One of my first, and enduring, passions is children’s literature. When I was in high school, I thought that I would become an author/illustrator, but I chose the teaching route instead. (Julia Cameron might call me a “shadow artist.”) Never has there been more of a market for children’s books, and I try to keep somewhat current, but I also love many older books, and I often obtain copies of them when they are “weeded” from library collections.For a child of the sixties, the books of Lois Lenski were ubiquitous. Strawberry Girl, Cotton in My Sack, the Mr. Small series were all fixtures in the school library. Nowadays they are frequently overlooked or discarded for being outdated. I remember one of my children’s literature professors, in a thick New Hampshire accent, dismissing Mr. Small for its gender stereotyping!
My interest in Lois Lenski was aroused this winter when I received the latest issue of Quaker Action, the bulletin from the American Friends’ Service Committee and this sentence caught my eye: “And the juvenile fiction writer Lois Lenski Covey included AFSC in her trust, and the organization receives quarterly donatons as a result.” Wow! All of a sudden she was no longer a long-ago author of quaint, slightly sexist books, but perhaps something of an activist, and I wanted to find out more.
Google ... my virtual hero. There is actually quite a bit of information available on Lenski. I found that she had published an autobiography, Journey Into Childhood, which was in our local library system, so I read it. What a life! From a near-idyllic childhood as a minister’s daughter in turn-of-the-century rural Ohio to scraping by as an art student in New York City to marriage to distinguished twentieth-century muralist Arthur Covey to recognition as an author/illustrator who pioneered a realistic portrayal of childhood in America, it was quite the journey.
What touched me most is her obvious love of children, and her concern for their physical, emotional, spiritual, and creative wellbeing. It was that concern which led her to being a writer (and she used that term, “being led” which this Quaker finds interesting.) Her books, far from being quaintly old-fashioned, were an expression of a very gritty concern for the poor and downtrodden -- especially children -- in this country, very much on a par with the works of Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck or Dorothea Lange.
A few years ago I read a biography of another icon of children’s literature, Margaret Wise Brown (author of Goodnight Moon,) who was very involved with the Bank Street School of Education and wrote quite self-consciously in a style that was "scientifically proven" to be “good” for children. Lenski’s pedagogy was based on what she knew in her heart to be good for children, first the children in her own life and later, the children she met through her writing. She was the quintessential teacher. And it was easy to understand her gift to the AFSC.
Lenski’s life may not speak to you in the same way it did to me, but if you like memoirs or you want a view of America in the last century, seek out this book.
This review is cross-posted at the Winter Reading Challenge.
