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Red, white, and blue?

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Julia L. Mickenberg Learning from the Left: Children's Literature, the Cold War, and Radical Politics in the United States 389 pp. Oxford 11/05 ISBN 0-19-515280-8 $74.00 Paper edition ISBN 0-19-515281-6 $19.95

To those of us who were around during the Cold War period, it's not news that there was a disconnect between the liberal tenor of children's books generally and the repressive spirit of the times. Men and women blacklisted by the mainstream media and the public schools, as Communists or suspected Communists, found a haven writing for children and young adults, with the encouragement of editors and the support of librarians.

Largely on the basis of this seeming partnership, Julia Mickenberg posits a significant, continuing leftist presence in the children's book field from the 1920s into the 1970s, shaping the content of books and potentially shaping young minds. But like many authors with a thesis to prove, Mickenberg tends to cherry-pick her evidence and then to claim or infer more than it demonstrates.

Thus, her discussion of the 1920s focuses on three "fanciful or imaginative books ... [that] encouraged children to imaginatively extend the limits of the possible"--Alfred Kreymborg's Funnybone Alley, Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories, Wanda Gag's Millions of Cats--"and implicitly criticized the ... spirit of capitalism." Together with Lucy Sprague Mitchell's matter-of-fact Here and Now Story Book, the three supposedly provided a usable past for 1935-40s authors of...

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