Animals Are Us: Anthropomorphism in Children’s Literature; Celebrating the Peter J. Solomon Collection

in 1760, “We don’t form a true judgment of the capacity of
children; nothing is out of their reach . . .” 11 By the middle of the
eighteenth century, children’s books enjoyed wide distribution
on both sides of the Atlantic, and publishers and booksellers
were aggressively targeting this market—a phenomenon
that exists to this day. All the books in this exhibition assert
the importance of children’s literature, and a selective survey
confirms this assertion.
After a hundred and twenty years, why does The Tale
of Peter Rabbit still resonate so deeply with young audiences?
Disobedience and its consequences still mesmerize the child.
With this theme, Potter’s work anticipates another subversively
iconic book of the twentieth century, Sendak’s Where the Wild
Things Are, whose characters feature in the poster Reading is
Fun-damental (ca. 1979; cat. no. 60). Significantly, Potter was
one of Sendak’s literary heroes. Potter had to self-publish Peter,
and when it emerged as an immediate phenomenal success, a
publisher came running, and Potter’s career was launched.
Like Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows
(1908; cat. no. 43), A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh (1926;
cat. no. 51) evolved out of bedtime stories for his young son
Christopher. This book, with its cast of talking stuffed animals
and delightfully innocent episodes, has prospered even in the
most cynical of times. Its success and enduring fame benefited
further from its Disneyfication, and it became a pop culture
phenomenon.
From an unruly rabbit and copacetic stuffed animals, we
turn to a pacifist bull who prefers to smell the flowers rather
than fight in the ring. Published in 1936, The Story of Ferdinand
(fig. 2; cat. no. 52) became a lightning rod for controversy,
garnering outrage from all sides of the political spectrum. These
unintended consequences only fueled sales, and the Oscarwinning
cartoon of 1938 further ensured Ferdinand’s legacy.
Deceptively sophisticated, the text is succinct, the drawing deft,
and the characterization irresistible; after more than eighty
years, The Story of Ferdinand continues to engage readers young
and old with its gentle message of self-worth.
figure 2. Robert Lawson. “It was [Ferdinand the Bull’s] favorite
tree and he would sit in its shade all day and smell the flowers,”
from The Story of Ferdinand.
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