The Children’s Books of Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Chinua Achebe & Others
JA
May 31
We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie is a (relatively) new blog devoted to lesser-known, out-of-print children’s books by ‘adult authors’. New finds are uploaded each week by Ariel S. Winter, some of which include picture books by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Chinua Achebe and Theo Le Sieg (aka Dr. Seuss – not strictly an adult author per say, but he did use this pseudonym for several books which he wrote but did not illustrate).
Endpapers for Come Over to My House by Theo Le Sieg, illustrated by Richard Erdoes
Achebe (Things Fall Apart), as it turns out, was quite a prolific in terms of children’s literature – his works include How the Leopard Got His Claws, The Drum, Chike and the River and The Flute. The latter, published in 1977, was a retelling of a traditional Igbo folktale about a young boy who loses his flute to the spirit world, yet manages to bring home food and riches for his family when he demonstrates his lack of greed and honesty. According to the blog, the book was illustrated by Tayo Adenaike, who was part of a Nigerian group of artists using ‘European techniques and materials joined with uli to craft a Nigerian art style that incorporates Igbo culture’.
Virginia Woolf’s offering began life as a story for the family newspaper, The Charleston Bulletin, sent to her teenage nephews, Julian and Quentin Bell in 1923. Entitled The Widow and the Parrot, Quentin Bell wrote that the result was a surprisingly moral tale:
We had hoped vaguely for something as funny, as subversive, and as frivolous as Virginia’s conversation. Knowing this, she sent us an ‘improving’ story with a moral, based on the very worst Victorian examples.
The story in question concerns a widow who is recently told about the death of her brother – he has apparently left her a small fortune, yet when she arrives at his house, it is in ruins and there is nothing to be found but his pet parrot. The house later burns down in a fire and the woman is the only one to remember the bird. In turn, it leads her to the gold buried among the wreckage, enough for her to live happily for the rest of her life. Woolf’s moral? ‘Such is the reward of kindness to animals’.
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Comments
01 Jun 10 at 12:56
Given the very sad news of his death, it’s well worth mentioning Randolph Stow’s Midnite: The Story of a Wild Colonial Boy in this context too — a book I remember with much fondness from my childhood.
...21 Oct 11 at 4:16
Terribly well written article.
...08 Dec 11 at 6:23
You couldn’t be more factual!!
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