Editors’ Introduction

Anyone who has recently boarded or disembarked from a plane at Heathrow in London, Narita in Japan, or Pearson in Toronto, has walked through an airbridge lined with HSBC advertisements. The corridor connecting the plane to the terminal building confronts the traveler with poster-sized groups of paired photographs, each with a single caption. There is a photograph of an old, wrinkled man, once with the caption “Old,” then, the same photograph repeated, but with the caption “Wise,”—then the sequence is reversed: “Wise,” then “Old.” There is also a photograph of a charming, pink-cheeked baby. The caption sequence reads, “”Work,” “Play,” then “Play,” “Work.” The sequences are clever and it is impossible not to reflect, as one transitions from air to land, from one country to another, that what you see depends on how you look. Perspective matters.

In this issue of The Lion and the Unicorn, we are very pleased to offer three general essays as well as a cluster of three South African essays, and the fourth annual “Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry” essay, “from brain to heart,” written by this year’s three judges, Angela Sorby, Richard Flynn, and Joseph T. Thomas. As it happens, all the essays, like the HSBC advertisements, invite the reader to consider perspective. Although the South African essays are first in the issue, they will be formally introduced by the guest editor after this brief general introduction.

Each of the general essays speaks, in some ways, the unspeakable. Paula Connolly sensitively addresses the complexities of communicating the events of 9/11 in picture books. Ellen Brinks, in “Uncovering the Child in Timothy Treadwell’s Feral Tale,” takes on the shadowy status of the “wild child” flickering between human and beast. And Tison Pugh, speaks the specter of latent cannibalism in L. Frank Baum’s Oz books.

The South African cluster, guest edited by Betsie van der Westhuizen, begins with “Cross-Cultural Misreadings,” by Elwyn Jenkins and Elizabeth Muther. The two South African scholars critique a view of their country presented in Apartheid and Racism by Donarae MacCann and Yulia Amadu Maddy. Next, Molly Brown invites us to look at “tokoloshes,” a kind of South African troll or hobbit. And finally, Carole Bloch, editor of a series of multilingual Little Hands books for South African children explains the range of problems associated with attempts to communicate simultaneously in English, Afrikaans, and eleven official tribal languages. Betsie van der Westhuizen will offer additional perspectives in her introduction—which follows.