145. Unlikely Children’s Authors

AMY: Hi, everyone! Welcome to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I’m Amy Helmes, here with my co-host Kim Askew. And Kim, with a four-year-old at home, you are probably pretty knee deep in children’s books over at your house.

KIM: Um. her bookshelf looks like my nightstand, and you know what that means.

AMY: Oh yeah.

KIM: It’s a disaster.

AMY: She is your daughter.

KIM: She is. Yep, yep, yep.

AMY: Are there any favorites in her rotation?

KIM: There's one called me and Mama that we really love. the author is named Cosby something or other. She's amazing. It's really wonderful. Um, we love all the Margaret Wise Brown books. I just ordered a few more in fact, cause I'm afraid she's gonna get too old for them. So I wanna get them all now while she's young enough to still enjoy them. But we love like Fur Family and Goodnight Moon and Good Day, Good Night. I mean, basically anything she does is magic. 

AMY: Yeah. I know, I feel really lucky because my kids are older now (11 and almost 14)

KIM: I can’t believe it.

AMY: I feel lucky that I’ve been able to read to my kids for as long as I have. Jack the younger one, he still likes me to read to him at night.  just started the Westing game by Ellen Raskin  it won the Newberry medal. I had never read it before. Um,

KIM: When’s it from?

AMY: What’s that?

KIM: When’s it from? Like when was it published? Is it an old book?

AMY: Oh, yeah, it’s old. I remember the title from when I was a kid.

KIM: I feel like I’ve heard of it.

AMY: It's kind of almost like an escape room kind of mystery. You have to solve who murdered somebody. But anyway, so like, it's fun because we're actually getting to read more “novel” novels, you know? 

KIM: It doesn’t have to have pictures.

AMY: Yeah. So we did, S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, which was great. And The Lord of the Flies (which is dark. I wasn’t sure it that was going to be okay for him, but he seemed into it.) We did Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. 

KIM: How fun.

AMY: What’s funny is that Julia acts like she’s too cool to be read to, but she sometimes sneaks into Jack’s bedroom and listen while I’m reading. I try not to acknowledge her because she will scamper away. the second you make eye contact. And then also our dog, Sunny, she'll be like fully passed out in her crate at night and then I'll say, “Sunny, you wanna go read with us?” And she gets all excited and she comes downstairs and she likes to be read to.

KIM: It’s a family affair.

AMY: And that reminds me, did i ever tell you my Harry Potter and the chickens story?

KIM: I don’t think so. I think I would remember that if you had told me. What happened?

AMY: Yeah. Speaking of animals, Enjoying or not enjoying in this case, getting read to. we had stayed on vacation at a farm in Texas a few years ago, and it was when we were reading, Harry Potter and I was reading it aloud to the kids  so we had all these chickens right outside our door, and in the morning you'd go get eggs from the chicken coop and everything. And there were roosters and stuff and so we'd sit outside and I'd read Harry Potter and this one rooster just kept interrupting  it would be in the early evening or whatever. It wasn't the morning like it was as if he was getting like super annoyed that I was reading and he just kept crowing.

KIM: The more you read, the louder he crowed.

AMY: Yeah, he wasn’t a J.K. Rowling fan.

KIM: Clearly. 

AMY: But yeah, so you know, also that I have been volunteering at the library at Jack's school. Right?

KIM: I love that, yes. That is so cool.

AMY: I went from being the art mom, which was a frustrating experience….

KIM: This is more your speed…

AMY: Yeah. It's much more my speed. It took me back to my high school years working at the public library. But anyway, at Jack’s school I mostly reshelve books, and of course I can’t help but browse. Which brings us to the topic of today’s episode. A few months ago I was glancing at the shelves and I saw Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang, which was a movie that I LOVED. I can still sing the theme song, do you want to hear it?

KIM: Yes.

[Amy sings…. Kim interrupts with a rooster crow.]

AMY: Okay. All right. Yeah, was going on a little too long, but needless to say, I love the movie. the songs are all so good from that movie. But anyway,  I definitely did not know that Ian Fleming of James Bond fame was the author.

KIM: Yeah, that’s crazy. I did not know that either. The one where the car flies, right?

AMY: Yeah, yeah. Dick Van Dyke.

KIM: That’s crazy. Oh my gosh.

AMY: So I'm standing there, I'm like, wait, Ian Fleming. And I even said to the school librarian,  did you know this? And she's like, yeah, it's pretty wild. Right. 

KIM: So according to Wikipedia, Fleming wrote the book for his son Caspar. It was published in three volumes (wow, who knew?) the first of which came out in 1964. And here’s more intel that will blow your mind: Roald Dahl helped write the 1968 film adaptation. (And the guy who produced the James Bond films also produced Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang.) You would just never put those things together.

AMY: No. But when you think about how weird that movie is, it does sort of track. I mean the Roald Dahl addition sort of starts to makes sense. But yeah, I would never in my head have thought the guy who wrote James Bond would be the same guy who wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

KIM: No, that is very strange. Side note, listeners, Ian Fleming was a former lover of Rosamond Lehmann, once of our previous Lost Ladies. She wrote the book that I really love, Dusty Answer. You can go back and listen to that episode. But apparently the affair ended by Fleming flinging a live squid at her. So it just got weirder, listeners.

AMY: Yeah, According to the woman who wrote the biography of Rosamond Lehmann, Selina Hastings, she was pissed that he mistakenly double-booked both her AND his wife at their vacation house in Jamaica (which how stupid can you get?) 

KIM: Uh, okay, there’s some problems going on if you can get that mixed up.

AMY: Lehmann recalled that Fleming’s wife was “unbelievably rude to me.” It’s like, “Well, you ARE his mistress.”

KIM: Yeah, what do you expect?

AMY: But to think tossing a squid at someone is going to smooth everything over? 

KIM: I know, if it lands in your face or your hair, it’s like, never forgiven! Anyway, i think we’re getting off on one of our famous tangents that we like to go on..

AMY: We’ll get back to this subject. This whole Ian-Fleming-wrote-Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang blow-my-mind fact actually got me wondering what other unlikely connections I could find between children’s books and authors you wouldn’t necessarily think of as writing kids’ books. I was trying to come up with other examples like this and I couldn’t think of any per se, but then I found a Mental Floss article by Lucas Reilly which highlighted a few more examples, so I thought I’d share a few.

KIM: I can’t wait to hear them. I wonder if I’ll know any.

AMY: Yeah, we’ll see. Okay, the first is Upton Sinclair. I wouldn’t have pegged the muckraking author who exposed all the horrors of the Chicago meat-packing industry in The Jungle as a guy who could turn on a dime and write a kids’ book, but the book was called called The Gnomobile: A Gnice Gnew Gnarrative with Gnonsense but Gnothing Gnaughty. (All n-sounding words spelled with a “Gn” to match Gnome, by the way.

KIM: Oh, of course. Naturally, yeah. As one would do.

AMY: Yeah, that book came out in 1936 and the Gnomemobile (if you google the cover of this book) is giving me some major Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang vibes! (It was made into a Disney movie in 1967 with the same adorable kids who were in Mary Poppins. Who knew? This is blowing my mind.) Okay, here’s the plot: “an amusing tale of two gnomes Glogo and Bobo, who travel to America in the company of two human friends in their custom gnomobile.” So apparently the book has an ecological message because the gnomes don’t trust the “big people” who are cutting down their forest home. 

KIM: Ooh, that’s 1936. That’s pretty good. That’s before The Lorax.

AMY: Yeah, it was an anti-pollution, anit-industrialization tale.  Last I checked, it was on Kindle for .99 I might need to read this one to Jack just for kicks. I’m curious.

KIM: Oh, yeah, and I need you to report back. 

AMY: Yes, I will report back in our Facebook forum where we give all our extra little info,so everybody needs to come over and find us 

There. And We'll be We'll be talking about the Gnomemobile and I'll put up a picture of the cover. Okay. So moving on to our next unlikely children's author, James Joyce. Were you aware that he wrote any kids books?

KIM: Nope, I am not aware of this.

AMY: He wrote a few stories for his grandson, Stephen, in 1936, which were later published posthumously. One is The Cat and the Devil. A mayor asks the devil to build a bridge for the town, and the devil agrees under the condition that he gets to own the soul of the first person to cross the bridge. When the bridge is complete, the mayor outsmarts the devil by tossing a cat across the bridge. So then the devil has a pet cat. And then he wrote another cat book, The Cats of Copenhagen. I saw the words “strange” and “subversive” used in one review of it.

KIM: Sounds about right. It’s also making me think of T.S. Eliot’s book about cats. What was the title of that one? 

AMY: Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats is the one that T.S. Eliot wrote.

KIM: Okay. So listeners, go listen to our mini episode on cats if you haven't yet. We have some opinions on the musical Cats. That's episode number 64, so if you love cats, I think Amy does sing in that episode too, so if you, if you like cats and Amy singing, go listen to that episode. What other unlikely children's authors did you find in this Mental Floss article?

AMY: Aldous Huxley.

KIM: Okay, another one you wouldn't expect. Let's hear about it.

AMY: Okay. So he is, you know, Allice Huxley of Brave New World Dystopian Fame. He wrote this book for his niece called The Crows of Pear Blossom.

KIM: Ooh, I like the title.

AMY: All right, well, hold, hold on. I'm not sure once you hear the gist of the story. Um, like Joyce's books, this one was published posthumously.

It's about Mr. And Mrs. Crow who are dismayed that their neighbor, Mr. Snake, always steals and eats their eggs. So they decide to leave him some fake eggs in their nest. He eats them. He suffers an excruciating stomach ache, so painful that he actually twists himself around the tree branches until he's tied up in knots and then I think he dies.

KIM: Okay, so uplifting, 

AMY: It made me think of that Instagram account. “Sad beige clothing for sad beige children.” Do you know that?

KIM: Yes, totally. Oh, that's hilarious. 

AMY: And actually this, um, all this Huxley Children's book has, um, a beige cover, so it's perfect. Maybe we should, send this to her as an inspiration.

Okay. I got one more. You gotta end with Ernest Hemingway, right?

KIM: Oh, he's gotta be in there. When you mentioned these other names, 

it's, it kind of makes sense even though I never would've guessed that.

AMY: Yeah, but only he could find a way to turn his fascination with blood sports like hunting and bullfighting into charming tales for children.

KIM: Of course he did. Was it for a relative as well? Do I even want to know? 

AMY: Not quite. It was for the son of a “lady friend” of his in Italy. She had challenged him to create stories for her young son (or nephew, not sure). These fables eventually appeared in a 1951 issue of Holiday Magazine. The first story is called The Good Lion, which is about a winged, pasta-eating lion from Venice who hangs out at Harry’s Bar. When he takes a trip to Africa, the other lions tease him for being different. This is appropriate, right? So Hemingway writes that he simply flies away from the bullies instead of engaging with them. “Adios,” he said, for he spoke beautiful Spanish, being a lion of culture.”

KIM: That’s kinda cute. I like that.

AMY: Yes, so this lion would drink Negronis or Americanos instead of “the blood of Hindu traitors” like the other lions. (Hemingway’s words, not mine!) They end up calling this poor lion a “Son of a Griffin” instead of “son of a bitch.” Of course by the end of the story the good lion is back at Harry’s Bar in Venice and he ends up actually hankering for the blood of Hindu traitors.  (Travel has changed him). He asks the bartender at Harry’s if they have it in stock. So I think it’s pretty classic; I love it. His other story is titled The Faithful Bull and it’s actually a parody of The Story of Ferdinand, if you know that children’s book. Hemingway starts it off saying, “One time there was a bull and his name was not Ferdinand and he cared nothing for flowers. He loved to fight and he fought with all the other bulls of his own age, or any age, and he was a champion.”

KIM: This sounds like Hemingway.

AMY: Yeah, yeah. This bull in Hemingway’s tale ends up dying nobly (in Papa’s eyes, anyway) killed by a matador in a bullfighting match.

KIM: Okay, well, a little violent. But so are fairy tales.

AMY: Maybe not ready for Cleo. Not “primetime ready,” not “bedtime ready.” I feel like these two are “children’s stories” in quotes. Holiday Magazine wasn’t a children’s magazine and The Faithful Bull is kind of his “eff you,” to the author of The Story of Ferdinand, which was published right after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and was seen by some as a political allegory promoting pacifism.

KIM: Yeah, yeah, right, okay that makes sense. That absolutely makes sense why he would parody that and have some fun with that.

AMY: Listeners, the Mental Floss article I referenced in this episode features 8 other authors who you might not anticipate would have written for kids. We’ll link to it in our show notes so you can find out whom some of the others were.

KIM: I think Cleo might be traumatized by some of these books we talked about today, so I might just stick with some other time-worn classics for now, but maybe I’ll go read them for myself.

AMY: So that’s all for today’s episode. Thanks for supporting us, and consider doing so more publicly by recommending us to a friend or leaving us a five-star review wherever you listen.

KIM: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.