The Children on Our Bookshelves
March 8, 2008

I am always amazed at those readers who have kept every book they have ever owned. Some small part of me envies them—it would be quite something to see what books I have owned through the years—yet I cannot imagine keeping textbooks or books that I feel I have outgrown or in which I no longer have any interest. Bookshelf space is precious.

Then there are those readers I truly do envy, those who kept (or whose mother kept) their childhood books. I have only one, the Fun to Cook Book. It’s odd how this one alone survived all these years and all the moves I have made, but somehow and for some reason it did. What’s even odder is why I kept it. I have no memory of using it, yet I know I learned to cook from my mother as well as from books. The book bears signs of regular use: half of the white plastic spiral binding is missing and unidentifiable smears mar various pages.

Because I can’t remember my personal connection with it, I became curious about the book itself. It turns out that the Fun to Cook Book was part of a publishing segment that suddenly took off in the 1950s—children’s cookbooks. Though they had been published since the 1870s, the mid-twentieth century, with its baby boom growth and the explosion of consumerism through advertising, gave this particular sub-genre impetus for substantial growth. With the war over and the men home, business took off. Television was the perfect medium for the mass marketing that was hawking everything from cars to gum. Markets, which, in 1928, had carried an average of 870 items, now carried 4,000. Convenience foods were increasing in popularity, and “cooking” was beginning to become more a matter of stirring, beating, whipping, adding, and heating than making from scratch as can be seen in some of the convenience foods introduced in this decade: Minute Rice, Tropicana frozen orange juice, Duncan Hines Cake Mix, Pream (the first powdered nondairy coffee creamer), Lipton dehydrated onion soup, Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks, frozen pizza, Eggo Frozen Waffles, Cheez Whiz, Lawry’s Original Spaghetti Sauce Mix, Swanson TV dinners, Pepperidge Farm cookies, Butterball self-basting turkeys, nonfat dry milk, Pillsbury refrigerated cookie dough, Tang, and Chicken Ramen. Not surprisingly, food manufacturers, eager to hook young cooks on the “convenience” of their products, created in-house cookbooks or booklets  as promotional items to develop brand loyalty.

T.W. Barritt, a culinary enthusiast, explored the trend of such books in his article “American Children’s Cookbooks of the 50s and 60s: Textbooks of Technique or Consumerism.” Of “my” cookbook, he notes:  

The Carnation Company released the Fun to Cook Book in 1955, written from the perspective of a young girl. “Margie Blake” was identified as the daughter of the company’s home economist Mary Blake who was the credited author of many Carnation recipe books. Nearly all the two-dozen recipes require Carnation Evaporated Milk. The storyline of Margie’s cooking adventures incorporated safety tips, advice for handling kitchen equipment and a primer on “Kitchen Manners.” Margie is the surrogate for her mother’s expert advice, but also provides a peer endorsement. The Carnation Company archive confirms that Mary Blake was actually a fictional character, as was Margie, which was a typical tactic for food marketers of that period. A young reader would certainly learn to prepare meatloaf, eggs, pie crust, and fancy cuts of vegetables in a manner that actually resembles French carving techniques, but the majority of recipes required nothing more than rudimentary skills of measuring, stirring, beating, shaking and whipping.

At the time I probably didn’t realize this book was merely printed hype for a company’s product even if it did use a lot of the canned milk. What I see when I look at the book now, which is kind of the comfort food of my book collection, is that it likely did have a major influence on my life. I’ve done a lot of culinary roaming in my cooking—from vegetarian to Julia Child to quick-and-easy (even, for a short time, detouring into Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook Book territory), foreign, and spicy. Today I tend to incorporate bits of everything I have learned. I am glad I grew up in a home and time where meals, even if they occasionally used packaged foods like Carnation Evaporated Milk, were built around the family dinner table. Having gone far beyond the Fun to Cook Book I have no real reason to keep it except for the fact that it radiates a feeling of childhood. And that is why it will always have a favored spot on my shelves.

Upcoming Book Festivals:
Two book festivals will take place this upcoming weekend. The first will be in Tucson, Arizona Friday night through Sunday afternoon, March 13-15. The Tucson Festival of Books will take place on the University of Arizona campus, and it is a full, exciting festival. More than seventy-five exhibitors and 350 authors who will be speaking, signing and meeting with fans. Children’s activities include readings, storytelling, two activity tents, an entertainment stage, a cooking stage, and Braille demonstrations. Teens have their own special events including robotics, games, storytelling, a teen authors’ lounge, an awards presentation for the winners of the Youth Fiction Writing Contest, a theatre group, poetry, plays, bands, and dance. Friday evening, March 13, is the Authors Table, an evening of cocktails, dinner and lively conversation. You can learn more at their blog where the latest news is always posted.  

Beginning Sunday, March 15 and running through March 17, the Children’s Literature Festival in Warrensburg, Missouri will be held. Though it focuses on children in grades 4-10, there are activities in which adults interested in children’s literature are welcome to attend. On Sunday a special luncheon and various workshops (including the opportunity to meet authors) as well as a book sale. Monday and Tuesday are set aside for the authors to meet with the schoolchildren.  

The Pub House:
Elegance is what comes to mind when I think of David R. Godine, Publisher. Producing only twenty to thirty books a year, Godine, like most high-quality small publishers, specializes in books that reflect his own tastes and interests, a list he says of “original fiction and non-fiction of the highest rank, rediscovered masterworks, translations of outstanding world literature, poetry, art, photography, and beautifully designed books for children” that is “deliberately eclectic . . . and features works that many other publishers can't or won't support, books that won't necessarily become bestsellers but that still deserve publication.”

Among their lines are two new series: Imago Mundi, line of books devoted to photography and the graphic arts, and Verba Mundi, notable contemporary world literature in translation. They also became the home of the famous Black Sparrow Books when the original Black Sparrow Press closed its doors.

Some of their current offerings that sound particularly delicious include the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature winner, The Prospector, the story of  a privileged boy turned poverty-stricken young man who sets off on a quest to find what he hopes will restore his former life; The Likes of Us, a collection of photographs shot by famed WPA photographers and taken from the archives of the Farm Security Administration; and It’s Only Rock and Roll, an anthology of fiction that deals exclusively with the power, drama and social issues of probably the most influential art form in the last half-century. I am also pleased to recommend their blog, which possesses the same classic elegance as their books. 

Of Interest:
I want to introduce you to This Side of the Pond, a blog from Cambridge University Press with an unusual twist—posts from its field reps who live and travel across the U. S. and Canada and share their experiences in academic bookselling. These can range from a sales call to a unique encounter while on the road. It’s a fairly new addition. The posts are titled “Notes from the Field,” and updated only once a week at this point so there are relatively few, but expect to see more soon. 

This Week . . .
Narrative magazine, an online magazine “dedicated to advancing the literary arts in the digital age” publishes fiction, nonfiction and poetry of top quality. They are a nonprofit venture that encourages writing and reading of new literature by making it available for free. You’ll recognize some of the names while others will be new—but they will all be good.

They currently have a contest going which offers a first prize of $3,000 as well as other monetary prizes. Both fiction and nonfiction writers are encouraged to enter short shorts, short stories, essays, memoirs, all forms of literary nonfiction, and excerpts from longer works of both fiction and nonfiction. All submissions must be less than 10,000 words. There is a small entry fee, and details can be found here. Deadline is March 31. 

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren