eng/295 Week 2.pp

92 The Horn Book Magazine March/April 2011 March/April 2011 The Horn Book Magazine 93

Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coat- sworth (1930) and Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (1943)—and another five received Newbery Honor recognition.

Some knew Ward only as one of George Macy’s featured illustrators for The Limited Editions Club, which published finely made editions of the classics of literature to a small group of subscribers for nearly three decades under Macy’s leadership. Others knew Ward as the founder of the Equinox Press, a cooperative for established fig- ures in the New York book-publishing world—printers, publishers, and book artists. Ward also served as supervi- sor of the graphic arts division of the Federal Arts Project in New York City from 1937 to 1939. Only an artist who rose every day at eight to fix breakfast for his family, began working at nine, and usually wrapped up at midnight, with short breaks for lunch and dinner, could have been so prolific. Except for a brief World War II stint assembling gyroscopes for Bendix Aviation, Lynd Ward made his living as an artist. Among the many books he illustrated and techniques he employed, it was his wordless graphic novels and his skill as a wood engraver that served him best and continues to yield influence today.

Will Eisner, the godfather of the graphic novel, called Ward’s work “a forerunner of the modern graphic novel…He stands out as perhaps the most provocative graphic storyteller in this [the twentieth] century.” Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics, named Ward a “missing link” in the development of comics. Ward

worked in a variety of media through- out his life—watercolor, oil, lithogra- phy, and brush drawing—but he always retained a special fondness for wood engraving. Over time, Ward was held in such high regard as the preeminent wood engraver in America that he is the only featured artist in the wood engraving section of the print indus- try’s standard textbook, The Complete Printmaker: Techniques, Traditions, Innovations. A photo of Lynd’s right hand gripping his graver is a wonder- ful reminder of the nature of the wood engraver’s art—it is, at its heart, a work- ing man’s enterprise.

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Throughout the pictures of the books collected in the Library of America volumes, or those in his books for young people, it is easy to see the wis- dom of the painter Joseph H. Lindsley who said, “Lynd Ward is a man with profound and abiding concern for the human spirit. And just as inescapable is the fact that having said that about a man, there is little else that needs to be said. To see his work is to know the man; to know the man is to enrich your life.”

S i g h t The a d i n g

The ABC of It: Alphabet Books and the Literature of Fact

by Leonard S. Marcus

It hardly matters for the alphabet book as a fiefdom of the picture-book realm that comparatively few children still turn to such books to learn their ABCs. Long before Sesame Street began serving up its witty spoonfuls of alphabet instruction to America’s preschoolers, abecedaria—as alphabet books have been formally known for centuries—diversified to provide a showcase for illustra- tors’ virtuosity in addition to a twenty- six-part introduction in browsable form to all manner of infor- mation. The alphabet genre has lent itself equally well to fantasy and nonfic- tional treatment, with some of the more memorable examples slyly blurring the line between the two, leaving catalogers in a tizzy and children in a good posi- tion to open their minds and eyes even

wider than usual. At the fantasy end of the spectrum

one finds exuberant inventions like Mordicai Gerstein’s The Absolutely Awful Alphabet—a rogues’ gallery of amusing monster portraits in contortionist poses that double as letterforms; and Chris Van Allsburg’s The Z Was Zapped,

in which monumental capital letters are placed one by one at the center of a proscenium stage where they are sub- jected to an alliteratively named catas- trophe of one kind or another: “The A

The twenty-siTh-character

Thoman alphabet could

hardly be handier as a

framework for organiThing

information within a

thirty-two-page book.

Leonard S. Marcus is the author of Minders of Make’ Believe and the forthcoming

Annotated Phantom Tollbooth (Knopf ).

94 The Horn Book Magazinee March/April 2011 March/April 2011 The Horn Book Magazinee 95

was in an Avalanche. The B was badly Bitten.” Once upon a time, children’s book authors reserved horrible fates like these entirely for badly behaved children. In making light of the cau- tionary tales of old, VanVV Allsburg (like Heinrich Hoffmann, Edward Gorey, and others before him) gives his readers an appreciative pat on the head, as if to say he is sure they do not need a book to tell them how to avoid trouble—any more than they need one to teach them their ABCs.

Children old enough to savor VanVV Allsburg’s archness and graphic sophis- tication have most likely also reached the stage (around age seven) when it becomes increasingly important to them to acquire knowledge of the

real world. Armies of alphabet books stand ready to come to their aid, each with a subject specialty to satisfy their curiosity.yy

Within this subcategory, animal ABCs have had one of the longest continuous runs, with a tradition dating at least as far back as the early nineteenth century. There are various reasons for this. Animals and children seemed a good match to Romantic writers caught in the spell of educa- tional theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who associated childhood innocence with the spiritual purity of the natural world; as a practical matter, accord- ing to the U.S. Census prior to 1920 most American children still lived on or near farms. In recent times, another rationale for publishing animal ABCs— Bert Kitchen’s Animal Alphabet,tt for instance, and Christopher Wormell’sWW The New Alphabet of AnimalsNN —hasss been the high-minded urge to share with young people the artwork of an accomplished painter or printmaker. As the picture-book market has tightened, however, the art-for-art’s-sake argu- ment has needed bolstering around the acquisitions meeting table by the added fillip of a marketing hook. Thus in his Caldecott Honor book Gone Wild: An Endangered Animal Alphabet,tt graphic artist David McLimans not only per- forms the dazzling typographical trick of re-imagining the Roman letterforms as a series of stylish pictograms inspired by the animal kingdom, but, by focus- ing exclusively on endangered species (the Chinese alligator, the Madagascar

tree boa), he also offers readers a timely, curriculum-friendly lesson in environ- mental awareness.

The twenty-six-character Roman alphabet could hardly be handier as a framework for organiz- ing information within a thirty-two-page book, the standard picture- book format. WithWW six pages left over for the obligatory copyright notice, title page, and other front and back matter,r the illustrator starts out with a pretty straightforward roadmap in hand, albeit a map on which the alpha- bet’s two most under-utilized letters, X and Z,ZZ loom as speed bumps to be negotiated. Thank goodness, at least, for zebras.

Zebras have no known place in the story of the contemporary American

family farm, the subject of Arthur Geisert’s Country Road ABC,CC so the author must have had a private chuckle or two when he realized that z-brace, a near-homophone for the old standby

alphabet-equine, was ideally suited to his own, more idio- syncratic purpose. (The term refers to a carpenter’s technique for reinforcing a barn door.) Geisert’s acrylic and watercolor-washed

etchings make plain his admiration for the patience, persistence, and devo- tion to manual labor that define family farming as much as do cornfields and silos. Here nostalgia for a once-ubiqui- tous way of life goes hand in hand with a no-nonsense fascination with the “way things work.” Geisert’s A is probably the first ever in an alphabet book to stand

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a d

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C . ©

2 0

1 0

b y

A rt

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e is

e rt

.

Geisert’s A is probably the first ever

in an alphabet book

to stand for ammonia fertilizer.

A Is for Abecedaria

Country Road ABC: An Illustrated Journey Through America’s Farmland (Houghton, 2010) by Arthur Geisert

The Absolutely Awful Alphabet (Harcourt, 1999) by Mordicai Gerstein

Animal Alphabet (Dial, 1984) by Bert Kitchen

Gone Wild: An Endangered Animal Alphabet (Walker, 2006) by David McLimans

Mazeways: A to Z (Sterling, 2007) by Roxie Munro

Ben Franklin: His Wit and Wisdom from A-Z (Holiday, 2011) by Alan Schroeder; illus. by John O’Brien

The Z Was Zapped: A Play in Twenty- Six Acts (Houghton, 1987) by Chris Van Allsburg

The New Alphabet of Animals (Running Press, 2002) by Christopher Wormell

94 The Horn Book Magazinee March/April 2011 March/April 2011 The Horn Book Magazinee 95

was in an Avalanche. The B was badly Bitten.” Once upon a time, children’s book authors reserved horrible fates like these entirely for badly behaved children. In making light of the cau- tionary tales of old, VanVV Allsburg (like Heinrich Hoffmann, Edward Gorey, and others before him) gives his readers an appreciative pat on the head, as if to say he is sure they do not need a book to tell them how to avoid trouble—any more than they need one to teach them their ABCs.

Children old enough to savor VanVV Allsburg’s archness and graphic sophis- tication have most likely also reached the stage (around age seven) when it becomes increasingly important to them to acquire knowledge of the

real world. Armies of alphabet books stand ready to come to their aid, each with a subject specialty to satisfy their curiosity.yy

Within this subcategory, animal ABCs have had one of the longest continuous runs, with a tradition dating at least as far back as the early nineteenth century. There are various reasons for this. Animals and children seemed a good match to Romantic writers caught in the spell of educa- tional theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who associated childhood innocence with the spiritual purity of the natural world; as a practical matter, accord- ing to the U.S. Census prior to 1920 most American children still lived on or near farms. In recent times, another rationale for publishing animal ABCs— Bert Kitchen’s Animal Alphabet,tt for instance, and Christopher Wormell’sWW The New Alphabet of AnimalsNN —hasss been the high-minded urge to share with young people the artwork of an accomplished painter or printmaker. As the picture-book market has tightened, however, the art-for-art’s-sake argu- ment has needed bolstering around the acquisitions meeting table by the added fillip of a marketing hook. Thus in his Caldecott Honor book Gone Wild: An Endangered Animal Alphabet,tt graphic artist David McLimans not only per- forms the dazzling typographical trick of re-imagining the Roman letterforms as a series of stylish pictograms inspired by the animal kingdom, but, by focus- ing exclusively on endangered species (the Chinese alligator, the Madagascar

tree boa), he also offers readers a timely, curriculum-friendly lesson in environ- mental awareness.

The twenty-six-character Roman alphabet could hardly be handier as a framework for organiz- ing information within a thirty-two-page book, the standard picture- book format. WithWW six pages left over for the obligatory copyright notice, title page, and other front and back matter,r the illustrator starts out with a pretty straightforward roadmap in hand, albeit a map on which the alpha- bet’s two most under-utilized letters, X and Z,ZZ loom as speed bumps to be negotiated. Thank goodness, at least, for zebras.

Zebras have no known place in the story of the contemporary American

family farm, the subject of Arthur Geisert’s Country Road ABC,CC so the author must have had a private chuckle or two when he realized that z-brace, a near-homophone for the old standby

alphabet-equine, was ideally suited to his own, more idio- syncratic purpose. (The term refers to a carpenter’s technique for reinforcing a barn door.) Geisert’s acrylic and watercolor-washed

etchings make plain his admiration for the patience, persistence, and devo- tion to manual labor that define family farming as much as do cornfields and silos. Here nostalgia for a once-ubiqui- tous way of life goes hand in hand with a no-nonsense fascination with the “way things work.” Geisert’s A is probably the first ever in an alphabet book to stand

C o

u n

tr y

R o

a d

A B

C . ©

2 0

1 0

b y

A rt

h u

r G

e is

e rt

.

Geisert’s A is probably the first ever

in an alphabet book

to stand for ammonia fertilizer.

A Is for Abecedaria

Country Road ABC: An Illustrated Journey Through America’s Farmland (Houghton, 2010) by Arthur Geisert

The Absolutely Awful Alphabet (Harcourt, 1999) by Mordicai Gerstein

Animal Alphabet (Dial, 1984) by Bert Kitchen

Gone Wild: An Endangered Animal Alphabet (Walker, 2006) by David McLimans

Mazeways: A to Z (Sterling, 2007) by Roxie Munro

Ben Franklin: His Wit and Wisdom from A-Z (Holiday, 2011) by Alan Schroeder; illus. by John O’Brien

The Z Was Zapped: A Play in Twenty- Six Acts (Houghton, 1987) by Chris Van Allsburg

The New Alphabet of Animals (Running Press, 2002) by Christopher Wormell

96 The Horn Book Magazinee March/April 2011 March/April 2011 The Horn Book Magazinee 97

for ammonia fertilizer. His K is for kick—whatkk can happen when someone rubs a cow the wrong way.

In Ben Franklin: His Wit and Wisdom from A-Z,ZZ Alan Schroeder reports that Frank- lin once wrote a “humor- ous piece…in which Z… complains about being stuck at the end of the alphabet.” Schroeder delivers this news on a page headed “Z is for Zeal” and well stocked, in typical fashion for this fascinating book, with a grab bag of Franklin aphorisms, biographical anecdotes, and deliri- ously inventive drawings by New Yorker cartoonist John O’Brien. E,EE accord- ing to Schroeder, “is for Electricity,” a passion of Franklin’s not limited to his messing around with kites. But farther down the page, E also stands for educa- tion (Franklin had surprisingly little) and exercise (he worked out by lifting trayloads of heavy lead type). M stands for money (Franklin printed the stuff for three of the original thirteen colonies, and children generally can’t read enough about it), among other things. The founding father with the longest hair was the quintessential polymath, and this rousing introduction to his extraordinary life and work sends the reader eager for more in far more than twenty-six different directions.

One of the great revelations to be gleaned from alphabet books is the realization that the letterforms can

themselves have something to say. The ABC books by Mordicai Gerstein and David McLimans mentioned earlier illustrate the playful side of typogra- phy’s expressive potential. In Mazeways: A to Z,ZZ Roxie Munro takes the notion a step further by presenting readers with a series of intricate fantasy landscapes within which individual letterforms are embedded as maze-elements, each viewed from above. Munro’s P,P for instance, turns out to be the parking lot at the center of a bustling urban street scene. Her R emerges from the fenced- in outlines of a ranch. Each mazescape comes with its own set of navigational challenges and list of half-hidden arti- facts to watch for,rr I-spy fashion. But the ultimate challenge posed to readers here is the basic one of looking more closely at their own surroundings—and at the labyrinthine world of fact in general, both in and out of books.

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The Wrong PlotThe Wrong Plot by James Cross Giblin

Sometimes you think you’ve finished the research for a key section in a nonfiction book, and then something occurs that makes you realize you’ve got it all wrong. This happened to me recently in connection with a book I’m working on about silent screen star Lillian Gish and her discoverer and director, D.W. Griffith.

The two met in 1912 when nineteen-year-old Lillian and her younger sister Dorothy came to the Biograph movie studio in New YorkYY City to visit their friend and fellow actress Mary Pickford. She introduced them to Griffith, who invited them to audition for a new short film, a melodrama titled An Unseen Enemy that he was rehearsing later that day. He explained that they would play orphaned sisters trapped in their home by thieves out to rob the family safe.

Gish in her autobiography and Griffith in his unpublished autobiographical notes recounted in detail what happened during the rehearsal. At one point, to get the young actresses in a suitably terrified mood, Griffith without warning shot off a live pistol over their heads. Apparently they performed to his satisfaction because he cast both of them in the movie and told them to report back to the studio the next day. Gish and Griffith then go on to describe in lesser detail the finished film.

I decided to use the story of the rehearsal and the eventual film as examples of how movies were made in the early days. I didn’t take into account the fact that because they were silent, movies then had no written scripts, only story outlines, and these often changed during the course of filming. I tried to see the movie, but it didn’t appear in any of the compilations of Griffith’s Biograph shorts that I located. Not until November 2010, during a MoMA retrospective on Lillian Gish, was I finally able to view An Unseen Enemy in an “incomplete print.”

It was complete enough, however, to show me that my synopsis of the story was seriously inaccurate. When I got home, I made notes of all the differences. Now I could rewrite the episode, confident that the plot was correct. And I wouldn’t have to face the communication that every nonfiction writer dreads—the sentence in a review or the letter from a reader that points out a major error in the book’s content.

N o t - S o - Tr i v i a l P u r s u i t s

James Cross Giblin’s latest book is The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy (Clarion).y

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