The Art of Victorian Books

It is discouraging to consider Jonathan Cott, with all his cuteness and his wide following in the general public, as someone who might be thought to represent the best in contemporary scholarship or criticism in children's literature. His flip style and his complete lack of organizational skills may fit nicely on the pages of The New Yorker or Roiling Stone. The attempts at criticism in his earlier books are just bizarre enough to appeal to pseudo-scholars in the field. These are the type of books that end up being reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. And, for me, that is the most appalling aspect of Cott's work. His version of scholarship makes our field appear to be all froth and lighthearted conversation. Children's literature, as seen by Jonathan Cott, is worthy only of witty cocktail party banter, or "enlightened shared experiences with our children as they grow up."

Volume seven of Cott's series, Masterworks of Children's Literature, confirms my suspicion that Cott does not produce his works for concerned members of ChLA. The only strong aspect of this volume is Sendak's nineteen-page dialogue with Cott. Here the reader gains insight from Sendak's appraisals and is entertained by his casual put-downs of Cott's theories.

Volume Seven should be titled "British Victorian Color Picture Books" since Cott fails to acknowledge the production of children's books either on the continent or in North America. I would rename the book Some Victorian Color Picture Books and might subtitle it Well-Known and Unknown Artists Especially Loved by the Editor.

Cott never explains how he came to choose the selections he includes. While everyone might agree with his choice of Caldecott, Crane, Greenaway, and Doyle, few could find a strong rationale for Eleanor Vere. Sendak comments, "E.VB.'s work, to me, is a gross and terribly sentimental parody of childhood . . . I am very hostile to it because it represents a collapse of every standard of bookmaking" (xvi). Cott has told his readers that these illustrations will show how children's books "truly came into their own," yet E.V.B.'s work is not at all distinctive. Further, her work is full of deep psychological implications; none of the children looks particularly happy; all of the artwork is poorly rendered. Sendak tells Cott, "E.V.B. was trying to do something interesting, but she was incapable of doing it, and so she wound up with just a rather bizarre image" (xvi). Furthermore, Cott includes Ballantyne's The Butterfly's Ball without any discussion. It is the earliest published work included in the book, yet Cott places it at the very end, leaving the reader to wonder if it was added at the last moment.

Sendak comments that he himself would begin the discussion with Caldecott who was the first to balance the words and pictures in children's books. He concentrates his discussion on Caldecott's book Hey Diddle Diddle and Baby Bunting, and discusses how the book's entire format leads its audience into both the textual story and the visual counterpart by doing the unexpected. Cott has included this entire picture book in his book and the reader can correlate Sendak's three page discussion with the text.

Crane, Sendak says, was more a decorator than an illustrator. His best discussion of Crane's talents focuses on The Barry's Bouquet. Sendak calls Crane "one of the great contents-page-people. And the title-page-people and book-jacket-people and cover-people . . . The Barry's Bouquet is marvelous" (xiii). Sendak discusses the total book design when he talks of Crane. However, Cott does not choose to reproduce all of The Baby's Bouquet. Instead, he has included some pages from it, as well as some from 1,2, Buckle My Shoe, Beauty and the Beast, The Frog Prince, and An Alphabet of Old Friends. The reader can follow Sendak's discussion, but Crane would have been represented better...