Category: Essays/Book Reviews

I have always loved The Story of Ferdinand and I’m not the only one. The book has been continuously in print since it was first published in 1936 and is largely considered to be a masterpiece. I think it’s a masterpiece too, but a flawed one. To me, Leaf’s story serves as a lesson that just about any story can benefit from just one more rewrite.

For those who have not yet read the story, let me just say this: Shame on you. Here’s your synopsis:

Ferdinand is a bull not like other bulls. While his peers in the fields run and jump and butt their heads in the hope of getting selected for the bullfights in Madrid, Ferdinand is happy to laze under his favorite tree and smell flowers.

Eventually, five talent scouts for the bullfights arrive on the scene to size up the herd. Ferdinand heads off to his tree to sniff, comfortable in the knowledge that he will never be chosen. He plops down on a bee, however, and the sting he receives makes him run and jump and snort in pain. The men interpret this display as fierceness, and cart off Ferdinand to Madrid.

The crowds arrive. Picadors, banderilleros, and the matador march into ring. Everyone expects a great show. But Ferdinand doesn’t deliver. He notices that the senoritas in the crowd have flowers in their hair so he plops himself in the center of the ring and smells. No amount of cajoling can get Ferdinand to do anything else, so he is sent back to the fields where, to this day, he’s still under his tree and still happily sniffing flowers.

Ferdinand was published at around the time of the Spanish Civil War and some say the book was written to serve as a sharply satirical commentary on the conflict. I have also heard an alternate story – one that says Leaf scribbled out the entire Ferdinand story in an hour to generate some illustration work for his pal, Lawson (who was especially fond of drawing cows). I’m leaning toward the latter tale simply because the book has a banged-out, rough-hewn quality of an awesome and inspired early draft.

The reason why Leaf wrote Ferdinand doesn’t really matter, though. He may have been commenting on the futility of war, but the theme that stands the test of time is Ferdinand’s celebration of nonconformity. It is a book the urges the reader to defy stereotypes and not let what you are dictate what you do. It’s a wonderful message, beautifully told, and that is why Ferdinand is something special.

But the book does has problems. As a kid, I could never wrap my brain around why all the other bulls in the meadow would spend their entire lives training for an event that would, without fail, get them killed. Make no mistake, the bullfight in Ferdinand is not the sanitized fare shown in other pieces of children’s entertainment; these guys are not just waving a cape around, they are stabbing. The bulls are also fully aware of this. One illustration shows a group of bulls admiring a poster for the fights. On it is a drawing of a charging bull with several spears protruding from his back.

In case that didn’t register, later on Leaf describes the parade into the bullring:

“First came the banderilleros with long sharp pins with ribbons on them to stick in the bull and make him mad. Next came the picadores…and they had long spears to stick in the bull and make him madder. Then came the matador…He had a red cape and a sword and was supposed to stick the bull last of all.”

Leaf doesn’t come right out and say it, but it sure is clear, even to children, that any bull who enters the ring is supposed to get stabbed to death – painfully and repeatedly.

So why would any bull volunteer to do this?

Leaf also fails to address what I consider to be an even larger story flaw. Ferdinand is at the bullfight because of the way he reacted to getting stung by a bee. He is now in an arena where banderilleros and picadors wield pins and spears used to make a bull mad. Yet, when Ferdinand sits down and smells flowers, none of these men get stabby.

It wouldn’t have even take all that much to get Ferdinand worked up. A bee stinger is a whole lot smaller than a spear – and we all know what happened then.

By inserting realistic details about bullfights into his story, Leaf made his story too unrealistic to be believed. In an arena filled with so many weapons and so many people intent on doing a bull harm, poor Ferdinand never would have stood a chance.

Bookshelf space was always at a premium in my childhood home. So when I outgrew my picture books, my mom wasted little time in packing them up into a giant cardboard box and depositing them in a dark, forgotten corner of the basement. Her plan was to parcel them out many years later after I had children of my own. The presentation of each book would be accompanied by the grandma bon mot: “Your daddy read this when he was your age!”

An unusually vicious rainstorm during my middle school years almost put an end to that plan. Most of the collection remained above the waterline but others were in sad and sorry shape.

But Mom and I ran hairdryers, Lysol-ed any pages that showed traces of mold and pressed the sorry specimens between  dictionaries. Fortunately, most of the books that were beyond the pale were ones that could be easily replaced after my son was born. (The Diggingest Dog, for example.) Other books were no great loss. (Sure, I could buy a new copy of the unsettling Are You My Mother?, but will I? No, sir.)

I was thinking about this 20-odd-year-old event recently because it brought something into sharp focus: a basement flood is an excellent way to determine a book’s value. Most of the books in that wet box entertained me in one way or another, but only a couple of them really mattered.

I would guess that about three or four dozen books were waterlogged in that flood. Some were beyond saving. But even among the salvageable books, decisions needed to be made. There was only so much Lysol and so many heavy dictionaries to go around. Where should I devote the bulk of my rescue efforts? To put it another way, which book would just be too painful to throw away? Amazon.com was still decades away, so a lost book was really lost. Maybe forever.

At the time my decisions were surprisingly swift and easy. Are You My Mother? never got a backward glance. Danger in Dinosaur Valley by Joan Lowery Nixon, however, was a different story entirely.

Danger in Dinosaur Valley was the quintessential children’s book for boys – beautifully bringing together dinosaurs, baseball and time travel in a fast-paced, funny tale of prehistoric survival. The entire story is seen through the eyes of a curious young Diplodocus and ends with a stirring and violent confrontation with a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Ah. Remember the days when it was okay to have violence in a picture book?

So… Get me some Lysol and a Merriam Webster, STAT! This book ain’t gonna die on my watch!

The dust jacket never made it, the spine is shot and dots of mold speckle the end pages but my efforts were not in vain. Grandma delivered her line to Alex on cue: “Your daddy read this when he was your age!” True enough, but I also read it at this age, even when my little guy isn’t around. That is a true test of a great picture book.

Danger in Dinosaur Valley has been out of print since the 1970s, but thank heavens we now live in the age of Amazon. Nine copies starting at $1.38? What a deal! Get it. I’ll bet you’ll keep it.

Just promise me you’ll store it on a high shelf.

So let’s open this up to the comment section: What picture book couldn’t you live without?