Czeslaw Milosz is one of the most honored and revered poets of the 20th century. A recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN Award for translation, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, among many honors, Milosz is known for his tragic and ironic poetry that affirms and celebrates the value of human life. During WWII, he wrote for several underground publications in Poland, and after the war, he came to the United States to work as a diplomat of the Polish government. Milosz later settled in California and became a professor of slavic languages and literature at the University of California at Berkeley. In addition to writing his own poetry, Milosz is well-known as a translator of works by Polish writers into English.

Today marks the centenary of Milosz's birth, and the Free Library is proud to celebrate his legacy with a special program tonight at Parkway Central. Join FLP librarian Mark Klus, a student and friend of Czeslaw Milosz, for an evening honoring Milosz's life and work from 6:30 - 8:00 p.m. in Room 108 of Parkway Central. For more information about the program, please call 215-685-7433.

Scarcely a day goes by in the Rare Book Department without a visitor asking about our Beatrix Potter Collection. It's not surprising since we have the largest collection of her works--imprints, manuscripts, letters and original illustrations--this side of the Atlantic Ocean. We're happy to report that at long last - IT'S ON! "The Charming Little Bunny: Collecting Beatrix Potter at the Free Library of Philadelphia" opens today in the Rare Book Department and runs through October 14th.

The items displayed demonstrate the undeniable allure of Potter's work. The exhibition also highlights the donors who in some instances spent a lifetime accumulating the books, handwritten documents and works of art of this beloved author and illustrator, and ultimately decided that the Free Library was where these treasured items belonged. Personal letters to friends provide insight into Potter's own thoughts on collecting.

The collection began with Mrs. William M. Elkins's gift of the original manuscript and watercolors for The Tailor of Gloucester, which she presented to the Free Library in 1951. In 1967 three large gifts of Beatrix Potter material were made to the Free Library: H. Bacon Collamore presented his collection of first editions and over one hundred original sketches and watercolors; a collection of letters to Mrs. James De Wolf Perry spanning the years 1928 to 1943 was given by Mrs. Perry's niece, Mrs. Richard Stevens; and Mrs. Charles Cridland, the daughter of Potter's American publisher Alexander McKay, gave the library a selection of letters, a copy of The Fairy Caravan annotated for the McKay children, and the autographed manuscript and 24 additional illustrations used in the American edition of The Tale of Little Pig Robinson.

The exhibition will be a focal point of a conference of the American members of the Beatrix Potter Society, "Preserving Beatrix Potter’s Legacy: Collectors and Collections," to take place at the Free Library and the Rosenbach Museum September 16-18. Registration is required--for more information see the schedule of events. The Rare Book Department will be hosting special Saturday hours for exhibition viewing on July 16th, from 1:00 - 5:00 p.m.

Carolyn Haywood created a comfortable, reassuring world for young children, where the greatest dilemma any character faces is the sudden disappearance of a coveted tea set from the toy store window. Haywood herself was a Philadelphia native, but the children in her stories live in small town America. They are free to play in the streets and roam the town on their own. For a modern adult reader, this can be rather anxiety-inducing – what terrible fate will befall these unsupervised kids? But in Haywood’s books, the world is a safe place. So safe, in fact, that it can be hard to imagine these books holding the interest of today’s children, who are used to a multi-media environment and who may be completely unfamiliar with the joys of catching frogs in the local creek.

Haywood was prolific, publishing over fifty books between 1939 and 1987. Her popular Betsy and Eddie series were first chapter books aimed at 8 and 9 year-olds. The characters are straight out of the old nursery rhyme, “What Are Little Boys Made Of?” The boys chase frogs and have benign adventures. The girls are more sugar than spice, sometimes to the point of inducing cavities. The world Haywood imagined for her characters can feel as two-dimensional as her black and white illustrations. Most of the children want only to play with their toy fire engines and dolls, and they all have pets with silly names. Billy’s dog is named Miss Mopsie-Upsie Tail. The Cupcake in “C” is for Cupcake is Christie’s class rabbit. The book’s chapter titles inform us that “C” is also for cake, Christmas cookies, candy canes, cinnamon buns. Such unrelenting sweetness may be soothing to young readers, but it often seems unrealistic.

Carolyn Haywood did not lead a boring life. She travelled through Europe and worked with famous artists, like Violet Oakley. She was active in her church and in the local library community and had a wide range of acquaintances. And yet her books do not reflect her worldliness. Perhaps because she had no children of her own, but based her stories on neighborhood children, she idealized them; or perhaps she was willfully naïve. Her books spoke to a particular generation, and although Haywood later tried to update the stories for newer audiences, they remain a record of a more innocent (and sometimes somewhat dull) place.

Or so we assumed, until we started cataloguing the unpublished manuscripts in her papers, which were donated to the Children’s Literature Research Collection at the Free Library. What we found there may surprise you! Tune in next week for more shocking revelations!

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-Lindsay Friedman
 

Tags: CLIR Grant, Children's Literature Research Collection, archives