osprey_archer | Caldecott Monday: Mei Li

I was a bit worried about Thomas Handforth's Mei Li, in the way that anyone might be worried about a book set in China written and illustrated by a white guy in 1939... But actually I was pleasantly surprised. Which is not to say that it is a shining racism-free beacon, you would want to ask someone who knows more about China than I do about that, but there's nothing obviously awful.

China was apparently a hot topic for American children's books in the 1920s and 30s. Not only were two Newbery Medal winners in that time set in China (Shen of the Sea and Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze), but I inherited from my maternal grandparents a book from 1927 called Coat Tales from the Pockets of a Happy Giant (which is about a giant who keeps stories in his pockets; I thought this was totally enchanting when I was a child), at least one of which is about China.

I'm not sure if I'm going anywhere with this; I'm not sure what it means, if it means anything, I'm not sure that fads always do. But it's an interesting fact.

In any case, the illustrations in Mei Li are quite lovely. These are clearly pictures that were drawn with the fact that they would be printed in black and white in mind, and they work beautifully: broad swooping black lines and little stippled details.