They Were Strong and Good

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Genre: Family; Children's Books/Ages 9-12 Fiction; Children: Grades 4-6; Classics; Juvenile Fiction / Historical / Other; Frontier and pioneer life; Lawson family;

Average Review: 4 stars

Review: Well, they were strong anyway : To what extent do you hold a book accountable for the crimes of its times? Caldecott Award winner "They Were Strong and Good" has some remarkable qualities as well as some lamentable ones. Created by the clever man who brought the world's attention to sweet "Ferdinand" the bull, Robert Lawson chooses here to tell the stories of his parents and grandparents. As he himself points out in the beginning, none of them were great or famous but, "They all helped to make the United States the great nation that it now is". Each grandparent hailed from a different country and each settled in the United States. Some lived in the North and some fought for the South during the Civil War. In the end, however, they were not remarkable people. But they were strong and good. So be it. I like this idea. And I like the author's illustrations (for the most part). Lawson's mastery of the pen and ink method is superb in this story. An exceptional example is his illustration of the City of Paterson. Using a "then" and "now" motif, he displays Paterson first in all its grimy Industrial Revolution glory and then in its previous pastoral perfection. Lawson is also adept at the visual gag. Once the author's Scottish sea captain of a grandfather and his Dutch grandmother wed, the next picture (rather than a frolicsome wedding shot) shows a woman heaved over the side of the boat. Says the text, "My mother's mother liked the monkeys and the sugar cane and the parrots, but she did not like sailing on the sea". Understatement at its finest. Which brings me to the parts of the book I don't like. I really wish I could've loved this book wholly and without reservation. Remember - this book was published in 1940. I was willing to forgive the shot of a happy black boy in the Caribbean. There may have been some. I was willing to forgive the Native Americans that the author's mother did not like. The book doesn't caricature them too badly and the worst they do is ask for food. And anyway, she hated white lumberjacks too. But then you start getting into the portrayals of African-Americans and the book loses me. If the book had just contained that picture of a mammy-like servant threatening the Native Americans, I still wouldn't have objected too heartily. She's actually not a bad caricature. Though wearing the standard head scarf she isn't smiling with the big lips so horrid in some books. It's the moment when the narrative switches from the Northerners' lives to the Southerners'. The author's father owned a slave and two dogs. Then war broke out and we suddenly have a shot of the whole family, slaves and all, weeping as father goes off to war. A different mammy-like woman sobs on a porch. The black slave boy sobs as well. Just out of curiosity, folks, why exactly are the slaves upset? Finally, to add insult to injury, we see another black slave riding into town to warn the citizens that the Yankees are coming. To be honest, this is a bit puzzling. Shouldn't the slave be riding TOWARDS the Yankees? Or is that just revisionist history? In any case, these little touches all combine to make me less than absolutely in love with this story. Though the premise is an excellent one, the racial tone makes it a difficult read today. Not a poor read, necessarily. But a read that will require a lot of explanation to those four year-olds that can't understand why the Indians went around demanding food all the time.