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Reviewed by:
  • Little Machinery: A Critical Facsimile Edition
  • Eric Bulson
Little Machinery: A Critical Facsimile Edition. Mary Liddell. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2009. Pp. xiv + 99. $24.95 (paper).

Once upon a time, there lived a little boy made from the spare parts of a broken train, trolley, and automobile. No one knew exactly who built him, but Little Machinery, as he was called, never really cared. He was brought into this world without the baggage of family ties and was free to devote himself to a life of adventure, which, strangely enough, always involved a crew of animals ready to capitalize on, some might say exploit, his unusual talents. (Except, that is, for [End Page 448] the beaver who preferred to build his own dam.) And who can blame them? It’s not often that you come across someone with a saw-hand, a foot-wheel (with a drill on the other one), a smokestack on his head, a whistle on his chest, and an insatiable desire for labor. If Little Machinery has a reason to exist, it is this: to work ceaselessly from dawn till dusk so that the animals can live more comfortably. There is no time for thinking unless, of course, it is done for the sake of designing another project.

Little Machinery, from which this synopsis was adapted, is Mary Liddell’s fairy tale of modernity, one that was written specifically for “the modern child,” published in 1926 by Doubleday, and, though positively received, soon forgotten. Lucky for us, it has been reprinted in an elegant critical facsimile edition that makes it possible for today’s postmodern child to catch a glimpse of an earlier moment in the history of the machine age. When putting this 62-page picture book together, Liddell adapted the available print technologies and design experiments to her advantage, and, in doing so, she managed to make her one and only children’s book new. Indeed, Little Machinery does have a lot in common with the illustrated books from the previous century, and it does anticipate some of the formal devices adapted by comic book artists in the late 1930s. And yet, when you see the faux advertisements on the front and back cover inserts, the juxtaposition of artisanal and mechanical typeface, and the oversized format (8.125 × 9.375 inches), Little Machinery begins to look a lot like an avant-garde magazine (a “Liddel magazine,” perhaps), something that belongs alongside 391, De Stijl, or Zenit.

And why shouldn’t it? If Liddel wanted to make the world intelligible to an audience of young readers, then it makes perfect sense that she would rely on contemporary innovations in graphic design. For this reason, the story of the machine-boy cannot be detached from the technology that made its transmission possible. With the turn of every page, young readers come face to face with words, images, and machine parts that together produce an elegant visual symmetry. Letters get interwoven with or stamped on machine cogs, pictures of nuts and bolts linger in blank white spaces, rabbits, teddy bears, owls, and woodpeckers play in available corners of the frame sometimes breaking through the fourth wall. All the while, the images that spill over the black and red frames of both pages are meant to inspire questions from the curious child (now modernist critic): What is an engine cylinder? How do gearwheels work? How are clothes made? How do you sharpen an eagle’s claws? How do you blow glass?

These are the questions that Little Machinery sets out to answer: not why am I here, or where’s my mommy, but how do machines work? In the brief introduction, John Stilgoe identifies the unmistakable influence of the “do-it-yourself” shop-manual that was popular in the first few decades of the century. Machines were fast becoming an integral part of everyday life, and for that reason, adults and children alike relied on shop-manuals for instruction about building and repair. Nathalie op de Beeck, in a brilliant critical essay appended to the back of the volume, provides a comprehensive overview that situates Little Machinery in its social, literary, and historical...

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