From Mayzie to Mrs. Mallard, our official children’s tales are telling

Last December, a sundered Massachusetts was united by a compromise worthy of the greatest statesmen. Robert McCloskey’s classic children’s book about how the Mallard family settled in the Public Gardens, Make Way for Ducklings, had been the odds-on favorite to become the “Official Children’s Book of the Commonwealth,” even though Ducklings is a book about, let’s face it, Boston, written and illustrated by a man from, let’s face it, Maine. But then western Massachusetts (“We are here! We are here!”) put forward its own candidate, Dr. Seuss, a Springfield boy (who grew up as Ted Geisel) whose first children’s book, And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, is about a real street in the state’s third-largest city and whose fanciful landscapes clearly inspired several Big Dig detours.

The issue had been joined since May 2001, when Rep. William Galvin of Canton and Sen. Brian Joyce of Milton, acting on behalf of a group of schoolchildren, petitioned the Great and General Court to grant Make Way for Ducklings official status–actually, the initial bill would have proclaimed Ducklings the Official Book, not children’s book, making it the state’s book for all ages–only to be met by a pro-Seuss counterpropo-sal from a different group of schoolkids. Roughly 18 months later, a compromise bill emerged from committee naming the McCloskey classic as the Commonwealth’s “Official Children’s Book” and declaring the late Dr. Seuss Massachusetts’s “Official Children’s Author and Children’s Illustrator.” (Unable to choose one over the other, these legislative Solomons picked both; no wonder the state budget’s in trouble.) The measure, which also designated the Boston Cream as the state’s official doughnut, was enacted and signed into law on January 1 by Acting Gov. Jane Swift, mother of three, in one of her last official acts.

So both ends of the state ended up satisfied and a couple of classes of schoolchildren learned a valuable civics lesson (“How a Bill Becomes a Law After a Whole Lot of Talking and Delays and Interruptions and Petty Politics and Recesses and Vacations”). But what does it mean to anoint as the state’s official bedtime stories the work of these two very different authors? Could it be that lawmakers, wittingly or not, are foisting on our young an agenda that’s various but nefarious? Are they reading between the seemingly innocent lines of Geisel and McCloskey and engaging in a little social engineering?

If so, they have capitalized on regional constituencies going against type. Traditionally, western Massachusetts has been more conservative than the eastern part of the state. Yet it is their boy, Seuss, who is the social subversive of the nominees. In The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, Seuss creates an allegorical socio-political landscape that mocks the status quo:

Far off in the fields, on the edge of a cranberry bog, stood the hut of the Cubbins family. From the small door, Bartholomew looked across the huts of the farmers, to the houses of the townsfolk, then to the rich men’s mansions and the noblemen’s castles, up to the great towering palace of the King. It was exactly the same view that King Derwin saw from his balcony, but Bartholomew saw it backward.

It was a mighty view, but it made Bartholomew Cubbins feel mighty small.

Many Massachusetts citizens might feel the same way gazing toward Beacon Hill. But in 500 Hats there is an even more revolutionary scheme at play. When Bartholomew goes to the city and takes off his hat as the King passes by, the lad finds that another, slightly more elegant, hat grows in its place. The same thing happens whenever he removes his headgear, each new hat becoming more elaborate. Bartholomew is innocent of any wrongdoing, yet he is set upon by a thuggish “Captain of the King’s Own Guard” and is saved from execution by a rule that only the bare-headed may be beheaded. But in the end, it’s the King’s greed and vanity–he simply must have the last and most opulent hat –that saves Bartholomew. The State, in the person of the King, has profited from the innocent child’s inability to conform to its draconian laws. Shame!

The King’s Own Guard has a kindlier face in liberal Boston’s entry in the children’s-lit sweepstakes: Ducklings‘ Officer Michael. In McCloskey’s perfect world, Michael spends his days in a little kiosk apparently guarding the Charles River, only raising his voice once, to alert several other policemen (interrupting checker games, whistling-while-twirling-nightstick practice, and soda buying for small contrite runaways) to help a family of ducks cross the street. You see, schoolchildren of the Commonwealth? Authority is our friend!

The regional contradiction is just the start of the mixed messages sent by the state’s official storytellers. When their fishing in the Public Garden comes to naught, McCloskey’s ducks have no qualms about feasting on handouts of peanuts from public employees when not shamelessly panhandling from tourists on the Swan Boats. By contrast, what are we to make of Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose, Seuss’s anti-charity screed? Cheerful Thidwick, naïve do-gooder that he is, offers a lift on his antlers to a small Bingle Bug.

There’s room here to spare, and I’m happy to share!
Be my guest and I hope that you’re comfortable there!

Poor Thidwick, whose head bows further down as each successive freeloader climbs aboard, is welfare taken advantage of. After the moose nearly perishes from serial generosity, he finds he must abandon the antlers of obligation to preserve his own infrastructure. The political overtones ring loud, if not clear.

And what lessons do these official books teach about single mothers? Abandoned by her spouse on the pretext of “a trip to see what the rest of the river was like, further on,” Mrs. Mallard, no longer on the city dole, needs no help whatsoever in providing food and transportation for her children, even home-schooling them.

Then there is Seuss’s Mayzie the Lazy Bird. In Horton Hatches the Egg, it is Mayzie who abandons her child– because she’s “tired” and “bored” and has kinks in her leg. Mayzie, like Mrs. Mallard, seems to have no support system in place, but unlike Mrs. Mallard, she shirks her responsibilities (“Work! How I hate it! I’d much rather play!”). Mayzie recruits a passing elephant to provide foster care, then she’s off! While our admiration for Horton the elephant grows, our contempt for Mayzie’s irresponsibility changes to pity when she ruefully sees that her own child has become estranged from her.

As a discouragement to working mothers, we have, in The Cat in the Hat, terrors endured by children abandoned by Mom to the care of a fish. What’s wrong with these women? Elephants! Fish! Why can’t they stay home where they belong? Mrs. Mallard seems perfectly contented, and she has eight kids!

Aside from such coded messages about authority, welfare, and parenting, what other politically charged lessons are buried in the Commonwealth’s official children’s books? Seuss’s Thidwick could be anticipating the influx of Democratic National Convention delegates–whether with resignation, enthusiasm, or sarcasm it’s hard to know–when he says:

A host has to put up with all kinds of pests
For a host, above all, must be nice to his guests

And what does it portend for our favorite-son 2004 presidential candidate when the conservative Mallards reject Louisburg Square for their home? “Because there was no water to swim in”–what kind of an excuse is that for rejecting Massachusetts’s junior senator as a neighbor? Is there a message here?

Like State House reporters, our children must learn to glean meaning from obscure signals. Do the state’s invisible citizens have a voice, if only our leaders would listen (Horton Hears a Who)? Or, like the Mallards, must the homeless be cut off from public assistance and left to fend for themselves? And is Harvard a treasure or a menace? Thidwick, after all, is pursued and nearly shot by men who want his head for the Harvard Club wall.

Even more frightening bogeymen may be lurking in the shadows. On page seven of Make Way for Ducklings, behind the happily snacking ducks, the unmistakable likeness of Richard Nixon glides silently by in the rear of a Swan Boat, staring blankly ahead. What was he doing in Boston and who paid his Swan Boat fare? Massachusetts was the one state he couldn’t win. What did we know and when did we know it?

Their impressionable minds shaped by such tales, now elevated to official status, the children of the Commonwealth will spend their lives pondering questions like these. And, of course, there’s the greatest lesson of all for our cynical, smart-aleck, wonderful children–the one taught at Fenway every fall–summed up in the words of Dr. Seuss:

Oh the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done!
There are points to be scored. There are games to be won.
And the magical things you can do with that ball
Will make you the winningest winner of all . . .
Except when they don’t. Because sometimes they won’t.

Sleep tight, kids. It’ll be okay.

Susannah Garboden is a freelance writer and children’s book reviewer.