illustrated children’s books

A new book, Illustrated Children’s Books, explores the design and influence of some of the best-loved children’s books which have inspired and enchanted generations worldwide.

The English Struwwelpeter or Pretty Stories and Funny Pictures by Heinrich Hoffman

Looking at work from as early as the 1600s through to the golden age of illustration in the nineteenth century, Illustrated Children’s Books examines the history and development of children’s books.

The Wizard of Oz © 2008 by Graham Rawle

The book also contains an analysis of more contentious material such as Noddy and Little Black Sambo, explored here in a socio-historical context.

The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls, illustrated by Florence K Upton

Here’s my personal favorite.  It sort of makes up for my personal “not-favorite” (see above).

Miffy’s Dream by Dick Bruna

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re:mixed race in the uk

This is a sad story.  I’m not up on the politics of the United Kingdom, so I had to look up the BNP or British National Party.  Here’s what I found on Wikipedia:

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The British National Party (BNP) is a far-right and whites-only political party in the United Kingdom.

The BNP is not represented in Parliament.

According to its constitution, the BNP is “committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948”. The BNP proposes “firm but voluntary incentives for immigrants and their descendants to return home”. The party also advocates the repeal of all anti-discrimination legislation, and restricts party membership to “indigenous British ethnic groups deriving from the class of ‘IndigenousCaucasian’”. The BNP also accepts white immigrants that are assimilated into one of those ethnicities. The BNP asserts that there are biological racial differences that determine the behaviour and character of individuals of different races, although it claims that it does not regard whites as superior to other ethnic groups, and that preference for one’s own ethnicity is a part of human nature.

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Schoolgirl victim of racist bullying says tormentor’s sentence is ‘pants’

telegraph_co_uk_new[10]

By Nick Allen

The victim, a 14-year-old mixed race girl, was repeatedly insulted with racist terms for six months by a 15-year-old, BNP supporting fellow pupil.

Last month the boy became the first school child to be convicted of racially aggravated harassment of a fellow pupil following a trial at Lincoln Youth Court.

The conviction prompted questions over whether such racist bullying should be dealt with through criminal law or by schools themselves.

The boy could have been detained for up to two years in a young offenders’ institution but he was instead sentenced to a six month supervision order and made to pay £500 compensation to the girl, which will be paid by his father.

The victim, who tried to kill herself with an overdose of stress pills and painkillers, said she was “disappointed” with the sentence.

She said: “When my mum told me the sentence I just thought ‘Is that it? That’s pants.’

“He has got a slap on the wrists and been told he was a naughty boy – that’s all. He has not paid the price for what he has put me through and he will never have to suffer like I have.

“I want him to be out into a multi-cultural school where he is one of the only white pupils to see what it feels like to be in the minority. I want him to be in my shoes and see how he copes with that.”

The girl, who is of mixed white English and black African heritage, was called “wog”, “coon”, “nigger”, “gorilla” and “golliwog” by the boy. She also suffered abusive chants of “white, white, white is right, kick them out, fight, fight, fight” and was repeatedly told: “Go back to your own country, you don’t belong here.”

She wrote a suicide note and took an overdose on Jan 25 this year. She was then sectioned for six weeks in a psychiatric hospital before the family moved to a different part of the country.

After the sentencing her mother said: “…He bullied her to the extent she actually wanted to die but he had no remorse. When he was found guilty we were on a high and thought we would finally get justice. But now we feel we have put ourselves out there and not got anything back.

During the case it emerged the boy was a known BNP supporter who actively tried to enlist other youths.

The victim’s mother said: “It’s very sad and comes from ignorance more than anything. My daughter is British, she was born in this country and has a British passport. But they just think everyone living in the UK should be white and English.”

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ten little what!?

Not done with Golly yet.  When I first looked into what the heck that was, I was led to a website for collectors of Golly memorabilia.  I saw Golly as a doctor, an astrounaut, all sorts of things, so I thought “Maybe he isn’t really racist because he doesn’t seem to be held back by his color or regulated to a station of servitude.  He’s achieving things.”  Short-lived thought, for next i was led to this site http://www.golliwogg.co.uk/racism.htm

For the past four decades Europeans have debated whether the Golliwog is a lovable icon or a racist symbol. In the 1960s relations between Blacks and Whites in England were often characterised by conflict. This racial antagonism resulted from many factors, including: the arrival of increasing numbers of coloured immigrants; minorities’ unwillingness to accommodate themselves to old patterns of racial and ethnic subordination; and, the fear among many Whites that England was losing its national character. British culture was also influenced by images – often brutal – of racial conflict occurring in the United States.

The claim that Golliwogs are racist is supported by literary depictions by writers such as Enid Blyton. Unlike Florence Upton’s, Blyton’s Golliwogs were often rude, mischievous, elfin villains. Blyton, one of the most prolific European writers, included the Golliwogs in many stories, but she only wrote three books primarily about Golliwogs: The Three Golliwogs (1944), The Proud Golliwog (1951), and The Golliwog Grumbled (1953). Her depictions of Golliwogs are, by contemporary standards, racially insensitive. An excerpt from The Three Golliwogs is illustrative:

Once the three bold Golliwogs, Golly, Woggie, and Nigger, decided to go for a walk to Bumble-Bee Common. Golly wasn’t quite ready so Woggie and Nigger said they would start off without him, and Golly would catch them up as soon as he could. So off went Woggie and Nigger, arm-in-arm, singing merrily their favourite song – which, as you may guess, was Ten Little Nigger Boys.

Ten Little Niggers is the name of a children’s poem, sometimes set to music, which celebrates the deaths of ten Black children, one-by-one. The Three Golliwogs was reprinted as recently as 1968, and it still contained the above passage. Ten Little Niggers was also the name of a 1939 Agatha Christie novel, whose cover showed a Golliwog lynched, hanging from a noose.

 

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By-Frickin’-Golly