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The Teacher as Trickster: My Journeys into Children's Literature by Francelia Butler Over ten years ago, Alethea Helbig wrote an article for the annual Children's Literature on Manabozho, an Indian trickster figure. I have always winced when I thought about it, because I think the trickster is very much a part of my own character. The word of wisdom I want to give you today is that very often, it pays to be a trickster. If I had not been one, the annual, Children's Literature, the Children's Literature Association, the permanent Division on Children 's Literature of the Modern Language Association, and the first two NEH Summer Institutes, which received grants from the government of $300,000—all these and many other things that have been good for children's literature would never have happened. In 1971, I received a grant from the University of Connecticut of $2,000 to found the annual. With the bumbling simplicity of a trickster, I went ahead with the project and found the cheapest printer, the pastor of the local Lutheran Church, who was willing to print 1,000 copies for $2,000. Aside from two (Barbara Rosen and Bob Miner) most of the names on the masthead were dummies— I myself stood in the printer's small office and read copy as the book was being printed. In that first issue, I incorporated a guest editorial on teaching children's literature I had been a invited to do for the New York Times Book Review. In it I said the men in the field should get off their ars poética and take a look at this new field. When the annual was well under way, I asked for my $2,000. "No, indeed!" I was told. "You did not go to a union printer. You don't get a cent! Besides," the administrator added, "I only got you the award to discourage this foolish project, as I knew you could never get it printed for that. There's a man who has wanted to begin a journal of American literature for years, and he would be very offended if you got a journal out and he didn't. I certainly don't want to offend him. Yours is a stupid project. If it were any good, a university press would have taken it. Children's literature simply is not a scholarly subject." I left his office weeping so hard I caught my foot under his door and limped for a month afterward. I stumbled over to the local bank and tried to get a loan for $2,000 to pay the preacher. I used the administrator as reference for the undertaking. This was a big mistake. He told the bank president that if I began the journal with a loan, I was setting myself up as a publisher and was moonlighting. I would be fired immediately. What to do? I went to the university bookstore, told the manager I was getting out a textbook which I wanted to use for my class. Would he purchase 1,000 copies? He could sell the books for $3.60 and make $1.60 a copy as I wanted no profit. I had a huge class and he immediately agreed . . . especially when he found the printer was Pastor of the Lutheran Church. The manager was a devout Lutheran. "And," I asked, "when he backs his truck up to your service entrance, will you give him a certified check?" He agreed. I hurried back to the press and quickly added a textbook apparatus at the back which you will still see, if you look at Volume One. The Pastor delivered the books and got his money. Within a few days, the manager of the bookstore called me. He had had a call not only from the administrator with whom I had dealt but from the Comptroller, demanding that I persuade the Pastor to return the check and take the books back. "I have been told by the administrator that you are an untrustworthy scatterbrained person, and that I should not have dealt with you," the manager said. "Have you ever found me so...

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