American Fairy Tales

1901, 1978 Dover edition
L. Frank Baum
Illustrated by N.P. Hall, Harry Kennedy, Ike Morgan, and Ralph Fletcher Seymour
American Fairy Tales
Bought new for $3.00
Fair condition paperback
B-

As Martin Gardner notes in the introduction, not all of these are set in America, and not all of these are about fairies, but they all involve magic and/or fantasy.  Sadly, one of the non-American tales is racist.  "The Laughing Hippopotamus" has a line about the "oily odor of black people."  Also, "The Mandarin and the Butterfly" is racist against the Chinese.  The Italian bandits in the first story, "The Box of Robbers," are a bit less stereotypical.  Yes, Baum was a product of his time, but it's still worth noting his racism.

On the plus side of this being a very early-20th-century children's book, there are such "1901" moments as the satire of women's fashion (in "The Enchanted Types" and "The Dummy That Lived") and the reference to "the republic of Macvelt" in "The Queen of Quok."  (William McKinley was still President at the time this story was serialized in newspapers , although he'd be assassinated on Sept. 6th, succeeded by Teddy Roosevelt.)  Much of the humor is aimed at adults, in a sort of Shrek way, but that makes it more enjoyable now than when I was a kid.


On the other hand, I really don't care for most of the illustrations.  At least Denslow did some nice pictures in Wizard, but almost all of Morgan's are bad, and he did two-thirds of the dozen stories.  Kennedy's art is good, especially in "The Glass Dog," where there's no clear moral, as Baum facetiously admits.  Certainly, Baum's moral for the best fairy tale here, "The Magic Bonbons," is debatable, since Bessie Bostwick enjoys "playing the piano better than Rubenstein."