May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture

was born in the mid-twentieth cen- decadent was forbidden. This included tury at the crossroads of Europe in religion and many books and ideas. But I a country that no longer exists— people still held on to their books and Czechoslovakia, now Czech Repub- kept their thoughts to themselves; they lic. Looking back, I can say that books also kept their religious beliefs even if meant everything in my life, and not just they did not express them openly. It was because I grew up in a time before tele- all very confusing for a small child. vision or computers but because I lived in a dark totalitarian empire, not even My parents, both artists, told stories to realizing it, with books being the only my sister and me. They read us fairy beams of light. tales and the books of wonderful mod- ern Czech writers and illustrators (pre– Books shaped my ideas; they held my World War II) like the brothers Karel and May Hill dreams, my fears, and my hopes. Books Josef Čapek or OndČej Sekora, and they made me draw pictures of what I had drew pictures with us. That was fun. read. They became the most important Arbuthnot and continuous stepping-stones through My father’s mother—my grandmother, my life. Marie—did not want me to grow up Honor in sin, so she took me secretly to visit One hundred fifty years ago, [British phi- imposing churches. She told me Bible losopher] Herbert Spencer wrote, “Chil- stories and showed me the statues of Lecture dren should be led to make their own saints and paintings of martyrs. We read investigations and to draw their own Fireflies, a Czech classic written by a Reading in the Dark inferences. They should be told as little clergyman named Jan Karafiát, while she as possible and induced to discover as insisted that I not tell anybody. This was much as possible.” a heavy load and not the best prepara- Peter Sís tion for what was to come in my Com- Luckily this was true of my early child- munist school. hood. No television, no computer, no babysitters—the word “babysitter” did Nor did the other side of the family make not exist in Czech. I spent my preschool things easier. My grandfather Karel was days with my grandparents, who intro- a railway engineer and spent the 1930s duced me to nineteenth- and twentieth- designing the technical aspects of the train century books—fairy tales like those of stations in Cleveland and Chicago. So my the Brothers Grimm and Karel Erben mother spent a short time in the Midwest. with their princesses, ogres, knights, and The family had a library of books they even death; also cautionary tales in the brought from America, which introduced tradition of Wilhelm Busch’s Max and me to many American children’s books of Moritz, where pictures show what hap- that period. I loved their colors and smell. pens to disobedient children. The pun- The best of them, in my opinion, was the ishments I still remember were severe— biggest book I had ever seen. My grandfa- like if you do not eat your soup, you will ther collected the funnies—comic strips go blind, or if you are too curious, you from Chicago newspapers—and got them just might die. This was scary stuff, but it bound in a large volume that was taller was hard not to be fascinated by it. than I was at the time. I pored over the pictures, virtually lying down on a page, to You get scared, you get happy, you are a follow the stories of Little Orphan Annie, child. You are learning about the world Mutt and Jeff, Krazy Kat, the Katzenjam- Speaker Peter Sís, center, at the May Hill that is close to you, but I had no idea mer Kids, and many more. I wore that Arbuthnot Honor Lecture with then-ALSC that I was living in a place called Czecho- volume out of existence, but it was in a President Mary Fellows, left, and Dr. Brenda slovakia, which had been a Democratic way a good preparation for the future, my Dales of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, the republic since 1918, annexed by Hitler, life in America. lecture venue. Photo by Bert Shepard. liberated by the Red Army, and taken over by Communists to become part of Those early years with my sister, my the Soviet Empire. Marxist social philos- parents, and my grandparents are won- Three-time Caldecott Honor illustrator ophy was the opposite of Herbert Spen- derful in my memories, full of play and Peter Sís presented the 2012 May Hill cer’s progressive idea to allow children sun. We caught glimpses of political real- Arbuthnot Honor Lecture April 4, 2012, the freedom to learn from experience. ity from time to time—People’s Militia at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Anything considered bourgeois and marching, flags flying, tanks on parade. Winter 2012 • Children and Libraries 3 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture But we did not understand, and besides, little boys like that sort soe, and books by Hans Christian Andersen, Alexandre Dumas, of thing, especially marching soldiers. So when my father came Jules Verne, Rudyard Kipling, and Robert Louis Stevenson. I no home one day in a uniform, I did not realize it marked the end longer recall which ones were approved by the government and of the safe part of my childhood. which were banned. My father was drafted into the Czechoslovak People’s Army, It was changing all the time. But I do remember a neighbor as were all young men of his age. He was a documentary film- lady, an old professor who secretly lent me “Western” books, maker and became part of the Army Film Corps. He was sent warning me not to tell anyone. This made them very special. to China, which was also part of the Communist Bloc at that All of a sudden, here I was with a pile of “secret” books that I time, to teach the Chinese People’s Liberation Army filmmakers read with a flashlight under the blanket. This made them the how to shoot a documentary. He told us he would be back for most amazing books imaginable, though in reality they weren’t Christmas, and then he was gone. literature of a high level. They were Wild West stories and thrill- ers, and who knows if I would have enjoyed them as much as I He did come back for Christmas, but not until two years later. did if they hadn’t been forbidden. I must have been about four- Time and distance seemed greater then, and I felt as if he had teen years old when the world we were told about at school been gone for many years. I had almost forgotten what he and read about in our textbooks—the world of brave Soviet looked like. He brought back fantastic tales about the Tibetan soldiers, pioneers, peasants, and revolutionaries—started to world and its boy-god-king, the Dalai Lama. He told me many look different. stories he did not dare talk about in public. Some of them I retold in my book Tibet Through the Red Box. They were even It was a strange world to grow up in. Nobody was quite sure more fantastic and at odds with Communist teachings than my how the Communist inquisition worked. (Take blue jeans as an grandmother’s stories of saints and miracles. example: at times they were considered Western and decadent; at other times they were okay because they were the clothes of the working class.) The Soviet minister of culture Andrey “Books shaped my ideas; they held Zhdanov proclaimed writers the “engineers of the human soul.” While the Soviet masters were fond of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry my dreams, my fears, and my hopes. Finn and Jack London’s White Fang, I have to say each book was Books made me draw pictures of what extended by a substantial appendix explaining the social condi- tions and working-class status of the heroes. The official opin- I had read. They became the most ion on Russia’s own Tolstoy (was he a pacifist?) and Dostoyevsky (was he a nihilist?) was constantly shifting. I am not quite sure important and continuous stepping- how I came to read Dickens and Balzac. They probably came from the family library, as did Ernest Thompson Seton and stones through my life.” Upton Sinclair. I was now six years old, and it was time to go to school. It started Not government-recommended were A. A. Milne and Lewis with the basics but also a daily dose of politics. All children in Carroll. Pooh, Eeyore, and Alice were considered decadent, the Communist school system were supposed to be indoctri- while the writers Astrid Lindgren and Arthur Ransome were nated, as I try to explain in The Wall, my book about growing published by the State House of Children’s Books, the publisher up behind the Iron Curtain. We learned to read and write—in of some beautifully illustrated books on poor-quality paper. Czech and Russian—but we were also supposed to prepare to become young pioneers with red scarves, trumpets, drums, and The big discovery for me was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his banners. We studied and memorized the life stories of Lenin, Little Prince. These, together with the Saul Steinberg books my Stalin, and other heroes from the Communist Olympus. When father brought from the West, were life-changing.

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