Do we need to be fearful?
Sandra L. Beckett
This chapter focuses on controversial picturebooks inspired directly or indirectly by the tradition of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Such picturebooks may be considered more unsuitable for children than their sources, despite the fact that traditional tales often contain violent and gruesome details. The author examines a wide range of picturebooks to show how authors and illustrators are using the heritage of traditional tales to explore disturbing, often dark subjects that are part of the life experience of young readers as well as adults. The chapter contends that these picturebook artists respect children’s ability to deal with the controversial subjects that often alarm adult mediators.
Controversial picturebooks are generally innovative and provocative works that defy current codes and conventions of the genre. Paradoxically, however, many unconventional and controversial picturebooks have their roots in the time-honoured tradition of folk and fairy tales, cautionary tales, and nursery rhymes. These may be present only in a very subtle manner, sometimes in reminiscences and allusions which go unnoticed by many readers. A large number of controversial picturebooks, however, draw heavily on traditional sources, often retelling or revisualizing the well-known stories. Although many adults consider the picturebooks to be unsuitable or threatening, they do not necessarily see the original works in the same light. These vigilant and perhaps overly protective adults may withhold picturebooks from a young audience while freely giving the same children access to the stories that inspire them, many of which contain grim, grisly, and gruesome details and events.
The traditional stories do not flinch from the hard, even sordid facts of life: child abandonment, infanticide, incest, rape, abuse, cannibalism, murder, necrophilia, and madness, among others. Yet most, if not all, of these subjects are considered taboo in children’s literature. Is it the fact that fairy tales and cautionary tales purportedly contain moral lessons that make them more acceptable to the mediators of children’s literature? The Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales) claimed to be “a manual of manners” (quoted in Tatar, 2003: 19). The title of Charles Perrault’s Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec moralités (Stories or Tales of Times Past, with Morals) stresses the lessons expressed in rhyming moralités at the end of each tale. However, the events and lessons contained in fairy tales often seem to be anything but moral: children are imprisoned, seduced, and devoured; adults are guilty of violence, abuse, and murder. Even the most popular fairy tales contain shocking and terrifying events. Snow White is a victim of attempted murder, Hansel and Gretel of attempted cannibalism, and Little Thumbling and his brothers of child abandonment. A poor little match girl freezes to death in the street, Cinderella’s cruel stepsisters have their eyes pecked out, and Snow White’s stepmother dances in red-hot iron shoes until she drops dead. All these stories, despite their grim and horrific themes, have been deemed appropriate fare for children. Although they are associated with an even younger child audience, nursery rhymes also present a range of unsavoury, downright macabre subjects. In her paintings for Nursery Rhymes, an anthology of twenty traditional tales, the Portuguese artist Paula Rego (2010) demonstrates clearly that these beloved works are actually colourful stories about madness, cruelty, and sex. “Ring around the Rosy” (“Ring a Ring o’ Roses”) is claimed to be about the deadly bubonic plague and “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” is purported to be about Bloody Mary and instruments of torture. Even without looking beyond the literal meaning of the words, “Hush-a-Bye, Baby” describes a baby and its cradle falling out of a tree. Yet these are the tales that are told to infants and toddlers.
Challenging fairy tales
Traditional folk and fairy tales were not originally intended for children, but were told to general audiences at a time when the concept of childhood as we understand it did not exist and very little distinction was made between children and adults. The collection and publication of these tales coincided with the ‘invention’ of children’s literature and they gradually passed into the children’s library and the nursery. Today many authors, illustrators and publishers are trying to restore them to a crossover audience of children and adults, as I demonstrate in Red Riding Hood for All Ages: A Fairy-Tale Icon in Cross-Cultural Contexts (Beckett, 2008; see also Beckett, 2014). In its innovative series Libros para niños—children’s books which are “¡NO SOLO para niños!” (NOT ONLY for children!)—the groundbreaking Spanish publisher Media Vaca published an illustrated collection of the Grimms’ tales, titled El señor Korbes y otros cuentos de Grimm (Mr. Korbes and Other Tales by the Brothers Grimm, 2001). Winner of the Bologna Ragazzi Award in the fiction category in 2002, the unusual book was intended, according to the publisher’s catalogue, “to frighten and delight both young and old.” The suitability of fairy tales for children has nonetheless been questioned over the centuries, particularly in the Anglo-American world. There was much criticism of the early editions of the Grimms’ tales as being totally inappropriate for children. In response, the brothers strove to alter the tales to make them more edifying for youngsters. However, the preface to the second edition warned that some parents might still find certain parts unsuitable for children (1980: 17). In their efforts to appease readers, the Grimm brothers removed sexual innuendo and heightened the violence, in order to more firmly punish the evil characters.
The Grimm brothers’ approach to making the material more acceptable for children might have been questioned in the anglophone world. The eighteenth-century author and educationalist Sarah Trimmer was opposed to fairy tales because “the terrific image” that tales such as Cinderella “present to the imagination, usually make deep impressions, and injure the tender minds of children, by exciting unreasonable and groundless fears” (quoted in Carpenter, 1985: 3). Similar anti-fairy-tale sentiment arose in America. As Jack Zipes points out, many Americans, suspicious of anything European, “considered fairy tales... subversive... and potentially dangerous for the health and sanity of children” (2001: 84). The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was the result of Frank L. Baum’s desire to create a “modernized fairy tale” in which the “nightmares are left out”, and claimed to have eliminated “all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised... to point a fearsome moral to each tale” (Baum, 1900: unpaginated). Even today, opposition to fairy tales persists. For Banned Books Week in the year of the 200th anniversary of the first publication of the Grimms’ tales, Sherry Liberman of the New York Public Library reminds readers that The Complete Grimms’ Fairy Tales was challenged by a committee of parents, teachers, and administrators twenty years earlier due to its “excessive violence.” Half of the “10 controversial kids’ books” listed in an April 2013 MSN Living article on books that have been challenged or banned in the United States are fairy tales. Using the statistics collected in Robert P. Doyle’s Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read (2010), the article cites Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” (for “pornographic” pictures of bare-breasted mermaids), the Grimms’ “Little Red Riding Hood” (for violence and the presence of alcohol), and “Snow White” (for graphic violence). According to the MSN Living article, “sexually explicit content” tops the list of reasons why children’s books are banned, followed by “offensive language” and “violence” (Pfeuffer, 2013). To a certain extent, fairy tales and controversial picturebooks, both of which constitute a form of crossover literature, share a similar fate in the world of children’s books, at least in some countries.
Some fairy tales tend to be excluded from the children’s canon and provoke controversy when they are reintroduced. The dark tale “The Juniper Tree,” in which a mother kills her son and cooks him for supper, provided the title of the fairy-tale anthology My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales, edited by Kate Bernheimer. When the anthology came out, “there was a controversial discussion online in which a bookstore browser—who admitted to not reading the book—accused [the editor] of seeking, through fairy tales, to ‘glamorize cannibalism’ for an unsuspecting generation of very young readers” (Bernheimer, n.d.). Maurice Sendak, one of the world’s best-known children’s illustrators, chose Grimms’ “The Juniper Tree” as the title story of his 1973 collection, which includes some of the lesser-known and grimmer of the Grimms’ tales. Fairy tales that are accepted fare for children in one country may not be in another. Perrault’s version of “Little Red Riding Hood,” which ends with the little girl being devoured, is not normally the subject of children’s editions in English-speaking countries. This is explained not only by the tragic ending, but by what Bruno Bettelheim calls the “direct and obvious seduction” (1975: 169). In Perrault’s tale (1697), which warns girls to beware of charming, two-legged wolves, the little girl undresses and climbs into bed with the wolf, who tells her that his strong arms are for embracing her better. It is not surprising that Britain and America, among other Western countries, favoured the German “Rotkäppchen,” in which the Grimms had eliminated Perrault’s sexual innuendo and added a happy ending that mitigated the violence, or at least its consequences. “Bluebeard” and “Donkeyskin” are seldom illustrated for children in the Anglo-American world, but Perrault’s versions of these tales are bedtime stories for French children from an early age. One of France’s most popular author-illustrators, Jean Claverie, published La Barbe Bleue (1991) for very young readers, which contains a very gruesome illustration of the dead wives in various states of decomposition (Figure 3.1).
Figure 3.1 La Barbe Bleue by Charles Perrault and Jean Claverie (1991).
The book’s success is indicated by the fact that it appeared subsequently in Gallimard Jeunesse’s popular Folio Cadet series for children eight to ten years of age. A few years later, another French illustrator, Sibylle Delacroix (2000), offered an only slightly less grisly depiction of the bodies in Bluebeard’s chamber of horrors. The tale has also been illustrated in Italy in a striking picturebook by Chiara Carrer (2007), whose illustration of the same scene is perhaps less disturbing because only the women’s legs are visible. Adult mediators did not seem to be particularly concerned about the graphic violence in these books for young children, but it is difficult to imagine them being published for the same audience in North America. Even in France, some illustrated editions of the more violent Perrault tales have raised eyebrows and provoked discussion of appropriate target audience. In Ma Peau d’Âne (My Donkeyskin, 2002), the author Anne Ikhlef and the illustrator Alain Gauthier offer an intimate, sensual retelling of Perrault’s tale about incest (Figure 3.2).
Figure 3.2 Ma Peau d’Âne by Anne Ikhlef and Alain Gauthier (2002).
Although the sexual innuendo in the illustrations is more subtle than in their earlier picturebook retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood,” this book was published by Seuil Jeunesse for readers from nine years of age, rather than six. For the most part, critics agree that it is more appropriate for older children and adults. In the eyes of some French reviewers, it is the esoteric nature of the text and images rather than the sexual content that makes this picturebook unsuitable for young children.
Broaching dark and difficult subjects in fairy-tale picturebooks
Fairy tales and nursery rhymes do provide a filter that allows authors and illustrators to broach more difficult subjects in picturebooks for young children. Many adults seem to find so-called “adult” subjects, particularly sexuality and violence, more acceptable in recastings of classic fairy tales. This is the case for Claude Clément and Isabelle Forestier’s Un petit chaperon rouge (A Little Red Riding Hood, 2000), which uses the tale—“a story about pedophilia” according to the illustrator (letter, 5 October 2003)—to tackle the subject of sexual abuse in a picturebook published by Grasset & Fasquelle for readers four years of age and older. When illustrating canonical fairy tales, illustrators may get away with more unconventional artwork, although this is not always the case. Even a rather traditional visual rendition of a classic tale can encounter opposition. The illustrated edition of the Grimms’ Little Red Riding Hood (1983) by Caldecott medallist Trina Schart Hyman was pulled from a first-grade recommended reading list by a California school district for its depiction of the fairy-tale heroine taking a bottle of wine to her grandmother.
Some picturebook editions of popular fairy tales have raised a great deal more controversy than Hyman’s. One such picturebook is Sarah Moon’s interpretation of Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood, published, in 1983, by the Creative Company, one of the most innovative American children’s publishers. The French-born fashion photographer casts a child model, Morgan, in the role of an urban Little Red Riding Hood. The sober black-and-white photographs used to document the sinister events involving a young, flesh-and-blood girl explain the book’s powerful, shocking effect on viewers (see Beckett, 2002: 49–53). In a dark, deserted street, a young schoolgirl is illuminated by the glaring headlights of the large car of a predatory, unseen driver. The wolf remains an invisible, menacing presence as the little girl begins to undress (Figure 3.3).
Figure 3.3 Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault and Sarah Moon (1983).
Moon’s final, disturbing image depicting only white, rumpled bedclothes confronts the reader with the sexuality and violence inherent in Perrault’s tale. Awarded the Premio Grafico at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in 1984, Moon’s daring portrayal of child abuse in a children’s book met not only with critical praise, but also with scandalized condemnation. An Italian reader felt the jury “mistook a very refined book for adult voyeurs for a children’s book” and an American reviewer and social worker thought that the Bologna Book Fair prize sticker should be accompanied by a red “HANDLE WITH CARE” stamp since the book can frighten even adults (Garrett, 1993: 9). Moon’s book did not meet with the same controversy in France, where it was published by Grasset Jeunesse for five years of age and up (1983). From an early age, young French readers are exposed to what Zipes calls the “seduction scene” (1993: 355) in Gustave Doré’s famous and influential nineteenth-century engraving of the encounter scene (1861). Doré’s even more troubling engraving of the bed scene presents an intimate tête-à-tête of the bonneted wolf and a little girl whose long, curly hair falls seductively over her shoulders and whose chubby bare arm pulls the sheet to her bosom. The Italian illustrator Beni Montresor reworks both of these Doré engravings in a rendition of Perrault’s version of Little Red Riding Hood published in New York in 1991. The provocative bed scene, which is featured on the cover, is followed by a second disturbing illustration, in which the little girl’s head has almost completely disappeared inside the wolf’s jaws. The picturebook by the 1965 Caldecott medallist was not without controversy. One reviewer suggests that Montresor’s darkly disturbing and violent interpretation of the classic tale is probably “more suited to adults searching into the deeper psychological meaning of fairy tales” (Robinson, 1991: 92).
In 1988, just five years after Moon’s controversial, award-winning book, Roberto Innocenti depicted a similar, troubling encounter of a young schoolgirl and a dark, dangerous, urban wolf driving, not a car, but a motorcycle.
The preliminary work, which the illustrator kindly allowed me to reproduce in Red Riding Hood for All Ages (Figure 3.4), was unfortunately lost before he began work on The Girl in Red (Innocenti, 2012), released in 2012 by the Creative Company, who had published both Moon’s Little Red Riding Hood (1983) and Innocenti’s Rose Blanche (1985) in the 1980s. Innocenti admitted to me at the Bologna Book Fair in 2013 that he preferred the original image, which had a decidedly darker tone than those in the book. Perhaps The Girl in Red would have caused more controversy had its illustrator retained the darker atmosphere of the earlier work, which is more reminiscent of his Rose Blanche. His first portrait of the girl in red running along a stone wall covered with graffiti bears more than a striking resemblance to Moon’s Little Red Riding Hood running along a brick wall. The presence of bystanders in Innocenti’s image does little to mitigate the sense of menace and dread, as they remain indifferent to the little girl’s plight in a hostile cityscape.
Figure 3.4 Preliminary work on “Little Red Riding Hood” by Roberto Innocenti (1988).
It would be interesting to know how the adults who restricted the Grimms’ “Snow White” to students with parental permission at some public school libraries in the United States because of its graphic violence—a hunter kills a wild boar and a wicked witch orders Snow White’s heart torn out—would react to Ana Juan’s Snowhite, published in Spain in 2001. Like Moon, Juan interprets the fairy tale entirely in black and white in order to create the “mysterious and troubling” ambiance she sought (email, 30 April 2014). In a hostile, dark world, the familiar characters either “lose their ‘goodness’ and become abusers,” as in the case of the prince and the seven dwarfs (Figure 3.5), or become silent witnesses who look the other way.
As in Wim Hofman’s disturbing psychological retelling of the same tale, Zwart als inkt is het verhaal van Sneeuwwitje en de zeven dwergen (Black as Ink is the Tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1998), in which Snow White contemplates suicide, Juan’s tragic ending brings us full circle at the end. Neither Hofman’s nor Juan’s young protagonist is able to escape the inexorable cycle of evil that dictates her fate. Marketed for young adults and adults, Juan’s cruel, sordid tale of narcissism, prostitution, drugs, and abuse is a far cry from the sweet tone of the Disney movie that she had loved as a child (email, 28 April 2014), and that, according to Jack Zipes (2001), changed the negative attitude toward fairy tales in the United States.
The images of Susanne Janssen’s Rotkäppchen, published by Carl Hanser in 2001, restore some of the sexuality to the Grimms’ version of “Little Red Riding Hood.” It is not so much the grotesqueness of the figures or the distorted perspective that disturbs adult readers, but rather the sexual innuendo that re-enters the familiar tale. Janssen focuses on faces and they tell a rather different story from the text. Setting out under her mother’s somewhat disapproving stare, the little girl with the saucy red hat and seductive pink lips seems to cast a flirtatious gaze at the wolf who lolls lasciviously on its back (Figure 3.6).
Figure 3.6Rotkäppchen by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and Susanne Janssen (2001).
After her encounter with the wolf, the young girl herself is sprawled across the doublespread and on her face is a look, not of fear, but of ecstasy. In the bedroom, the intimate close-up of her face that fills the picture frame portrays a dreamy gaze, shaped eyebrows that arch speculatively, and a sensual, lipstick-smeared mouth. The German critic Mattenklott Gundel finds it “hard to imagine the book in the hands of small children” pointing to “a precarious eroticisation of the pictorial narrative.” In his view, Janssen’s picturebook belongs “to the category of those books whose blurb points out from the outset that they are not suitable for children, but rather more so ‘for adults interested in art’” (Gundel, 2002: 38). Janssen has drawn a very different tale from the Brothers Grimm’s “fairy tale for little children,” according to the reviewer, who feels it might be different if she had included humour or irony to distance readers, as did Yvan Pommaux in John Chatterton détective (1993), winner of the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (German Youth Literature Award) in 1995.
Pommaux’s popular picturebook retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood” nonetheless has a sinister undercurrent, as it depicts a psychopathic wolf art-collector who abducts the heroine and holds her for ransom to obtain a coveted wolf painting for his art collection (Figure 3.7) (Plate 14).
The eponymous black cat detective follows a trail of red items of clothing—ominous signs perhaps of the young victim’s struggle with her abductor—through dark and deserted parks, streets, and alleys to the wolf’s powerful, black car. However, the comic book style, humour, and happy ending of Pommaux’s whodunnit mitigate the seriousness of the subject matter in this award-winning picturebook appreciated by adults and children alike. Even fairy-tale retellings in a playful, light-hearted mode can, however, be controversial. Fam Ekman (1985) adopted a humorous approach to the Grimms’ version of “Little Red Riding Hood” in Rødhatten og Ulven (Red Hat and the Wolf), in which a sexy she-wolf in high heels and a low-cut red dress attempts to seduce a naïve country boy. The Norwegian public is quite accustomed to Ekman’s sophisticated, challenging picturebooks, which are avidly collected by adults, so the picturebook did not meet with any controversy until it was adapted as a television film. According to the author, the film was never aired due to the provocative scene in which Red Hat stares into the décolleté of the seductive saleswoman wolf in the café, a scene deemed inappropriate for children (Figure 3.8).
It is important to remember, however, that this occurred in the 1980s. The Scandinavian countries are much more tolerant toward sexual content in children’s works than most other countries.
Figure 3.8 Rødhatten og Ulven by Fam Ekman (1985).
An increasing number of contemporary retellings of fairy tales in picturebook format adopt a darker, more ambiguous atmosphere and restore some of the sexuality and violence of the earlier sources. The majority of these books, however, have been published in non-English-speaking markets. Both the text and the images of Rood Rood Roodkapje (Red Red Little Red Hood), by the Dutch author Edward van de Vendel and the Belgian illustrator Isabelle Vandenabeele, received awards when the picturebook was published in 2003 by the innovative Belgian publisher De Eenhoorn. The strikingly dramatic woodcuts create a dark, unsettling atmosphere, which becomes decidedly more troubling toward the end of the story. Vandenabeele portrays a composed little girl wielding a large, blood-drenched axe, as blood fills her grandmother’s doorway and flows out into a pool on the ground beside her (Figure 3.9).
The final, ambiguous spread depicts the little girl standing in a blood-red room staring at the black wolf skin on the floor as she dreams of doing red things. More than a decade earlier, one of France’s most successful children’s publishing houses, L’École des loisirs, published Mina je t’aime (Mina, I love you), a picturebook by the French author Patricia Joiret and the Belgian illustrator Xavier Bruyère (1991). While there is nothing in Mina je t’aime that blatantly transgresses taboos, there is an underlying current of sensuality and a disturbing sense of menace. Joiret and Bruyère portray Little Red Riding Hood as a predatory seductress (she lures three young boys to her she-wolf grandmother) in a picturebook targeted at very young children. One particularly sensual portrait, inspired by Titian’s Venus of Urbino, shows Carmina lounging on a divan in a sexy red mini-dress and red tights, her long, loose, red hair flowing erotically over her shoulder and a seductive smile on her red lips. Although it shocked my class of Canadian university students, there is no trace of any controversy in France over this picturebook, which seems to be widely used by teachers with children aged nine to eleven. Despite its apparent success in France and the fact that it was released by a major publishing house, Mina je t’aime has not been translated (except for an adult audience in a scholarly anthology of retellings I published in 2014, titled Revisioning Red Riding Hood Around the World: An Anthology of International Retellings).
Figure 3.9 Rood Rood Roodkapje by Edward van de Vendel and Isabelle Vandenabeele (2003).
One retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood” that did spark discussion of its appropriateness for young readers in France was Mon Chaperon Rouge (My Red
Riding Hood, 1998) by Anne Ikhlef and Alain Gauthier (Figure 3.10) (Plate 15). Seuil Jeunesse released it for ages six years of age and up, but some critics consider it to be a sophisticated picturebook primarily for adolescents and adults. This is not due only to the sensuality and eroticism of both the text and illustrations, however, but also to the textual layering and sophisticated images. Adult readers may have difficulty with this picturebook because it is inspired by Ikhlef’s earlier, rather provocative film, La vraie histoire du Chaperon rouge (The real story of Red Riding Hood), which was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 1985. The five-year-old actress Justine Bayard is nude in the intimate bed scene, as she lovingly caresses the wolf, in the guise of the French actor Didier Sandre. In fact, the picturebook is less disturbing than the film, since the prepubescent heroine portrayed by Gauthier appears much older than the young actress who plays Little Red Riding Hood. Mon Chaperon Rouge nonetheless remains a daring picturebook which, like the film, presents an erotic, nocturnal version of the tale inspired largely from oral versions, notably the gruesome tale “The Story of Grandmother,” with its cannibalistic scene and ritualistic striptease. Ikhlef uses what Angela Carter calls “the latent content of those traditional tales,” a content that is “violently sexual,” but, unlike the British author, she does so in a children’s picturebook (Goldsworthy, 1985: 10). The sexual content is perhaps made more palatable in this picturebook targeted at children by the fact that Ikhlef embeds in the poetic text other popular forms from children’s culture, such as nursery rhymes, counting rhymes, riddles, and songs, although some of these also have grisly overtones. The author reworks a counting rhyme to retell the story of the cannibal repast (see Beckett, 2008: 89). Ikhlef’s picturebook (1998) retains the lengthy, ritualistic striptease of “The Story of Grandmother,” in which the little girl asks in turn what to do with her apron, bodice, stockings, and skirt, and the wolf tells her each time to throw the article in the fire, as she won’t be needing it anymore. Gauthier’s illustrations turn the scene into an erotic spectacle in which readers become complicit spectators, peering voyeuristically over the man-wolf’s shoulder. A red curtain is pulled back to reveal the little girl, smiling enigmatically at the wolf (and readers) as she shrugs one shoulder out of her red dress. The more risqué version of the dramatic dialogue from the popular tradition receives a strikingly provocative treatment by Gauthier. The intimate picture of a naked Little Red Riding Hood lying on top of the wolf is once again framed by red bed curtains, as if readers/viewers were watching a love scene being enacted at the theatre.
The figure of the ogre in picturebooks
The ogre is a common figure in folk and fairy tales, from where it made its way into children’s literature. For many children today, the word ‘ogre’ is likely to evoke the grotesque, harmless figure of Shrek. In the francophone world, however, the terrifying images that Doré created for Perrault’s Le Petit Poucet (Little Thumbling) are still engraved on the collective unconscious of young and old alike (Figure 3.11).
The Swiss picturebook artist Béatrice Poncelet (2003) incorporates Doré’s frightening images into Les Cubes (The Blocks), a challenging picturebook about dementia. The dominant image on the book’s cover is a fragment of the fearsome face of Doré’s ogre in the process of cutting his own daughters’ throats. Superposed over his face is a children’s block that depicts the fragment of his hand on the hilt of the knife. Poncelet adds colour to Doré’s images, which makes them even more nightmarish, as it highlights the blood. Fragments of this gruesome scene reappear on blocks throughout the book with more frequency than other, less disturbing childhood images. Three blocks with fragments of Doré’s engraving are positioned in the centre of one doublespread so as to reconstruct the most horrific part of the image (Figure 3.12).
Figure 3.11 Les Contes de Perrault (The Fairy Tales of Perrault) by Charles Perrault and Gustave Doré (1861).
Midway through the story, the block bearing the ogre’s face is isolated and enlarged to fill an entire page. Poncelet defends her inclusion of these images—essential images of our cultural heritage—in her picturebooks. A child reader unfamiliar with Doré’s work still “sees clearly that it is an ogre, and an ogre is scary, so why not show it (wink, also small homage) since it’s part of our culture” (Poncelet, 2005: 60). Doré’s ogre also finds his way into her picturebook Chez elle ou chez elle (At Her Place or at Her Place) (1997). A unique ogre is the eponymous protagonist of L’Ogresse en pleurs (The Ogress in Tears) by the French author Valérie Dayre and the Hans Christian Andersen Award winner Wolf Erlbruch (1996). They use the filter of fairy tale to present the ultimate form of parental violence against a child, that of cannibalism. In Dayre’s tale of “a woman so evil that she dreamed of eating a child,” the sinister, grotesque ogress prowls an eerie, surreal landscape looking for a child to eat until finally she returns home and devours her own child (Figure 3.13) (Plate 16).
Erlbruch’s decision not to represent the horrific cannibalistic scene was not intended to protect young readers, but rather to highlight the horror and violence, which is witnessed by a circus monkey. The animal’s yellow eyes almost pop out of his head, his mouth is open wide in a terrified scream, and he beats his drum frenetically (see Figure 1.3 in Chapter 1). The truncated German title Die Menschenfresserin (The Ogress) eliminates the sentimentality of the French title, which refers to the ogress’s fate as she roams the countryside at the end of the story, now seeking a child to love, not to eat. The picturebook shocks many non-French-speaking readers, perhaps in part because the wordplay in French reduces some of the anguish (the expression “à croquer” or “to eat” has the figurative meaning of “to look good enough to eat”). In an article titled “How Much Cruelty Can a Children’s Picturebook Stand?” Horst Künnemann (2005) points out that admiring critics who added the picturebook to their collection “would not read it to their own children.” While Erlbruch’s phenomenally successful illustrations for Vom kleinen Maulwurf, der wissen wollte, wer ihm auf den Kopf gemacht hat (The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of his Business), by Werner Holzwarth (1989), sold well over a million copies, the German edition of L’ogresse en pleurs, with its darker title, was printed in only 15,000 copies. Needless to say, the picturebook has not been translated into English.
The heritage of traditional tales
It is not surprising that controversial picturebooks are often inspired by traditional tales, cautionary tales, and nursery rhymes. Many contemporary picturebook artists turn to fairy tales as models of what children’s literature should be. These genres have been popular with both children and adults for centuries. The French publisher Christian Bruel acknowledged in 1981 that there is a connection between the traditional tale and the controversial picturebooks of his experimental publishing house Le Sourire qui mord (The smile that bites) (Bruel, 1985). Concerned by the fact that many children’s books ignore complete chunks of the reality experienced by children, the publishing house was founded with the intention of eliminating the stereotypes and taboos in children’s literature. Its complex, crossover picturebooks deal with difficult themes, notably sensuality and violence, in a manner that is particularly disturbing for adults. The wordless picturebook Vous oubliez votre cheval (You are forgetting your horse), conceived by Bruel and illustrated by Pierre Wachs (1986), is one of several enigmatic picturebooks in the groundbreaking series Grands petits livres (Large little books) that contain important allusions to fairy tales. The doublespreads that refer to “Goldilocks” and “The Frog Prince” are perplexing and unsettling, but the one devoted to “Little Red Riding Hood” is entirely unnerving. Opposite the black-and-white illustration depicting the inside of the grandmother’s empty living room, where a bear trap has been set, is a colour illustration showing the bedroom, where a large, realistic wolf stands in the doorway, holding in its jaws a red slipper that evokes the absent, devoured grandmother (Figure 3.14) (Plate 17).
It is not the violence done to the old lady that disturbs adult readers, however, but rather the implied sensuality. Obligingly bringing the grandmother’s slippers, the wolf fixes his yellow gaze on Little Red Riding Hood, but viewers see only two vulnerable-looking bare legs and feet that bleed suggestively off the page, conjuring up images of a naked heroine. The ambiguous illustrations, which leave readers to determine if Little Red Riding Hood is the victim or the complicit partner of the wolf, are far more disturbing for adults than children. While adults will immediately interpret these multilayered, enigmatic pictures in the light of “Little Red Riding Hood,” children may simply be fascinated by their strange and sometimes playful details.
Like fairy tales, nursery rhymes have inspired some rather controversial picturebooks. Maurice Sendak chose two nursery rhymes as the text of his picturebook We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy (1993), an origin clearly indicated in the subtitle “Two Nursery Rhymes with Pictures.” It is the pictures and the added text, not the original nursery rhymes that are a source of alarm for adults. Cleverly combining two little known and unrelated nursery rhymes, Sendak interprets them, with a great deal of social commentary, in the context of serious contemporary problems and issues that are introduced in newspaper headlines and articles. Although the illustrations are not necessarily frightening, they remind readers of horrific things in the real world: poverty, war, crime, pollution, famine, inflation, AIDS, unemployment, and so forth. A number of critics feel We Are All in the Dumps is not a picturebook for children. In a review for School Library Journal, Kay E. Vandergrift says that “adults may question presenting serious topics to children in this imaginative form,” but she points out that its subject matter is part of children’s experience: “Lucky children have seen homelessness, and worse, only on TV; the unlucky have lived it.” Categorizing We Are All in the Dumps as a picturebook for four years of age and up, the reviewer concludes: “In this beautiful, passionately concerned book, Sendak creates visual poetry, rich in symbolism, that goes to the heart of such matters better than any earnest description” (Vandergrift, 1993: 119). Jane Doonan rightly points out that “Dumps shares with certain other modern picture books a quality that was formerly the preserve of folk and fairy tales: an open address” (1994: 166). For decades, Sendak’s books have challenged established ideas about what children’s literature is and should be, in an attempt to revolutionize the picturebook genre by introducing dark, contentious themes.
From classic cautionary tales to challenging picturebooks
In addition to cautionary tales from the fairy-tale tradition, contemporary picturebook artists borrow from classic cautionary stories, in which cruel fates are purportedly offered for children’s edification. The most influential of these works is Heinrich Hoffman’s popular collection of moral tales, Der Struwwelpeter, a German classic that has often been criticized for its violence. The cruelty is, of course, mitigated by humour, as indicated by the original title, Lustige Geschichten und drollige Bilder mit 15 schön kolorierten Tafeln für Kinder von 3-6 Jahren (Funny stories and whimsical pictures with 15 beautifully coloured panels for children aged 3 to 6, [1845]). In these nightmarish stories with their implausible and absurd morals, a thumb-sucking boy has his thumbs cut off with giant scissors, a girl is burned to death playing with matches, and a child who refuses to eat his soup wastes away and dies. Another German classic in the same vein, published in 1865, is Wilhelm Busch’s Max und Moritz (English trans. Mac and Murray), in which the boys’ pranks end with them being ground to bits and devoured by a miller’s ducks, to no one’s regret. The Anglo-French author Hillaire Belloc parodies nineteenth-century cautionary tales in his humorous work Cautionary Tales for Children: Designed for the Admonition of Children between the Ages of Eight and Fourteen Years (1907), illustrated by Basil Temple Blackwood (B.T.B.) and later by Edward Gorey. The tongue-in-cheek poems recount the stories of “Jim, who ran away from his nurse, and was eaten by a lion,” “Matilda, who told lies and was burnt to death,” and “Henry King: Who chewed bits of string, and was early cut off in dreadful agonies.”
Images from both of the German works find their way into Chez elle ou chez elle and Poncelet attributes this influence to the German side of her Swiss culture. Poncelet is often accused of elitism and creating picturebooks for adults, but she insists that they are intended for children as much as adults. She feels that many children’s books continue to address children in the same manner they did at the beginning of the twentieth century, that is, “avoiding truly confronting them with existence” (2005: 60). The French publisher François Ruy-Vidal, who collaborated with the controversial American publisher Harlin Quist, had made the same accusation in the 1960s. Quist and Ruy-Vidal both wanted to abolish the taboos in children’s literature and break down the boundaries that separated it from adult literature. In 1972, they published an adaptation of Hoffman’s work, Pierre l’ébouriffé: Histoires pas très drôles, d’un passé toujours présent (Dishevelled Peter: Not Very Funny Stories of a Past Still Present), adapted by Ruy-Vidal and illustrated by Claude Lapointe. Unlike the majority of the Quist and Ruy-Vidal collaborations, Pierre l’ébouriffé did not appear in the United States. Although Quist’s daring books gleaned critical acclaim, their European look and controversial content prevented their commercial success in the United States and to this day they remain unique in American children’s publishing.
From fear to pleasure: picturebooks as an introduction to life
Assumptions about children’s limited ability to deal with certain topics have often restricted their literary experiences and deprived them of fictional opportunities to explore dark, disturbing, and painful subjects that nonetheless touch them personally and constitute part of their life experience. This is particularly true in the case of the picturebook genre (see Beckett, 2012). The Danish author Oscar K laments the attempt to keep “an often harsh reality out of children’s books” and wonders “for whose sake—children or adults?” (2008: 46). He and his wife Dorte Karrebæk, whose unconventional and provocative illustrations brought a new look to Danish children’s literature, contend that to take children seriously is to present them with raw and undiluted reality. As we have seen, there is a particular reluctance to portray those harsh realities in the picturebooks of the Anglo-American world. In his article “Creation of a Picture Book,” the English children’s author and illustrator Edward Ardizzone acknowledges that we tend to “shelter [the child] too much from the harder facts of life,” and expresses his belief that subjects like poverty and death, “if handled poetically, can surely all be introduced without hurt.” Books for children are, in his view, “an introduction to the life that lies ahead of them,” so he feels that picturebook artists are not “playing fair” if “no hint of the hard world comes into these books.” In support of his argument, Ardizzone points to fairy tales, like those of Andersen, and to nursery rhymes, which consist of “the very stuff of life itself” (1980: 293). Sendak attributes the appeal of the Grimms’ tales with young and old alike to the fact that they are about “the pure essence of life—incest, murder, insane mothers, love, sex”... (quoted in Lanes, 1980: 206). Many contemporary picturebook artists agree that it is their duty to tell young children some terrible truths even if this causes horror and distress.
Dark subjects can also cause immense pleasure, as a number of critics remind us. Maria Tatar states: “Children love fairy tales precisely because they speak the language of pain, suffering, loss, and torture with a candor they often do not encounter in real life.” She admits being “hooked by the terror” as a child, explaining: “And I read voraciously, in the same way that I was also mesmerized by the images of people suffering from terrible diseases in the pages of JAMA, the professional medical journal that piled up over the years in my parents’ bedroom” (quoted in Liberman, 2013). In No Go the Bogeyman (2000), Marina Warner has shown the pleasure both adults and children derive from the fantastic terrors used in tales, nursery rhymes, and cradle songs to allay real ones. A reviewer for V&A Magazine reported his ten-year-old child’s reaction to Rego’s collection of Nursery Rhymes: “‘Really, really scary Daddy... But in a good way.’” In her work, Rego focuses on the fears and obsessions of childhood, conscious that those fears remain with us as adults. Should these fears not be faced while we are still children? Rego describes the cathartic nature of frightening images in the following manner: “If you put frightening things into a picture, then they can’t harm you. In fact, you end becoming quite fond of them” (email from Sue Hopper on behalf of Paula Rego, 5 June 2014).
Some of the most celebrated picturebook artists, including Maurice Sendak, Tomi Ungerer, and Wolf Erlbruch, continue in the tradition of folk and fairy tales. Sendak was largely responsible for reintroducing subjects from the dark, disturbing side of childhood into picturebooks with Where the Wild Things Are, published in 1963. Since the 1960s, picturebooks have made great strides in freeing themselves from the rigid moral codes and taboos that long governed children’s literature. They now deal with a wide range of topics that are often quite contentious and very far from the standard fare of children’s books. However, the fact remains that we are still discussing “controversial” picturebooks. “The gulf between childhood and adulthood” that was demonstrated by the very different response of adult and child readers to Where the Wild Things Are, according to its author, still seems to exist more than fifty years later. Sendak describes the dual response to the picturebook in the following words: “Adults find the book fearful; however, they misinterpret childhood. Children find the book silly, fun to read, and fun to look at” (1995: 142–143). Of course, not all the picturebooks examined here will be “silly” and “fun” for young readers. And they will probably all be more frightening or alarming for adults than Where the Wild Things Are. In his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” J.R.R. Tolkien, contends that fairy stories provide moral or emotional consolation through their happy ending, which he terms a “eucatastrophe” (1964: 68). Perhaps it is the absence of this “eucatastrophe” in many contemporary picturebooks inspired by traditional tales that accounts, at least in part, for their controversial status. Künnemann describes the horrifying events in L’Ogresse en pleurs as “an existential catastrophe” and “a drama of cosmic proportions” (2005: 17, 16). However, does that mean that children cannot comprehend and appreciate the appalling and tragic events? As Sendak maintains, picturebook artists understand that “children know a lot more than people give them credit for” and “are willing to deal with many dubious subjects that grownups think they shouldn’t know about” (Sendak, 1988: 192). In an article devoted to “inappropriate picturebooks for young readers,” Carole Scott points out quite rightly that “their authors must view their texts as appropriate, providing an introduction to our world rather than constructing a cocoon for children to shelter from it... as artists, they shy away from presenting ‘inappropriate’ works that are not truthful to the reality they perceive” (2005: 12).
Like Oscar K, Sendak insists that the “anxiety” over such books comes not from children, but “from adults who feel that the book has to conform to some set ritual of ideas about childhood” (1988: 193) Adult mediators who try to keep controversial picturebooks out of the hands of young readers feel that they are protecting children. Sendak, on the other hand, sees children’s authors and illustrators as the only ones who attempt to “protect [children] from life.” “All we’re trying to do in a serious work is to tell them about life,” he claims (Sendak, 1988: 193). Acknowledging that We Are All in the Dumps is a “potent, evocative book,” Vandergrift contends that Sendak “respects children’s ability to deal with powerful and potentially controversial issues and ideas.” Such controversial picturebooks engender “discussion, speculation, and a variety of interpretations” (Vandergrift, 1993: 119), and therefore offer adults an opportunity to broach very difficult subjects with children. Scott insists on the role of the adult mediator and “the filter of adult interpretation” in children’s reception of works that “may seem shocking or inappropriate for young children” (2005: 12). Picturebook artists who understand the importance of exploring the nightmare side of child experience also recognize the importance of presenting potentially disturbing images and ideas in a manner that is appropriate for their young readers.
Maybe we don’t need to be fearful after all!
Academic references
Ardizzone, E. (1980) Creation of a Picture Book, in Egoff, S, Stubbs, G.T. & Ashley, L.F. (eds) Only Connect: Readings on Children’s Literature, 2nd edn. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 289–298.
Beckett, S. (2002) Recycling Red Riding Hood. London: Routledge.
Beckett, S. (2008) Red Riding Hood for All Ages: A Fairy-Tale Icon in Cross-Cultural Contexts. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
Beckett, S. (2012) Crossover Picturebooks: A Genre for All Ages. London: Routledge.
Beckett, S. (2014) Revisioning Red Riding Hood around the World: An Anthology of International Retellings. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
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Bettelheim, B. (1975) The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Random House.
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Garrett, J. (1993) “With Murderous Ending, Shocking, Menacing...”: Sarah Moon’s Little Red Riding Hood 10 Years After, Bookbird, 31(3): 8–9.
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K, O. [O. Dalgaard] (2008) It’s Not the Fact That It Is Said—In Fact It’s Just the Way You Say It, Danish Literary Magazine, (Autumn): 46–48.
Künnemann, H. (2005) How Much Cruelty Can a Children’s Picturebook Stand? The Case of Wolf Erlbruch’s Die Menschenfresserin, Bookbird, 43(1): 14–19.
Lanes, S. (1980) The Art of Maurice Sendak. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
Liberman, S. (2013) Banned Books Week: The Complete Grimms’ Fairy Tales, New York Public Library, 27 September. www.nypl.org/blog/2013/09/27/banned-books-week-grimms-fairy-tales (accessed 24 April 2014).
Pfeuffer, C. (2013) 10 Controversial Kids’ Books, MSN Living, 2 April. http://living.msn.com/family-parenting/the-family-room-blog-post?post=65efcc07-75a5-468b-9532-47806b8be4b1 (accessed 5 April 2014).
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Sendak, M. (1988) Caldecott and Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Sendak, M. (1995) Maurice Sendak, in Hopkins, L.B. (ed.) Pauses: Autobiographical Reflections of 101 Creators of Children’s Books. New York: HarperCollins, pp. 142–143.
Tatar, M. (2003) The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, 2nd edn. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Warner, M. (2000) No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock. London: Vintage.
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Children’s literature
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Belloc, H., illus. Temple Blackwood, B. (1907) Cautionary Tales for Children: Designed for the Admonition of Children between the Ages of Eight and Fourteen years. London: Eveleigh Nash.
Bruel, C., illus. Wachs, P. (1986) Vous oubliez votre cheval. Paris: Le Sourire qui mord.
Busch, W. (1990) Max und Moritz: eine Bubengeschichte in sieben streichen. Bindlach: Loewe Verlag.
Carrer, C. (2007) Barbablù. Rome: Editore Donzelli.
Clément, C., illus. Forestier, I. (2000) Un petit chaperon rouge. Paris: Grasset & Fasquelle.
Dayre, V., illus. Erlbruch, W. (1996) L’ogresse en pleurs. Toulouse: Milan.
Ekman, F. (1985) Rødhatten og Ulven. Oslo: Cappelen.
Grimm, W. & J., Segal, L. & Sendak, M. (1973) The Juniper Tree and Other Tales from Grimm, 2 vols. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux.
Grimm, W. & J. (1980) Kinder- und Hausmärchen Band 1, Märchen no 1-86. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam.
Grimm, W. & J., illus. Hyman T.S. (1983) Little Red Riding Hood. New York: Holiday House.
Grimm, W. & J., illus. Dumas, O. (2001) El señor Korbes y otros cuentos de Grimm. Valencia: Media Vaca.
Grimm, W. & J., illus. Janssen, S. (2001) Rotkäppchen. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag.
Hoffman, H. (1845) Lustige Geschichten und drollige Bilder. Frankfurt am Main: Literarische Anstalt (J. Rütten).
Hoffman, H., adap. Ruy-Vidal, F., illus. Lapointe, C. (1972) Pierre l’ébouriffé: Histoires pas très drôles, d’un passé toujours présent. Boissy-St-Léger: F. Ruy-Vidal and Harlin Quist.
Hofman, W. (1998) Zwart als inkt is het verhaal van Sneeuwwitje en de zeven dwergen. Amsterdam: Querido.
Holzwarth, W., illus. Erlbruch, W. (1989) Vom kleinen Maulwurf, der wissen wollte, wer ihm auf den Kopf gemacht hat. Wuppertal: Peter Hammer Verlag.
Ikhlef, A., illus. Gauthier, A. (1998) Mon Chaperon Rouge. Paris: Seuil Jeunesse.
Ikhlef, A., illus. Gauthier, A. (2002) Ma Peau d’Âne. Paris: Seuil Jeunesse.
Innocenti, R. (1985) Rose Blanche. Story and illus. Innocenti, R., text Innocenti, R. & Gallaz, C., trans. Creative Education. Mankato, MN: Creative Education.
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Joiret, P., illus. Bruyère, X. (1991) Mina je t’aime. Paris: L’École des loisirs.
Juan, A. (2001) Snowhite. Onil: Edicions de Ponent.
Perrault, C. (1697) Histoires ou contes du temps passé avec moralités. Paris: Claude Barbin.
Perrault, C., illus. Doré, G. (1861) Les Contes de Perrault. Paris: Pierre-Jules Hetzel.
Perrault, C. illus. Moon, S. (1983) Little Red Riding Hood. Mankato, MN: Creative Education.
Perrault, C., illus. Claverie, J. (1991) La Barbe Bleue. Paris: Albin Michel.
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Perrault, C., illus. Delacroix, S. (2000) La Barbe Bleue. Tournai: Casterman.
Pommaux, Y. (1993) John Chatterton détective. Paris: L’École des loisirs.
Poncelet, B. (1997) Chez elle ou chez elle. Paris: Seuil Jeunesse.
Poncelet, B. (2003) Les Cubes. Paris: Seuil Jeunesse.
Rego, P. (2010) Nursery Rhymes. London: Thames & Hudson.
Sendak, M. (1963) Where the Wild Things Are. New York: Harper & Row.
Sendak, M. (1993) We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy. New York: HarperCollins.
Van de Vendel, E., illus. Vandenabeele, I. (2003) Rood Rood Roodkapje. Wielsbeke: Uitgeverij De Eenhoorn.
