Birthday of picture book authors:
Verna Aardema Vugteveen (b.1911). Her book, Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears (1975), illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon, received the Caldecott Medal in 1976. She also wrote several other picture book folk tales, mostly from Africa.

Cynthia Rylant (b.1954). Ms. Rylant is the author of the picture books When I Was Young in the Mountains, Mr. Putter and Tabby Pour the Tea, and Henry and Mudge: The First Book of Their Adventures, among many others. Her novel Missing May won the 1993 Newbery Medal and A Fine White Dust was a 1987 Newbery Honor book.
Newbery Project reviews of Missing May.

Peter Spier (b.1937). Dutch-born American author and illustrator of some of my favorite picture books: The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night (1961), London Bridge Is Falling Down (1967), Star-Spangled Banner (1973), Noah’s Ark (1977), Bored—Nothing to Do! (1978), Oh, Were They Ever Happy! (1978), Rain (1982), The Book Of Jonah (1985), We The People: The Constitution Of The United States Of America (1987), and People (1980).

Also born on this date were American patriot Nathan Hale and Tibetan patriot The Dalai Lama.

The Poetry Friday Roundup for this week is at Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering.

Pearl Buck, b. 1892. She was born in West Virginia, but since her parents were only on furlough from the mission field in China, Pearl grew up and lived much of her life in China. She was homeschooled by her mother and by a Chinese tutor. After the publication of her second novel, The Good Earth, Pearl Buck won both the Pulitzer Prize and, ten years later, the Nobel Prize for Literature. She was able to have only one natural child, a daughter, Carol, who was mentally handicapped as a result of PKU. Mrs. Buck adopted seven more children.

Charlotte Zolotow, b. 1915. Charlotte Zolotow celebrates her 92nd birthday this year. She’s written over 90 books for children and edited many more.

The Official Charlotte Zolotow Website.

Charlotte Zolotow on children’s emotions: “Children have the same emotions as adults, though they experience them more intensely, since they haven’t yet learned the protective camouflage with which we adults disguise our feelings.”

Does this mean that as adults we hide (camouflage) our feelings even from ourselves?

All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.

Big Brother is watching you.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.

George Orwell, b.1903, added these ideas and terms to our collective wisdom. If you’ve never read 1984 or Animal Farm, you should. Both books are directly applicable to current events.

Also born on this date, Eric Carle, author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Very Busy Spider, among other favorites. I noted a couple of years ago on this date that The Grouchy Ladybug would make a great blog title.

Ambrose Bierce, b. 1842, author of The Devil’s Dictionary. Bierce was irreverent and cynical, but funny. Semicolon quotes from The Devil’s Dictionary.

Back in March, when I was on my “blog vacation”, I read a biography of Mr. Bierce, one that was recommended here, called Bitter Bierce. I borrowed the book through interlibrary loan from some obscure college library, hoping to read something about the life and mysterious disappearance and presumed death of Mr. Bierce, lexicographer, journalist and humorist. Instead, I got a quaint biographical/critical study of Bierce’s life, psychology and literary works by Professor C. Hartley Grattan, copyright 1929. The book was fascinating, not because it gave a great deal of illumination to the life and writings of Ambrose Bierce, but because it did give insight into what I presume was the prevailing attitude among the American intelligentsia circa 1929.

A few examples:

Mr. Gratten writes in some detail about Ambrose Bierce’s anti-female attitudes and statements, but the author finds it completely unnecessary to try to excuse or even explain such an antipathy on the part of Mr. Bierce toward half of the human race.

Mr. Grattan on government and the arts:

Certain it is that sweetness and light have often radiated from the courts of tyrants and usurpers; for thought for creative artists, rulers can do little directly beyond giving them the benefits of order and security and leaving them alone, for civilization they can do much. They can endow and defend a civilizing class. That is why I think of sending copies of this essay to the Russian ‘bosses’, to Signor Mussolini, and to Mr. Winston Churchill.

A pre-World War II sentiment if I ever heard one! Bring on the dictator with his order, security, sweetness, and light!

Mr. Grattan calls Bierce “old-fashioned” because Bierce held to strict moral standards. He calls Bierce’s diatribes opposing socialists and socialism “sloppy and inconsequential thinking.” (Perhaps they were; I haven’t read them.) Grattan equates Bierce’s support for “selective breeding” with advanced thinking. Then, Grattan proceeds to write about “the essential modernity of the ideas that Bierce evolved.” Morality and opposition to socialism are antiquated and out-dated; eugenics are advanced and modern. And Bierce is both old-fashioned and modern at the same time.

Mr. Grattan calls Ambrose Bierce a contradictory, enigmatic sort of person. Bierce’s contrariness must have affected Mr. Grattan’s writing. Of Ambrose Bierce I did learn one thing I didn’t know before:

Bierce was one of twelve children each having a name beginning with A: Abigail, Addison, Aurelius, Amelia, Ann, Augustus, Andrew, Almeda, Albert, and Ambrose. (Two died in infancy.)

From The Letters of Ambrose Bierce: “My father was a poor farmer and could give me no general education, but he had a good library and to his books I owe all that I have.”