fairy tales

Summer of Faerie: Thoughts on Illustrations and Racial Representation

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They read us tons of picture books in school: books about Johnny Appleseed, Jackie Robinson, Paul Bunyan, apple-picking, and a menagerie of animals. We would sit cross-legged in a circle on braided rugs, watching the teacher hold the book out so we could see the pictures.

We read fairy tales, my favorite: Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Rumpelstiltskin, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and others.

We read histories and historical fiction: books about the American Revolution and Civil War, Underground Railroad, pioneers, World Wars, and astronauts.

I read on my own, too: I still love the Hutchinson Treasury of Children’s Literature and got a copy for our library. I also bought a Treasury of Children’s Literature anthology and a Beauty and the Beast picture book by Max Eilenberg, illustrated by Angela Barrett. The magic of these illustrations overwhelmed me; I would sit for unnecessary lengths of time, studying the luminous colors and fantastic scenes. They opened a world of beauty, mystery, magic, and adventure I yearned to enter.

Illustrations from top left moving clockwise: “Snow White,” retold by Josephine Poole, illustrated by Angela Barrett; Beauty and the Beast, retold by Max Eilenberg, also illustrated by Angela Barrett; The Thorn Rose by the Brothers Grimm, illustrated by Errol Le Cain.

The fairy tale illustrations I loved had one particular characteristic: as tales from the United Kingdom and Europe, they usually featured, well, white people. I remember a fair amount of gorgeous tales with Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and other Asian characters, but most of the picture book illustrations I remember that featured people of African heritage were historical or realistic fiction about dark times in American history: slavery, the Jim Crow laws, and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Illustrations from top left moving clockwise: “Prayer at Valley Forge” by Arnold Friberg; A Picture Book of Jackie Robinson by David A. Adler, illustrated by Robert Casilla; Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, illustrated by Renée Graef; “The Underground Railroad in Indiana.”

Illustrations shape our visual imaginations. I began to separate in my imagination the fairy-tale world of golden palaces and enchanted forests, inhabited by magical creatures and white people, from the real world of plantation fields, brick buildings, gray cities, cruelty, and injustice inhabited by white and black people.

I read lots of chapter books, too. The Dr. Dolittle books are funny, and sweet, and adventurous, but the first one has a peculiar scene: Dr. Dolittle and his animal friends have gone to Africa to help with a terrible sickness among the monkeys. While there, the crew is chased around by the local inhabitants, the Jolliginki. Prince Bumpo, the heir of this kingdom, strikes a deal with Dr. Dolittle: he will let Dr. Dolittle and his crew out of prison and get them a ship back to England if Dr. Dolittle can make him white. He describes why:

“White Man, I am an unhappy prince. Years ago I went in search of The Sleeping Beauty, whom I had read of in a book. And having traveled through the world many days, I at last found her and kissed the lady very gently to awaken her—as the book said I should. ’Tis true indeed that she awoke. But when she saw my face she cried out, ‘Oh, he’s black!’ And she ran away and wouldn’t marry me—but went to sleep again somewhere else. So I came back, full of sadness, to my father’s kingdom. Now I hear that you are a wonderful magician and have many powerful potions. So I come to you for help. If you will turn me white, so that I may go back to The Sleeping Beauty, I will give you half my kingdom and anything besides you ask.”

Dr. Dolittle agrees, and creates a mixture from his medical bag that transforms Prince Bumpo from a man with dark skin and brown eyes to a man with skin “white as snow” and eyes that are a “manly gray.” Prince Bumpo is thrilled and fulfills his end of the bargain.

Remembering and rereading this fills me with sadness – and shame. I remember that I didn’t question this scene at all when I first read it, though I knew racism was wrong. As a kid, I could not picture a black person living in the fairy-tale world of silver castles and green mountains, defeating dragons or rescuing princesses. 

(Note: In the The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle, Prince Bumpo returns. The mixture has worn off, and he has resumed his original appearance. He is a friend and companion in this book, though his characterization and the descriptions and dialogue surrounding him are horribly racist.)

My division between a mythical land of white people and a real world where minorities faced cruelties and injustice was, of course, wrong. Imagination and wonder are a divine gift to all humans. The Kingdom I ached for – a land of beauty, mystery, wonder, and adventure – is real, and it is the heritage of Christ-followers from every tongue, tribe, and nation:

Isaiah 2:2 (ESV): It shall come to pass in the latter days
that the mountain of the house of the LORD
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be lifted up above the hills;
and all the nations shall flow to it . . . 

Revelation 7:9-10 (ESV): After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Isaiah and Revelation remind me: Elohim, the Creator-God who made all people, is our Judge. Our genetic differences are glorious signs of His imagination and creativity. We are accountable to Him for how we treat each other. 

How does this influence this Summer of Faerie project, an exploration of the meaning and magic of fairy tales? For one thing, every tongue, tribe, and nation has legends and stories of wonder and mystery; this investigation will be infinitely richer if it is global. I also found some more recently-published retellings of some of my old favorites with diverse characters. The illustrations are, frankly, adorable:

We need good, beautiful stories that are true; that shape our imaginations and open our eyes. More than that, we need God’s story: His tale of sin and the Fall, evil and injustice, hope and restoration in a Kingdom of light.

If you know of any other beautiful, culturally-diverse fairy tale picture books or fairy tale retellings, could you leave a comment with a picture or a link?

Summer of Faerie: “Winds of Change” by Matthew Cyr

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Faerie Wind

It’s the end of May and beginning of June: one of my favorite times of year, when purple lilacs bloom, the new leaves rustle in warm winds, and it’s hot and bright enough to put on sunscreen and enjoy its cool, thick smell.

These days at the lake have “slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely” (Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). I’ve had the undeserved luxury of hiking in the green mountains, paddle boarding during my lunch hour, a few frigid swims, and continuing to research fairy tales and folklore for the Summer of Faerie project. I hope to post more about this later, but for now, I have found a few treasures:

  • Kate Forrester’s Celtic Tales, a collection of British, Irish, Welsh, and Scottish legends with gorgeous silhouette illustrations
  • J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Mythopoeia,” a poem I had heard of but not read (and do not fully understand yet)
  • Angelina Stanford’s fascinating research on how fairy tales retell the Gospel

This week’s Summer of Faerie post is a piece by Matthew Cyr, whose masterful craftsmanship I first encountered in The Cultivating Project (a seasonal online journal). Matthew’s prose reminds me of an enchanted forest, with layers of vivid imagery and root-deep musings that leave me pondering for days. This short-short story explores some of the strangeness and mystery of the world of fairy tales.

Winds of Change

by Matthew Cyr

Eyes closed, head thrown back, Ehelia danced among the maple whirlywings, whirling with them as they fell. Cirigan watched her from where he was seated on a fallen linden trunk, playing a rippling tune on his polished swan’s bone flute. Merriment played on his usually-somber face as he followed Ehelia’s fluid spiraling.

As the breeze quickened and more of the winged seeds took flight, Ehelia swept up those around her and flung them back up to be joined by fresh ones from above. Again she swirled them up as they drifted down to her, and again until the air was awhir with spinning wings that flickered in and out of the dappled sunlight.

In the midst of her laughter something caught at Ehelia’s attention, as if a movement from the corner of her eye or a sound out of place, half-heard. She came to a stop and looked toward the river where it ran unseen behind the yarrow-clad hill.

Cirigan stopped piping. “What is it, Irushili?” He often called her that, Shower of Laughter, instead of her true name, which meant Heartsighted.

Ehelia had no word to give him back, but he followed when she started away toward the river.

Cresting the rise, she could see something heaped down by the water’s edge. She paused, then pushed closer. Cirigan crossed half in front of her and stopped, as did she. It was plainly a body, a figure lying as if spilled from a cup.

“Is that….” he began, without taking his eyes from the thing.

“Yes.” No cloud had passed over, but the sun-washed hilltop seemed to darken for a moment around them.

“I never thought… to find one outside of old tales. An Oulahlain.  How came it here? None have ever been near this place. ” His eyes narrowed slightly. “It still lives.”

Ehelia passed him, only half aware that she was drifting closer to the creature again. Cirigan twitched slightly but didn’t move to block her. She looked and listened and smelled, taking in the crude clothing, the mane of tangled hair, the shallow breaths.

Ehelia’s gaze passed on to the angry red scratches on the arms and legs, as if it had been plunging through thorn and thicket. The figure’s feet had scarcely stopped bleeding into the river as it whispered past. The tears in the thing’s coarse-spun garment looked fresh as well, and some of its shabbiness the mark of recent hard use and weather. 

“She was chased,” Ehelia said quietly.

“She?”

“She is female… and young, as they would reckon age. Little more than a child of her kind.” Ehelia didn’t try to unravel how she came by this surety, but Cirigan had known her long, and accepted it as truth without need of explanation.

“They’re dangerous at any size or age,” Cirigan said. “They all but destroyed our people. So few of us lived to flee here… and now again our place is found out.”

Ehelia made no reply, but the still air around her felt like a closed door. Cirigan turned to her, finally taking his eyes from the slumped creature to press Ehelia with his gaze.

“Where one comes, others will be drawn. If this one is hunted by its own kind, they that follow will be more and worse. They will bring the cold iron that slays our folk.”

Cirigan glanced back at the fallen thing on the riverbank. “Yet for it to return to its kind now might be more ruinous than if it remain. Could be that it will wander ever lost in the wilds instead…or a sleep be placed on it that it never wake.” He fingered the bone flute.

And now Ehelia turned to him. Her eyes, usually the pale green of the moon-moth’s wing, were like sunlight through young beech leaves. The floating tufts of cottonwood silk above the hillside seemed to slow in the air, and the river to further hush itself.

“None other will find its way here that we do not wish, “she said. “Our folk can keep the border.”

Like heat-shimmer off a sun-baked rock, she could feel the uncertainty rising from him, mingled with shame: none of their people would think to end a living thing before its time, but he had voiced the nearest deed to that.

“We must tell the others,” Cirigan said, his tone more subdued but still stubborn around the edges. “All must decide.”

Ehelia glided even closer to the strange figure till she hovered just over it. Under the burrs and dirt, the sleeper’s hair was ruddy-gold like a kingfisher’s breast, and fell across her eyes, hiding them.

The forest seemed to breathe again. Ehelia had made her decision. The breeze now wafted the cottonwood wisps into the river, which carried them past and on out of sight. A lift of air drew the sleeper’s hair away from her face, revealing a pale brow and lidded eyes. Oulahlain. The Unseeing Ones.

Soft, soft, like the feathered touch of a month’s antennae, Ehelia brushed the stranger’s eyelids with her fingertips. She whispered a few words that hung glistening in the air, like dewdrops on spider threads.

She knew without looking that Cirigan had vanished, as the figure shivered and its eyes sprang open. Eyes little less green than Ehelia’s own. The wakened creature drew back at the sight of her.

“Be at peace, Daughter of Man,” Ehelia said. “You are watched over, and none shall harm you here.”

Matthew Cyr

Matthew Cyr

Once upon a time, Matthew Cyr unearthed an ancient-looking early edition of The Hobbit in his elementary school library and has been wandering in Middle Earth ever since. He has a hobbitish appetite and prefers to keep a good book in one hand and good food in the other. Matthew is fascinated by the power of story to awaken us to redemptive Truth. Several years ago he took up a quest to own and read every book ever published by C.S. Lewis. He shares his home with his wife and daughter, three cats, and a smallish serpent who has thus far never instigated the consumption of prohibited produce. Some of Matthew’s writings can be found at thecultivatingproject.com.