Caldecott Monday: Grandfather's Journey
Sep. 11th, 2017 02:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerAllen Say's Grandfather's Journey, which won the Caldecott Medal in 1994, was probably not written expressively for the purpose of repudiating the 1941 winner, Robert Lawson's They Were Strong and Good - but as they are both Caldecott medalists, it does sort of work that way.
They are the same kind of book, both windows onto American history through the medium of the author's own family history - but these windows offer very different views. In They Were Strong and Good diversity needs to be quelled, tamed, by white supremacy, whereas in Grandfather's Journey it's something to be greeted, even welcomed. In his journey, Say's grandfather "shook hands with black men and white men, with yellow men and red men."
And of course Say's grandfather was himself a Japanese man who immigrated to America, which is in itself a celebration of diversity - to present this is a quintessentially American story, the immigrant who comes to this nation and goes on a cross-country trip and marvels at the marvelous weathered rock formations, the amber waves of grain, the towering mountains and mighty factories and gorgeous trains.
Edna Ferber actually has a similar passage in Great Son, where a German Jewish refugee marvels at the natural beauty and industrial strength of America. Say is drawing on a tradition: the immigrant who becomes an American by falling in love with the country.
(And, because Say's family returned to Japan before World War II, the Japanese internment camps never come up. Say grows up hearing stories about beautiful California, and the family is about to visit, but then "a war began. Bombs fell from the sky and scattered our lives like leaves in a storm." So it is not until the postwar years that he goes to California, and "came to love the land my grandfather had loved.")
The text is poetic, as I think the above excerpts illustrate - gentle, thoughtful - and the illustrations share in that gentleness and tranquility. Many of them are composed like studio portraits, the subject looking straight at the camera/viewer, which sounds like it ought to be boring or static but instead is just - peaceful.
They are the same kind of book, both windows onto American history through the medium of the author's own family history - but these windows offer very different views. In They Were Strong and Good diversity needs to be quelled, tamed, by white supremacy, whereas in Grandfather's Journey it's something to be greeted, even welcomed. In his journey, Say's grandfather "shook hands with black men and white men, with yellow men and red men."
And of course Say's grandfather was himself a Japanese man who immigrated to America, which is in itself a celebration of diversity - to present this is a quintessentially American story, the immigrant who comes to this nation and goes on a cross-country trip and marvels at the marvelous weathered rock formations, the amber waves of grain, the towering mountains and mighty factories and gorgeous trains.
Edna Ferber actually has a similar passage in Great Son, where a German Jewish refugee marvels at the natural beauty and industrial strength of America. Say is drawing on a tradition: the immigrant who becomes an American by falling in love with the country.
(And, because Say's family returned to Japan before World War II, the Japanese internment camps never come up. Say grows up hearing stories about beautiful California, and the family is about to visit, but then "a war began. Bombs fell from the sky and scattered our lives like leaves in a storm." So it is not until the postwar years that he goes to California, and "came to love the land my grandfather had loved.")
The text is poetic, as I think the above excerpts illustrate - gentle, thoughtful - and the illustrations share in that gentleness and tranquility. Many of them are composed like studio portraits, the subject looking straight at the camera/viewer, which sounds like it ought to be boring or static but instead is just - peaceful.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-11 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-11 09:48 pm (UTC)But it's kind of funny that we both went to "artist X without the weirdness."
no subject
Date: 2017-09-12 08:06 am (UTC):-)