me. This is the child-like mindset Brown exploits (and which Mister Dog then exploits with the little boy).

But Brown also implies that you’ll be happier if you let people into your life. Look how despondent Mister Dog appeared when preparing his breakfast cereal, back before he had met the boy. And look at how happy he was afterwards. You can be yourself and belong to yourself without having to keep to yourself.

Mister Dog is strange, confusing, disturbing, and utterly unique. And I love it. If I was American and Crispin’s Crispian was on the presidential ticket this year, I’d vote conservative. He wouldn’t build a wall to keep the Mexicans out. Although there is a fence around his house and a sign that says “NO CATS”, so I guess you never know.

Pigs in blankets, a la Richard Scarry

The other day I was flicking through Richard Scarry's Busiest Fire Fighters Ever, a Little Golden Book from the early 90s.

And I noticed that these frightened looking pigs seem to be under attack from giant pieces of bacon.

And one of the pigs is named Smokey.

And, worryingly, that looks like a frying pan next to the bed in the foreground.

Yep, alarm bells should be ringing at this fire station all right.

Isn't Pig Won't Naughty? by Richard Scarry

My brain hurts.

Isn’t Pig Won’t Naughty?

How can I answer when I don't even understand the question.

Last time I saw contractions this close together, Heidi was about to pop out.

I know the words, but together they make about as much sense as a bad translation. Or the phrase “humorous Adam Sandler movie”.

I feel as bewildered as the Springfield Elementary students when Principal Skinner tells them to “stand down”.

Isn’t Pig Won’t Naughty?

To be fair to one of the most beloved names in children’s picture books, this was not actually written by Richard Scarry. Or else it was a hell of an achievement, because he’d been dead for 16 years when it was published in 2010. I'll have to do Scarry justice and review an original at some point.

The Richard Scarry Corporation produced this, one in a set of board books designed for real littlies like Heidi. She loves to sit and turn the pages and although she’s getting strong, she can’t possibly rip them. So there’s that to be said for Isn’t Pig Won’t Naughty?

And there is also this: the title got me to read the book. (Oh yeah, and, um, Heidi too). I had to work out what the hell was going on.

It turns out it’s the story of two brothers named Pig Will and Pig Won’t. Why don’t they share a surname? I dunno, I guess they’re like Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez.

Pig Will is the good brother, like Emilio, and says "I will" to everything his parents ask, including putting on a hat when he plays in the snow. Pig Won’t is a bit of a dick and says "I won't" to everything, and ends up with white powder all over his face and nose. Like Charlie.

As a result, he catches a cold and learns his lesson. So, in the end ...

Though it's Pig Won't's wont to say "won't" and Pig Will's will to say "will", Pig Won't says he won't say "won't" anymore. Like Pig Will, Pig Won’t will say “will”, and won't say “won’t”. Pig Will will will Pig Won't on, but then Pig Won't won't be Pig Won’t anymore, will he? He’ll be Pig Will too, won't he? Pig Won't will just need to be willing, or else he won't succeed, will he?

Next time I think I’ll choose something easier to understand. Ulysses, maybe.

Corduroy by Don Freeman

Recently, I was rummaging through the picture story books at my parents’ house, looking for nostalgic reads to share with Heidi. Some I was actively seeking: the Berenstain Bears, a few Shirley Hughes classics, some Little Golden Books. Some I had completely forgotten, books I hadn’t thought about in 30 years. One of those was Corduroy.

As soon as I saw the cover, it all came flooding back. The little teddy bear locked in a department store overnight, trying to pull his missing ‘button’ off a mattress. The security guard who finds him and takes him back down the escalator to the toy section. And the little girl who saves up money in her piggy bank to buy Corduroy the Bear.

But there was one thing that I didn’t remember, something I only noticed upon rereading the book for the first time in three decades: Lisa, the little girl who buys Corduroy the Bear, is black. And I realised that there was a very good reason I didn’t recall this: because I never noticed in the first place. When I was four, five, six years old, Lisa wasn’t a black kid. She was just a kid.

And it made me think about children and parenthood. When it comes to knowledge and values, babies are blank slates. Nobody is born with built-in notions of race or religion, of superiority or inferiority, of similarity or difference. Watch the way babies or toddlers interact. They don’t know if their little friend is a different race unless their parents tell them.

This is of course all very obvious, but given recent world events it is worth reflecting that everything we know and believe is learnt. We learn from our parents, from our friends, from the world around us, from TV, from books. Some picture books teach equality in a beautiful way – Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox was one such example we read recently.

Others, like Corduroy, do so more subtly. I’m not even sure if the author-illustrator Don Freeman, who was white, meant for his book to be anything other than an adorable story. But there are messages in its pages.

When Lisa first sees Corduroy in the store and looks into his bright eyes, she wants to buy him. Her mother is dismissive: “He doesn’t look new. He’s lost the button to one of his shoulder straps”. Note that it was only the adult in the situation who ascribed a negative connotation to his appearance. Poor, innocent Corduroy didn’t know he’d lost his button. Neither did Lisa.

It is worth noting that Corduroy was written in the USA in the year of Martin Luther King’s assassination (1968), and that for young African-American readers it provided valuable positive reinforcement. Consider this excerpt from a Goodreads reader review:

It was the first book I ever read that had a lead character that looked like me. (And no, I don't mean the bear.) The little Black girl ... was well groomed and cared for, and SO nice. People out there who've always had characters in books and magazines who look like them won't 'get it'. The significance will be lost on them I fear. But it's instances like that that help establish a child's self-esteem and community worth.

None of this would mean much if Corduroy was a run-of-the-mill story, read once or twice and tossed aside. It is certainly not that. In our house it was well-loved and well-worn. Not just in our house. The New York Public Library, the National Education Association, the School Library Journal, they all have Corduroy in their respective lists of the top 100 children’s books of all time.

What is it about that little bear and his story that is so adorable? The green overalls, the expressive face, the innocence of the great big world around him – he’s just like a toddler. And the premise plays to a sense of child-like adventure. I know I wasn’t the only kid to dream of the freedom that would come with being in a big store overnight.

There are so many memorable pages imprinted on my mind: Corduroy stepping tentatively onto the escalator. Corduroy trying to pull a button off a mattress because he thought it belonged to his overalls. The nightwatchman searching with his flashlight. And my favourite: the white pillow and sheets with only Corduroy’s tiny, fuzzy ears sticking up to reveal his hiding place.

It is at turns charming, sad, sweet and tender. At its core is the notion of innocence. Corduroy thinks the escalator is a mountain, the furnishings department is a palace. He sees something small and round on a mattress and assumes it must be his missing button. When Lisa takes him home, there is a little Corduroy-sized bed next to her own, just waiting for him. “This must be a home,” he says. “I know I’ve always wanted a home”

Rereading it nearly 50 years after publication, Corduroy is also a window into an era. Just look at the styles seen in the department store: the saleslady’s beehive hairdo and cat’s eye glasses, the classy hat and coat combination worn by Lisa’s mother, the 1960s lamps in the bedding emporium. Some older books don’t stand the test of time, but Corduroy deserves to be a retro classic.

Part of that is due to the pictures, which are pieces of art that would not look out of place framed on a nursery wall. The use of bright colours for the busy department store during the day, the limited palette at night, the way every character’s eyes tell a story. Freeman was 60 when he produced Corduroy, and it was the result of a lifetime of observing the human character.

As a young man he made money playing trumpet in a dance band, working at nightclubs and weddings. He used to wander the streets of New York City with his sketch pads, recording the sights and characters of the city. One night he lost his trumpet on the subway, and decided to make a living from his artwork instead. Broadway and circus performers were frequent subjects.

He died in 1978, ten years after Corduroy was released. Freeman wrote and illustrated something like 20 children’s books, including a sequel called A Pocket for Corduroy. That title rings a bell; I think I must have read it as a kid as well. Perhaps I’ll stumble across it one day. For now, I’m so glad I rediscovered the original.

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

Next year, Goodnight Moon turns 70 years old. It has sold more than 14 million copies since it was first published in 1947 and is one of the most beloved bedtime stories of all. And yet, until recently I had never read it. I’m not even sure I had heard of it until I saw it on Heidi’s shelf, a baby-shower gift that I hadn’t noticed before.

So we read it. And I thought: “What the hell was that all about?”

There was something vaguely unsettling in the pages, haunting even. The stark red and green colour scheme, the vast room, the single red balloon hovering in the corner, the “quiet old lady” who is actually a rabbit and who is sometimes there and sometimes not. It was all a bit ... eerie.

In the great green room, a little rabbit lies in bed saying goodnight to everything he can see. And some things he can’t. Goodnight comb. Goodnight chairs. Goodnight mush. Goodnight nobody. Goodnight air. Goodnight air? That’s a kid desperately trying to drag out his bedtime.

All I could think of was Steve Carell as Brick the weatherman in Anchorman. I love ... carpet. I love ... desk. Brick, are you just looking at things in the office and saying that you love them? I love lamp. Do you really love the lamp or are you just saying it because you saw it? I love lamp. I love lamp.

I later read that George W. Bush nominated Goodnight Moon as one of his favourite books. And again I thought of Brick.

Anyway, back to the book. I wasn’t the only one who found it creepy. Zoe felt there was something Twin Peaks-ish about it. “What is the bowl full of mush?" she asked. “Is it porridge? Is it soup? Is it laced with LSD?”

I thought that a single reading nearly 70 years after publication was perhaps not the fairest way to assess Goodnight Moon, so I did some research. The author, Margaret Wise Brown, was interviewed by LIFE magazine the year before Goodnight Moon was published:

The first draft of a Brown book is usually written in wild, enthusiastic haste, in lost unintelligible soft pencil on whatever scraps of paper are available; the backs of grocery bills, shopping lists, old envelopes. “I finish the rough draft in 20 minutes,” Miss Brown says, “and then I spend two years polishing." She is currently polishing 23 books more or less simultaneously.

Brown only wrote, she did not illustrate, so the artwork fell to her friend and collaborator Clement Hurd. And there are some curious aspects to the illustrations, not the least of which is that the characters are rabbits. Apparently this was simply because Hurd was better at drawing bunnies than people.

Brown might have polished her words but you know what they say, you can’t polish a Hurd.

There are peculiar details if you look closely. On the bunny’s bedside table is a book with a green cover. Turn the page upside down and you’ll see it is a copy of Goodnight Moon. It is no surprise to find such a touch of absurdity.

One of the strangest pictorial elements is in the framed illustration over the fireplace in the little bunny’s room. It depicts a cow jumping over the moon, but the cow’s udder is hard to make out. In the words of Brown’s biographer, on the publisher’s instructions the udder “was reduced to an anatomical blur, so as not to disarrange the fragile sensibilities of some librarians”.

I can just imagine the library detective Mr Bookman, perhaps my all-time favourite Seinfeld guest character, enforcing that himself. “This is about that kid’s right to read a book without getting his mind warped. Or maybe that turns you on, Seinfeld, maybe that’s how you get your kicks.”

The mysterious blurred udder didn’t help. When it was first published, the New York Public Library refused to stock even a single copy of Goodnight Moon. It considered the book “unbearably sentimental” and did not acquire its first copy until 26 years later.

Children’s books, the library believed, should be fairytales or folklore, classics rather than the absurd modernity of Goodnight Moon. But Brown was ahead of her time. She had studied at an education college whose founder wanted to create a new style of picture story books, called “Here and Now”. At its core would be the everyday experiences of a regular toddler.

And that’s what kids respond to with Goodnight Moon. The bedroom is a place they know. The objects are familiar, although less so 70 years later. None would now recognise the old style telephone on the bedside table. Then again, why does a toddler need a phone by the bed anyway?

The concept of saying goodnight to random stuff, baffling as I found it on first reading, is actually quite sweet. Heidi is forever waving at anyone and anything, animate or inanimate. Even the blank “goodnight nobody” page seems true to life. Kids do say the darnedest things. The author gets inside the mind of a tiny child and uses soothing rhyme and rhythm to great effect.

To adults, the room seems abnormally vast. But Goodnight Moon wasn't written for adults. To a toddler, any room seems enormous. Their world is so small, their perspective so different from their parents. On a second and third reading, I realised that everything I found strange made much more sense from the little bunny's viewpoint.

As the pages progress and the bunny gets more tired, the illustrations become just a touch hazier. The final line – “goodnight noises everywhere” – acknowledges that bedtime for the little ones is early, while the rest of the house remains active.

Margaret Brown was perhaps more Wise than I first gave her credit for.

Then again, she died aged 42 when, after emergency surgery for appendicitis while on a publicity tour in France, she kicked up her legs, cancan style, to show how fit she felt. That dislodged a blood clot in her leg, which quickly travelled to her brain and killed her instantly.

Not so Wise after all. 

A Fish Out of Water by Helen Palmer

When I was a kid, I always liked reading the “About the Author” blurb at the end of a book – probably the budding quizzer in me wanted every piece of available information. One of my favourite childhood books was A Fish Out of Water and my version had no such blurb – or if it did it was on a long-lost dust-jacket. So I’ve written one myself:

Helen Palmer was born in New York in 1898. For 40 years she was married to Dr Seuss. They had no children – Helen was unable to. In later years she suffered from cancer and partial paralysis. For the last few years of Helen’s life, Dr Seuss was having an affair with the woman who would later become his second wife. In 1967 an ill, depressed and heartbroken Helen committed suicide by an overdose of barbiturates.

Maybe there was a reason there was no such blurb.

We’ll get to A Fish Out of Water shortly, but first a little more on Helen Palmer. In 1927, Helen married Theodore Geisel, known to friends as Ted, and later known to the world as Dr Seuss. Ted Geisel wanted to become a teacher but Helen, six years his senior, encouraged him to make a career from his artwork. She was his editor, advisor, business manager and inspiration. She co-founded the “Beginner Books” imprint - you’d recognise the Cat in the Hat logo – in 1957.

And yet, a decade later Helen was dead. Within a year of her suicide Dr Seuss remarried. His second wife, Audrey, is still alive and in her mid-90s continues to serve as president of Dr Seuss Enterprises. There seems little doubt that the younger Audrey provided a renewed inspiration for Dr Seuss, who was 64 when he married for the second time. His niece Peggy described Helen’s death as “her last and greatest gift to him”. Her suicide note speaks for itself:

"Dear Ted, What has happened to us? I don't know. I feel myself in a spiral, going down down down, into a black hole from which there is no escape, no brightness. And loud in my ears from every side I hear, 'failure, failure, failure...' I love you so much ... I am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you ... My going will leave quite a rumor but you can say I was overworked and overwrought. Your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed ... Sometimes think of the fun we had all thru the years ..."

She might have heard “failure, failure, failure” from every side, but few people have given the world more joy than Helen Palmer. She gave the world Dr Seuss. But for her prodding, he might never have gone beyond the cartoons he drew as a college student. And Helen Palmer’s name also lives on as an author herself.

But even there she remains in her husband’s giant shadow, for A Fish Out of Water in fact originated as a short story by Dr Seuss, titled Gustav the Goldfish. It was originally published in a magazine in 1950, with the trademark Seuss rhymes and illustrations. You can see a comparison here. A decade later, he gave Helen permission to revise the story to make it a suitable “Beginner Book”, which required a more basic vocabulary.

In hindsight, the absurd premise is pure Seuss. A boy buys a pet goldfish and, against the advice of the pet-store owner, overfeeds it. The fish quickly outgrows every vessel in which the boy tries to house it, until even the local swimming pool is becoming too small to hold it. At this point the pet-store owner, Mr Carp, dives with a mysterious toolbox and magically returns the fish to its original size.

The illustrations by P. D. Eastman – a protégé of Dr Seuss – bring a charming realism to the preposterous story. Eastman’s drawings are much truer to life than the zany art of Dr Seuss, and something about the realistic looking figures – the baffled policeman and the concerned fireman – make it easy for a child to put themselves in the position of the little boy, to think maybe this really could happen!

I had never heard of Gustav the Goldfish until researching this blog, and I don’t know if I’d have preferred the Seussian version as a kid or A Fish Out of Water. They each appeal in different ways. All I can say with certainty is that I loved A Fish Out of Water and that Helen Palmer, despite her tragic end, was no failure.