Indians, Eskimos, and guns in DANNY AND THE DINOSAUR

The original edition of Danny and the Dinosaur, written and illustrated by Syd Hoff came out in 1958 as an "I Can Read" book. It was published by Harper & Brothers:

Some years later, it was reprinted with brighter colors:

In the story, Danny visits a museum. When he goes into the museum, he sees "Indians" and "Eskimos." Hoff's book was edited by Ursula Nordstrom. When he submitted the manuscript to her, she thought his line about Danny wanting to "see how the world looked a long, long time ago" was unchildlike. She suggested he be specific and use "He saw Indians." (For more on this, see Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom edited by Leonard Marcus). He took her advice. People have objected to those stereotypes for years. We've written about them here on AICL. 

In 2017, the publisher celebrated the 50th anniversary of the book. On their website they had this worksheet. I put the arrow on it, shared my image on Twitter, and asked the publisher (HarperChildrens) to think critically about what Item E. invited non-Native kids to think about, with regard to Native peoples:

By the end of the work day, HarperChildrens responded, saying "We appreciate your valuable feedback and sincerely apologize that this activity was offensive. It has been removed from the site." (Screen shot below):

I asked if the image would also be removed from the book, but they did not reply. 

A few months ago, a Native parent told me that she and her daughter were reading Danny and the Dinosaur. She said that the page with stereotypical images of "Indians" and "Eskimos" had been edited. The stereotypes were gone.

Then, last month at the 2021 Children's Literature Association Annual Conference (online), I saw the edited image. Dr. Ramona Caponegro's presentation was about the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection archives at the University of Southern Mississippi. I've been there and have seen the Syd Hoff collection. Her presentation included information about Danny and the Dinosaur. I learned that the edited copy is part of a 5-book collection of stories about Danny, published in 2017. That was the 50th anniversary of the book. Edits were done to two pages that face each other in the book. 

First is the original (image is from a YouTube read-aloud of the book):

And here's the edited 2017 version from the 5-book collection (image sent to me by Dr. Caponegro):

The stereotypical Indian and Eskimo and the sentences "He saw Indians." and "He saw Eskimos." are gone. In the edited version we see a new bear. On the facing page, the guns and the sentence "He saw guns." are gone. These changes were not made to the hard cover that you can buy, today. 

Why were the changes made to one edition and not the other? 

A primary factor in edits is cost to the publishing house. When edits can be confined to a single page, they are more likely to be done because when edits cause a shift such that words move to a subsequent page, that may mean changes to every subsequent page--and that means more cost to the publishing house. I'm going to speculate that there's a different printer for the 5-book paperback collection than there is for the single hardcover, and that hopefully we'll see a change to the hardcover, too, but will we? Five years have passed since the edits were done. Why have the edits not been made to the hardcover?

And I wonder what prompted the edits in the first place? I'm speculating again that the publisher may have been hearing from parents who had concerns about the guns on page 7. So, perhaps a decision was made to remove them and, at the same time, remove the stereotypical Indian/Eskimo. No statements were made explaining any of this. 

Dr. Caponegro's research into the changes is on-going. Like Caponegro, I have many questions! When either of us has more to report, I'll be back!  

Children's Literature Association 37th Annual Conference

I'm in Ann Arbor for the 37th annual conference of the Children's Literature Association, enjoying listening to others talk about their research. I was headed to the 10:00 session, "Telling Tales" but so were a lot of other folks. I arrived a few minutes late, opened the door, and saw no empty seats. So, I'm taking a break and hope to hear from other conference-goers about papers given by Catherine McKenna paper and Kay Weisman.

At 8:00 I went to a session chaired by blogger, friend, and scholar, Sarah Park. It was called "Constructing the Author and/as Celebrity".  Papers were given by Sara van den Bossche (Ghent University) on Astrid Lindgren's work, Camille Parker (independent scholar) on blogging and author blogs, and, Maria de Guadallupe Serrano Diez (University of Winnipeg) on the works of Mexican Francisco Gabilondo Soler, a Mexican writer who created and performed as Cri-Cri: El Grillito Cantor (in English, the Little Singing Cricket).

I enjoyed all three immensely and hope that each paper evolves into a publication. There were interesting points made about what gets canonized (most people know Lindgren's work while few outside of Mexico would know Soler's work), and how writers today use blogs.

Yesterday afternoon, I went to a session called "Playing Indian" that was also quite good. Both, Alan Scot Willis (Northern Michigan University) and Kay Harris (University of Southern Mississippi) cited Native scholars, specifically, Philip J. Deloria and Rayna Green. It is very important that people studying depictions of American Indians read the work of Native scholars and apply that work to their analysis of children's books. I look forward to reading more from Willis and Harris.

At the books exhibit, I bought two books. One is Points of View: An Anthology of Short Stories. I bought it because of one name on the cover.... Durango Mendoza. The volume includes one of his stories. This one is "The Passing". Durango is husband to my dear friend, Jean. First published in 1966, it would be interesting to compare how the volume evolved over time, what authors were added and when. The copy I bought also has a story by Louise Erdrich, and one by Ralph Ellison... The Ellison story looks intriguing. It's title is "A Couple Scalped Indians".

I also bought Growing Up Ethnic in America: Contemporary Fiction about Learning to be American. I'll have to study the stories, and think about the collection and the title of the book. "Learning to be American". It includes several stories I want to read: Tiffany Midge's "A Half-Breed's Dream Vacation", Louise Erdrich's "The Red Convertible", Diane Glancy's "Portrait of the Lone Survivor", Sherman Alexie's "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" and Simon J. Ortiz's "To Change in a Good Way".  They are all Native writers. Would they say their stories are about "learning to be American"?

Enough for now... going to gather my things and head for another session.

2008 Children's Literature Association Conference

I spent the last couple of days at the 2008 Children's Literature Association (ChLA) Conference. I met many people (professors) with whom I've had email with over the last ten or so years. Among them are Michael Joseph, Tammy Mielke, Kara Keeling, and June Cummins. A lot of people there read this blog and encourage their students to read it, too. It was terrific, too, to meet Tom Crisp, a student in Teacher Education at Michigan State, and talk with Ben Smallwood, at Illinois State.

There were several presentations on Sherman Alexie's YA novel, and one on Bruchac's Dark Pond and Skeleton Man. Ben Smallwood talked about Tim Tingle's books. All were thoughtful papers, not romanticizing the writers or their books, but posing good questions. I am intrigued by Adrienne Kertzer's challenge over whether or not the illustrations in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian support the text, and will return to the book to consider her challenge.

In my presentation, I talked about three books I've written about on this blog (McDermott's Arrow to the Sun, Pollock's Turkey Girl, and Rodanas Dragonfly's Tale,) none of which I recommend.

Conferences are time well-spent. Meeting people, hearing others thoughts in person. Next year's conference is in Charlotte, North Carolina. A special thanks to Linnea Hendrickson for encouraging me to attend ChLA.