There are books that are majestic, a bounty of sight and sound to be enjoyed by old and young. There are other books that are simply fun to read. One book that fits the latter category is a collection of Margaret Wise Brown’s stories and poems, Friendly Tales.
The collection, published as a Little Golden Book imprint, includes some of the lesser-known works of the prolific author, made in collaboration with illustrators Garth William, Leonard Weisgard, and Martin and Alice Provensen, among others. Wise Brown has become a mainstay of early children’s books due to the monumental, long-standing favorite Good Night Moon. The elements that make that classic so well-loved were, as Friendly Tales demonstrates, not a fluke but part of Brown’s development as a children’s author.
As with most of Brown’s stories, there is a recurring theme of bunnies, kittens, and dogs. It’s not lofty literature and it can be cloying, but the stories can be a cozy good time for young folks. Particularly delightful are tales like The Sailor Dog which recounts the minutia of the life of Scuppers the Sailor Dog ending with the great ballad of Scuppers (I am Scuppers the Sailor Dog—I’m Scuppers the Sailor Dog—I can sail in a gale / right over a whale / under full sail / in a fog.)
Stories with blessedly few words like The Color Kittens and A Home for a Bunny wonderfully mimic the playful preschooler’s use of language. There are rhyming lines that tickle the curious ear. After reading, it’s hard to tell to what extent the child is playing with words because she was inspired by the book or to what extent she is displaying an innate curiosity about language that was already there. Brown hits on something good. Perhaps it’s not all good, but more on that later.
Other inventive little stories give a window into occupations that are genuinely interesting. The Seven Little Postmen follows a letter from a little boy to his grandmother; The Burglar in the Dark offers a look at late-night police patrols with a charming twist; The Train to Timbuctoo offers a whimsical ride down the track from Kalamazoo to Timbuctoo with a satisfying array of onomatopoeia. These partly realistic examinations of different jobs ground the collection in the real world, offering a nice change of pace from the cutesy bunnies and kittens (but those are nice too, especially for the sentimental child).
One of the drawbacks of Margaret Wise Brown’s writing is that she is decidedly writing for children. Truly great books for children are written for people. Children do not need to be condescended to and deprived of excellence. That being said, sometimes mothers are tired and sometimes children enjoy fluffy entertainment. This collection beats the pants off Frozen, and sometimes you can choose to indulge a fancy instead of tucking into a nourishing meal. As long as it’s not the staple of your diet, a bit of “bubble gum reading,” as some mothers call it, will do no harm.
Besides, as bubble gum lit goes, Brown’s is not bad. Decades of parents putting children to bed with a soothing recitation of Good Night Moon are a testament to the calming effect of the author’s use of language. One reviewer aptly described Brown’s “quirky” portfolio as “that perfect marriage of mesmerizing for children and tantalizing for adults.” She elaborated, “They’re a pleasure to read — precise and rhythmic — words that don’t rhyme still harmonize so beautifully that even the most halting reader can become a poet, telling her child a blessing.” Here are some choice lines from the collection:
From A Home for a Bunny: “Spring, Spring, Spring!” sang the robin. It was Spring. The leaves burst out. The flowers burst out. And robins burst out of their eggs. It was Spring.
From The Train to Timbuctoo: From Kalamazoo to Timbuctoo / It’s a long way down the track / And from Timbuctoo to Kalamazoo / It’s just as far to go back / From Timbuctoo to Kalamazoo / From Kalamazoo and back / A long, long way, / A long, long way, / A long way down the track…
And some snippets from The Color Kittens: “Orange as an orange tree. Orange as a bumblebee / Orange as the setting sun / Sinking slowly in the sea.”
Reading In the Great Green Room, a biography of the eccentric author by Amy Gary, it seem the source of Brown’s linguistic playfulness was likely the same fertile ground of many good writers (among them Else Holmulund Minarik and Alice Thomas Ellis). Wise Brown was born into New York society and spent part of her childhood on Long Island, free to roam uncivilized portions for hours on end and free to devote hours to books of fairytales in the nursery. This marvelous combination of leisure hours and good stories is a recipe for a storyteller.
Beyond this solid foundation in story and imagination, however, Brown was a post-modern mess. The child of a cold family severed by divorce, Brown attended boarding school and entered a life among the upper crust and thoroughly progressive.
In recent years, many people are smitten with the idea of Brown as an independent, free-spirited woman who refused to conform and lavishly spent her paychecks on carts of flowers and parties for friends. A different perspective of her life reveals perhaps a wounded woman with great potential who failed to cultivate deep and meaningful relationships. There were certainly fabulously odd and deliciously interesting affairs, but nothing of substance to speak of.
Like the breezy stories that are easily consumed, leaving nothing but a vaguely pleasant melody, the accounts of Brown’s whimsy are lovely but ultimately shallow. It’s also not all harmless fun. Brown was part of a “new” educational regime, complete with an experimental school in which she could test out her innovative books. It was here, at the Bank Street School, that Brown developed what become known as the “here and now” genre of children’s books. While there is nothing inherently wrong with lyrical ditties about bunnies and breakfast, they become problematic when they are given place of preference. Because children prefer the simple and unsophisticated, like cartoons and sugared cereal, Brown seemed keen on giving children her godless stories in place of the fairytales and fables that formed her as a storyteller. There is speculation that Brown, who remained childless, did not even like children (she remarked, “I don’t particularly like children.”) Whether or not she liked children, she certainly seemed to have limitations in her understanding of them. For example, her seemingly altruistic impulse to bequeath the royalties of the perennially popular Good Night Moon to her neighbor, a young boy, had predictably disastrous results.
There’s evidence in some of Brown’s stories of an insidious irreligiosity. For example, there is a strange theme of children “belonging to themselves.” Mister Dog, a crazy and charming little story, has a sinister undertone in that the dog, Crispin’s Crispian, and the boy he befriends do not belong to anyone. This libertine quality can wrongly be viewed as positive when in reality it is very sad. A child will claim to want total independence when someone cuts off the jelly beans and requires some teeth-brushing, but what child truly wants no one to feed him a hot meal and tuck him in at night? The poverty of lasting human relationships in Brown’s life as much as the weak-minded progressivism she ascribed to seem to inform her works.
The course that Brown’s life might have taken with age and wisdom remains unknown. She died suddenly at age 42 while touring Europe, following what is alternately reported as an ovarian cyst or appendicitis that required emergency surgery in France. According to some sources, after a successful operation, “Margaret died of an embolism after kicking up her leg can-can style to show the doctor how well she was feeling.” This seems a fittingly odd way to kick the can, so to speak, for a woman of intriguing beauty, talent, and eccentricity.
What Brown did was original. Her sing-song verse and child-sized tales offered something new in the realm of books for the young. With exceptions, her works can be enjoyed, but they are best offered as a little aside, an interesting detour. Woe to him who makes Friendly Tales and the like a bridge to the empty, rhymey-mimey imitations that have followed, polluting the children’s section of the library and preschool classrooms everywhere. Fables and timeless tales will always do more for a child’s mind, as Brown’s life and art attest.
