Why 'classics' aren't always classy. Robert Lawson's They Were Strong and Good

They Were Strong and Good
Robert Lawson
ISBN: 0670699497
1941 Caldecott Award Winner
Read February 4, 3013

Fair warning, I don't always agree with the Caldecotts, and sometimes I violently disagree.  I think a great value of children's materials is that they are accessible to, and interesting to, children.  Not interesting to adults, not necessarily artistically or stylistically fascinating or innovative.  Soapbox, I know.  Sorry.

Anyway, with that background, I don't actively look up all the past Caldecotts and Newberys to check out.  If they are attractive to me, I'll see them on the shelf and pull them out (Hugo Cabret, Creepy Carrots, I'm looking at you).  If they aren't attractive to me, then I have a neverending pile of books, a legal pad full of lists of books, and a limited lifespan.

So here is this early winner, showing up on my desk to be checked for condition.  I figure, oh hell, professional development, right?  So I start reading it.  It's a little weird, a set of short-bit dry family stories, and then we get to the first twinge: lazy, thieving, disreputable Indians in Minnesota.  Also, judging by the engraving, black 'Mammys' were in Minnesotta.  Ok, that's a little twitchy, but it was the forties.  Moving on.  Grandparents again, nothing much here... Oh.  Oh dear.  'When my father was very young he had a Negro slave.'  Oh?  That's... lovely.  The kicker?  His father also had two dogs, which have full Roman names.  The slave?  Just Dick.  Not even Richard.  No last name, of course.  Ai yi yi.

Now we're off to fight in the war, and lose the war, and the comment at the end is 'and (dog's full name) and (dog's full name) and Dick were all gone too.'  Nice to see the order of importance there.

So I'm pretty solidly cringing at this now, and I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I'm being a little too touchy.  So up pop Google to see what I can see.

Reader, it was worse.  This is the 'revised' version.  The first edition, that won the Caldecott?  'Tame' Indians in Minnesota.  And the bit with the slave?  'When my father was very young he had two dogs and a colored boy' oh and it gets even better: 'The colored boy was just my father's age.  He was a slave, but they didn't call him that.  They just called him Dick.'

I have no words, gentle reader.  No words.