In Biography for Young Readers, Nothing is Impossible

Recommendations of Dorothy Aldis' juvenile biography Nothing Is Impossible: The Story of Beatrix Potter¹ have been cropping up everywhere recently. Feminists compiling lists of children's books with competent female protagonists seem invariably to recommend it. The title appears in my local library's flyer, "Girls Are People, Too";² in the bibliography Little Miss Muffet Fights Back, compiled by Feminists on Children's Media (revised edition, 1974); and in Sandra Styer's article, "Biographical Models for Young Feminists,"³ to name just a few. I notice also that in the latest revision of the popular Anthology of Children's Literature⁴ the editors have added a chapter of the Aldis book to the biography section, with the laudable motive, I suspect, of offsetting the traditional male dominance of juvenile biography.

In addition, the seventy-fifth birthday festivities for The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1978 have focused attention on the Aldis biography, giving it a new lease on life. Marilyn D. Button's review of Potter biographies for the Children's Literature Association Newsletter,⁵ for instance, mentioned the book favorably.

Because I frequently discuss the book in my children's literature classes as an example of inferior juvenile biography, I decided I'd better read it again.

I preceded my rereading of the Aldis book by reading The Journal of Beatrix Potter, transcribed from her code writings by Leslie Linder,⁶ and Margaret Lane's adult biography. The Tale of Beatrix Potter.⁷ I had several reasons for this. The journal is, of course, an invaluable primary source of information about the important years from 15 to 30 in Beatrix Potter's life. What she records and what she chooses not to record in this secret record which she expected no one else to read provide our best clues to the day-to-day reality of her life. The Lane book is the standard biography and one that has been universally praised for its lucidity, accuracy, and intelligence. Dorothy Aldis writes in her preface that she was herself moved to finish and publish her account of Potter's life after reading Lane's book, and she draws heavily on it. In addition, because the Lane biography is written with such clarity and concision (it is only 165 pages long), it can be read and enjoyed by adolescent readers. Thus, although the Aldis book can be read by pre-adolescents—children from about 9 to 12 for whom the Lane book is probably too difficult—for adolescents, Margaret Lane's biography must be kept in mind as an alternative to Dorothy Aldis'. As such, it has a formidable advantage to begin with in its numerous photographs of its subject, her family and surroundings, and its reproductions of her childhood sketches, fungi paintings, code-writing, picture-letters, and book illustrations. Richard Cuffari's drawings for the juvenile biography are attractive but cannot compete with the wealth of authentic pictorial material enriching the adult biography.

As to the text of Nothing Is Impossible, its strengths lie in Aldis' skill at constructing scene and dialogue and in her sensitivity to a young reader's perceptions and preoccupations. She begins her biography:

Nearly everybody remembers a little of what it was like to be five years old. Quite a few people even remember some things that happened when they were four, or three, or even two.

But most children, when they are five years old, can hardly wait to be six, seven, or eight. When they get to be twelve or thirteen, they long to be grown-up so they can boss themselves. They hurry away from childhood days and soon forget most things about them.

This is a story about a girl named Beatrix Potter who never forgot what it was like to be a child of four or five or six. Perhaps this was because she spent so much of her childhood alone. Until she was almost six, she had no brothers or sisters. She never went to school or had any playmates her own age. Her parents did not seem to be interested in her...