Coping with the Pandemic: C-PTSD, Children and Picture Books

Article 3

by Lyn Lacy

1500 words

Photo by Bryan Goodwin, posted on Facebook May 6, 2021

A story enriches us by giving a glimpse into someone else’s life— the good or bad, triumph or hardship, joy or sadness. A story is also a non-threatening path that can lead to insight about one’s own emotions, environment, life itself. If this were not true, stories would not have lasted through the ages. 

Of the many ways adults help children adapt and thrive, sharing stories can help them both work toward a better awareness of themselves and their relationships. For stories to heal is a value of a well-told tale, an aspect that cannot be approached frivolously or by chance. How-to or so-called bibliotherapeutic books with strategies for improving behaviors or attitudes certainly have their place in child development. However, stories are better. A good story paired with thoughtful art is even better yet, for everybody likes pictures, and many children are visual learners.

Enter—the picture book.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, picture books can be especially important for parents, grandparents, caregivers and teachers who can use them in thoughtful ways to guide children in trying to understand their situation. During the crisis, children’s lives have been turned upside down as they sheltered at home, separated from friends, teachers and classroom routines. Schools sat empty while some 55.1 million K-12 students had to make the dramatic adjustment to learn from home and deal with loss of basic freedoms and loss of a sense of community they get from attending school. Not only do children share the adults’ concern about everyone’s physical health, but they also deal with adverse effects on their own emotional, social and intellectual well-being.

“Let’s face it: Right now, everyone who has been stuck at home—whether a kid or an adult—has been experiencing a lot of emotions. One minute you might have felt terrified by the latest news; the next, you might have been ready to scream if you had to be around your little sister for one more second. Admit what you are feeling. This is hard. This stinks. I don’t like this. Life during a global virus outbreak does that to you.” (Daisy Yumas, “So, How Are You Feeling?, NYT, 26 April 2020) As early as April, 2020, child welfare agencies were noting, “Our concern is children for whom school was a safe space are now perhaps in environments where they really don’t have a lot of leverage to move or go outside or leave…That means many children are suffering in silence” (Amy Beth Hanson, The Associated Press, 19 April 2020). 

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that results from a traumatic event, such as a natural disaster or car accident. Another psychological disorder is called Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD; also known as developmental trauma disorder) that can develop in response to an adverse, prolonged experience, rather than a single event. C-PTSD can especially develop in children when they have been deprived of normalcy by a disruption in their lives over which they have no control or chance of resolution. (“What is Complex PTSD?” by Matthew Tull, PhD, verywellhealth.com, 30 March 2020). 

This concern has grown about how children manage to cope during the pandemic and how, when they return to school, they will have to make yet another drastic adjustment with different teachers, classmates, even little things like seat assignments. ”While kids are resilient, they’re not make of stone…Ongoing stress can be traumatic…In fact, nearly any event can be considered traumatic to a child if it happened unexpectedly, it happened repeatedly and the child was unprepared for it…or watched a loved one suffer….It’s also important to remember that it doesn’t mean he’ll automatically be traumatized…and the vast majority return to normal. (However,) between 3 and 15 percent of girls and 1 to 6 percent of boys develop C-PTSD following a traumatic event.” (“Treating the Effects of Childhood Trauma,” by Amy Morin, LCSW, verywellhealth.com, 24 Feb 2020)

Having a condition like C-PTSD can be isolating for youngsters, because they do not understand or know how to articulate what has been going on. Once they return to school and perhaps for a long time afterward, they may have different identities from those they had before the pandemic. They may even exhibit certain symptoms and behavioral characteristics of C-PTSD, such as:

Anxiety, depression, sadness

Lack of self-control, inability to express needs and wants

Impulsive behavior, irritability, aggression, anger

Isolated, trouble with relationships, lack of empathy

Low self-esteem, loss of interest, feeling hopeless

Lack of concentration, memory, decision-making

Fear for safety, lack of trust, feeling helpless 

Medical problems, sleeplessness

 (“Treating the Effects of Childhood Trauma,” by Amy Morin, LCSW, verywellhealth.com, 24 Feb 2020)

Characters in picture books act out some of the same behaviors at home, at daycare or at school. They throw temper tantrums. They get the blues. They feel lost. Sharing these books offer children the opportunity to look and listen for ways a character copes. A sensitive approach while reading aloud gives an adult the opportunity to call attention to a key point or have conversations about the character and situation in the story. Simply asking may be enough—“Have you ever felt like this character?”, “Have you ever been in such a situation?” or “Has anyone you know ever acted like this?”

This is not to presume that the authors and illustrators intended any such underlying messages when they created their books. This is also not to suggest these exquisitely-crafted picture books are like bibliotherapeutic titles. Gentle messages, however, may be on their pages if one only looks and listens. 

This is also not to say other helpful messages are to be found in these extraordinary picture books. Calling attention to joy and success over adversity brings out the power of a picture book to provide children with comfort during bad times. Finally, this is not to suggest such messages are obtrusive in the storytelling experience. A conversation should not interrupt the narrative, but key points may be saved as a focus for conversation after the book is closed.

Conversation starters may be something like these:

Has someone in the community helped you or your family?”

What do we have that we can share with others?

What is something to do when you feel bad?

Who is special in your life?

What was a good thing to do when you could not go to school?

What gives you sweet dreams?

What can you do that makes your family proud?

How can you make a special new friend?

When you regret something, what can you do?

Can you think of a way to make good things out of bad?

What is a way to get over anger or disappointment? 

Have you ever gotten frustrated when you cannot explain what you want?

What can you do when you don’t understand?

Exemplary 21st century picture books such as those below can help children understand and articulate what has been happening in their lives. These picture books are reviewed in Article 4, with a gentle conversation starter noted by an asterisk*. They offer a unique attempt to help children cope, such as a story about an obstacle overcome, a fortuitous turn of events, a lighthearted surprise or an example of strength and hope. 

Now more than ever children are looking for validation, reassurement, comfort, honesty, positivity, security and hope (“What is Complex PTSD?” by Matthew Tull, PhD, verywellhealth.com, 30 March 2020). For children today with C-PTSD, the hope is they may come away from sharing their feelings with belief in a brighter future and all the good that life can bring.

"Go easy on yourself. You're doing great. This is just really hard." Thank you, Bryan.

                                    Titles reviewed in Article 4:

Bang, Molly. When Sophie’s Feelings Are Really, Really Hurt, 2015, Blue Sky Press 

Bottner, Barbara. Priscilla Gorilla illustrated by Michael Emberley, 2017, Atheneum 

Chabbert, Ingrid. The Day I Became a Bird, illustrated by Raul Nieto Guridi, 2016, Kids Can Press

Cordell, Matthew. King Alice, 2018, Mcmillan 

de Sève, Randall. Zola’s Elephant illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski, 2018, Houghton Mifflin

Evans, Kristina. What's Special About Me, Mama? Illustrated by Javaka Steptoe, 2011, Little Brown

Frame, Jeron Ashford. Yesterday I Had the Blues, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, 2003, Random House  

Juster, Norton. Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie illustrated by Chris Raschka, 2008, Di Capua 

Loney, Andrea J. Double Bass Blues illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez, 2019, Knopf 

Love, Jessica. Julián Is a Mermaid, 2018, Candlewick 

McKissack, Patricia C. Goin’ Someplace Special, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, 2001, Atheneum

Mora, Oge. Saturday, 2019, Little Brown

Nyong’o, Lupita. Sulwe, illustrated by Vashti Harrison, 2019, Simon and Schuster 

Paschkis, Julie. Where Lily Isn’t, illustrated by Margaret Chodos-Irvine, 2020, Henry Holt 

Pippin-Mathur, Courtney. Maya Was Grumpy, 2013, Flashlight Press

Shannon, David. Grow Up, David!, 2018, Blue Sky Press

Shea, Bob. Who Wet My Pants? illustrated by Zachariah OHora, 2019, Little Brown

Shulevitz, Uri. How I Learned Geography, 2008, Farrar 

Smith, Sydney. Small in the City, 2019, Neal Porter Books

Stein, David Ezra. Interrupting Chicken, 2012, Candlewick 

Tan, Shaun. The Red Tree, 2000, Vancouver: Simply Read Books 

Willems, Mo. Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus! 2003, Hyperion

Willems, Mo. Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale, 2004, Hyperion

The Night Before Christmas: Santa Claus into the 21st Century

 Article 2

by Lyn Lacy

5300 words

For Bruce Whatley, for revealing the startled man behind Santa’s cool façade—and the struggle the frantic reindeer had getting onto that roof.

America’s Santa Claus is magic. He may be pictured as an elf or as a full-grown man. His coat is red, green, brown or even black. Best of all, Santa can be of any race—all he has to do is lay his finger aside of his nose. He was first described almost two hundred years ago in “A Visit from Saint Nicholas, or ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas”, a poem of 56 lines that have been called “some of the best-known verses ever written by an American.” The poem has been published in hundreds of editions, anthologies and parodies, has been visually interpreted more often than any other text and was the text for one of the first children’s books published in America to be illustrated in color.

The poem was first printed publicly on December 23, 1823, in the Troy Sentinel of New York anonymously and without illustrations. For the holiday in 1830, the Sentinel attached a woodcut by Myron King (n.d.) as the first illustration for the poem. 

In 1838 Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863), was cited as the poet, but he did not begrudgingly admit it until 1844. Some historians say that Moore—a well-known New York scholar of Hebrew and Greek—considered a sweet holiday tribute written for children as too frivolous to have been written by a pious man of the cloth. 

A debate about whether Moore was indeed the author was examined by Don Foster in Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous (Holt, 2000), in which he used, among other things, textual analysis of the anapestic verse to insist that the poem was written by Major Henry Livingston, Jr. (1748-1828) of Poughkeepsie, New York, seventy miles up the Hudson River from New York City. Livingston’s children remembered their father reading the very same poem to them as his own as early as 1807. Livingston himself never claimed authorship, but his descendent Mary S. Van Deusen (n.d.) published the poem under his name in 2016, illustrated by various illustrators of the 19th century.

The question of authorship has been as fascinating as the idea of where Santa Claus came from in the first place. Of all the world’s traditions and folklore surrounding generous gift-givers, the Netherland’s Sinterklass or Sint-Nicolass had the most direct influence on the poem. Both Moore and Livingston would have been aware of the Dutch culture in New York that had existed since the 17th century, when the Nederlanders settled the southern tip of Manhattan Island and called it New Amsterdam. The Dutch brought with them their tradition of a benevolent old gentleman with long white hair and beard who rode either in a horse-drawn wagon or mounted on the white horse itself to deliver gifts in good children’s shoes. Only the name “Sinterklass” (which became “Santa Claus”) and names for two of the reindeer—“Dunder” (thunder) and “Blixem” (lightning)—would attach themselves to The Night Before Christmas.

And both Moore and Livingston would have been familiar with their fellow New Yorker, Washington Irving (1783–1859), who wrote a gentle lampoon of the “hard-headed, hard-handed, stout-hearted” Dutch settlers in his novel A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (1809). Irving wrote, “the good St. Nicholas would often make his appearance in his beloved city, of a holiday afternoon, riding jollily among the treetops, or over the roofs of the houses, now and then drawing forth magnificent presents from his breeches pockets, and dropping them down the chimneys of his favorites…he never shows us the light of his countenance, nor ever visits us, save one night in the year…confining his presents merely to the children.” 

Irving also created a character Oloffe “The Dreamer” Van Kortlandt who had a dream in which he recognized “the good St. Nicholas…by his broad hat and his long pipe, which smoke ascended into the air and spread like a cloud overhead…And when St. Nicholas had smoked his pipe, he twisted it in his hat-band, and laying his finger beside his nose, gave the astonished Van Kortlandt a very significant look, then mounting his wagon he returned over the tree-tops and disappeared.”

The first illustrated book of the poem was a little 16-page chapbook in 1848 with eight wood engravings of a high-stepping Santa dressed as a Dutchman in frock coat, vest and knickers by Theodore Chauncy Boyd (1830-c1899). 

Following that was an even slimmer 10-page edition in 1862 illustrated by the prestigious illustrator, Felix Octavius Carr Darley (1822-1888). Darley had earlier illustrated Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” and the artist explained that for “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” he used Irving’s description of Saint Nick as an American Dutchman—“plump, short fur-lined coat, black boots and pipe.” Some other early versions were published with no credit given to the illustrator and are today known as the “Charles Graham” edition of 1870 or the “McLoughlin Bros” edition of 1888.

 

Thomas Nast (1840-1902), a famous political cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly, was the first to picture Santa Claus as a rotund little elf in a red fur suit, based on the artist’s German tradition of Sankt Nikolaus. In 1890, Nast published Thomas Nast's Christmas Drawings for the Human Race, which had a few illustrations for select lines from the poem. Haddon Sundblom (1899-1976), in advertisements for Coca-Cola from 1931 to 1964, pictured Santa as a full-grown human—always holding a bottle of Coke but never drinking it and never with a pipe—who is recognized around the world today. Although neither Nast nor Sundblom illustrated a picture book of the full text from The Night Before Christmas, much credit is due them both for their contributions to an American Santa.

 

The first half of the 20th century had editions of the poem by famous artists, all of whom remained true to their traditional styles, such as those by William Wallace Denslow (1856-1915) in 1902, Jessie Willcox Smith (1863-1935) in 1912, Margaret Evans Price (1888-1973) in 1917, A. E. Kennedy (1883-1963) in 1918, Frances Brundage (1854–1937) in 1927 and Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) in 1931.

Other illustrators were Keith Ward (n.d.) in 1934, Fern Bisel Peat (1893-1971) in 1936, Berta Hader (1890-1976) and Elmer Hader (1889-1973) in 1937, Thelma Gooch (b.1895-) in 1937, Grandma Moses (1860-1961) in 1948 (see below), Leonard Weisgard (1916-2000) in 1949, Eleanora Madsen (n.d.) in 1949 and Corinne Malvern (1901-1956) also in 1949.

The second half of the 20th century offered a flood of classics by well-known picture book illustrators, some of whom exhibited an almost reverential attitude toward the famous poem. Settings were customary scenes of moonlit winter nights and cozy interiors, such as those by Gustaf Tenggren (1896-1970) in 1951, Roger Duvoisin (1900-1980) in 1954, Gyo Fujikawa (1908-1998) in 1961, Douglas Gorsline (1913-1985) and in 1975, Tomie dePaola (1934-). Additional illustrators were Anita Lobel (1934-) in 1984, Tien Ho (n.d.) in 1986, John Steven Gurney (n.d.) in 1989, Greg Hildebrandt (1939-) in 1990 and Cheryl Harness (n.d.) also in 1990, Mike Artell (n.d.) in 1994, Ted Rand (1916-) in 1995, Christian Birmingham (n.d.) also in 1995. Private and small press editions of the poem were works of art illustrated by Valenti Angelo (1897-1982) in 1937, John dePol (1913-2004) in 1957 and Emily Wentworth (n.d.) in 1988.

However, more than half a dozen illustrators in the 1980s and 1990s presented new details for characters, plot or composition. For example, Rene Cloke (1905-1995) in 1980 pictured a slew of fairies that helped Santa (who knew he had fairies?). A worthy mechanical edition of The Night Before Christmas from this period was by Michael Hague (1948-) in 1981. A coloring book by John O’Brien (n.d.) in 1981 showed 12 kids, 30 stockings and a twinkle-toed, elfin Santa reminiscent of ones by Nast and Denslow. 

James Marshall (1942-1992) in 1985 pictured Santa in cowboy boots, raiding the family’s fridge and posing for a photo with the family’s bulldogs, cats and chickens. Scott Gustafson (n.d.) in 1985 had an awe-inspiring view from very high above of Santa arriving in his sleigh and devoted an illustration that lingers on the narrator coming down the dark stairway, heightening the anticipation of seeing Santa himself in the living room. James Rice (1934-2004) in 1989 depicted very homely, exhausted reindeer and a houseful of mice that were already living it up before a bespectacled, hard-working Santa came along with elves to be the mice’s dance partners. 

William Cone (n.d.) in 1992 presented a fun point of view from a solemn Santa looking into the chimney. For the stanza “To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!” Julie Downing (n.d.) in 1994 showed reindeer in the foreground headed right off the double-page spread. Jan Brett (1949-) in 1998 had two of Santa’s elves doing all the work while Santa himself was barely in the pictures at all. Tasha Tudor (1915-2008) changed a portrayal of Santa from a traditional “peddler” in her 1962 and 1975 editions to a glowing, goblin-like elf in 1999. 

Continuing into the 21st century, many beautiful editions with a traditional approach have been published by illustrators such as Caroline Pedler (n.d.) in 2001, Mary Engelbreit (1952-) in 2002, Tom Browning (n.d.) in 2009, Lesley Smith (n.d.) in 2010, Christopher Wormell (1955-) also in 2010, Charles Santore (1935-) in 2011, Angela Barrett (n.d.) in 2012 and Antonio Javier Caparo (n.d.) in 2017. Will Moses (n.d.) in 2006 lavished his edition with familial details that firmly anchor the story in a sense of place, as his great-grandmother had done over half a century before.

As handsome as these holiday books are, they are not in keeping with the focus here on exciting innovations regarding characters, plot or composition. Also excluded from this study are parodies, re-writes for select audiences, editions with animals as characters, miniatures and uses of photography or novelty media such as clay models or stitchery. Others not surveyed are editions in which the text has been edited. The only acceptable edits here are two common changes – one for the title, in which The Night Before Christmas has supplanted the poem’s original longer title, and one for the last line, in which “Happy Christmas” has become “Merry Christmas.” 

The following illustrators have been faithful to the text itself, whether their visual interpretations are contemporary, classical, comical or surreal. Some of the artists are award-winners for their other picture books, and those from outside the U.S. are proof that America’s Santa now belongs to the world.

1999 Bruce Whatley (Australian, 1954-), Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas. New York: HarperCollins

For the last Christmas of the 20th century, Bruce Whatley ushered in a truly bold new age of innovative 21st-century illustrations. The first double page spread was from the viewpoint of the mouse’s nest on a shelf high above the living room. Then, his reindeer exploded off the pages for the couplet, “To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!” This was followed by two more spreads depicting the continuing tumultuous action as the animals stampeded into our space beyond the picture frame, truly in a panicked frenzy that demands our involvement. The illustrator’s attention to the stanza about “dry leaves that before a wild hurricane fly” resulted in the reindeer rolling their eyes, tangling up with the leaves and bugling frantically. 

Most artists before and since have ignored this stanza altogether as irrelevant to the story or perhaps as too awkward and troublesome to illustrate. Whatley pictured the reindeers’ arrival in a way no one had done before, and his superb sequence of four double-page spreads was as exciting to see as Chris Van Allsburg’s (1949-) single-page rhino scene in Jumanji in 1981 and Maurice Sendak’s (1928-2012) three “wild rumpus” double spreads in Where the Wild Things Are in 1963.

Whatley also gave endearing, larger-than-life facial expressions to Santa and the father, including their surprise at first seeing each other. He included a plot twist by having the jolly old elf give the father a nostalgic little present of his own. Plus, as Santa flew away, the reindeer once again burst off the page right into our laps. In 2004, HarperFestival released a board book of Whatley’s 1999 edition.    

2002  Robert Sabuda (American, 1965-), Illustrator and paper engineer. The Night Before Christmas Pop-up, New York: Little Simon, 12 pp, 8”x8”

A master paper engineer like Sabuda has elevated the pop-up book to a work of art with the power to entice and educate in the razzle-dazzle of a high-tech age. Sabuda’s mechanical edition enhanced the magical theme of Santa Claus and the poem itself when, for instance, paper performance showed Santa going down the chimney, then back up again. From the beginning stanza, when the mouse’s head turned as the clock strikes midnight, the special mechanical features acted out the story, advancing an understanding of it rather than simply amusing or intriguing the audience. Sugarplums on wheels encircled the children’s heads and a pull-the-flap propelled Santa above the town in this remarkable tour de force. 

2002  Matt Tavares (American, 1975-), Illustrator. 'Twas the Night Before Christmas: Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas, Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 32 pp, 10”x11.6”

Among all the pitched rooftops in Boston, Santa and his reindeer landed on a particular one -- the beautiful 1804 Nichols House in Beacon Hill. The setting inside the townhouse had old-fashioned furniture, Christmas tree and toys drawn in pencil to create monochromatic scenes from a time gone by. Such close observation can be doubly rewarding when you learn online that the illustrator photographed real-life models for his characters, a sleigh, a papier-mâché reindeer, a Christmas tree with 19th century ornaments and The Nichols House Museum. The book has very few solid black lines or solid white spaces but exhibits a gradation of shades of grey, affecting the softer tones of moonlight and candlelight at nighttime.

Adding to the illustrator, Tavares created unforgettable facial expressions for three characters. First was a lovely young girl, whose model was the artist’s cousin Susan, sleeping with one arm over a dolly to keep it from falling out of bed. Next was the father, modeled by author friend M. T. Anderson, who turned with eyes wide in wonder as he hears from above the “prancing and pawing of each little hoof.” Last of the frozen moments in time showed Santa -- whose model was a Santa’s helper named Art Usher -- with a priceless expression of shock when he realizes he’s being watched, not only by the father but also by us. This Santa was in the old tradition of a 19th-century Dutch gentleman of New York, dressed in a long coat with fur collar, and the startled look on the good sir’s face pulled at our hearts as you realized he’s just as vulnerable as we mortals. Long after you’ve closed the book, the three sweet faces stayed with you. Tavares has illustrated other Christmas books, such as The Gingerbread Pirates (2009) by Kristen Kladstrup, Red and Lulu (2017), and Dasher (2019). 

2005  Lisbeth Zwerger (Austrian, 1954-), Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, New York: Penguin, 40 pp, 9.5”x11.6”

Zwerger ‘s remarkable double page watercolor showed Santa in his sleigh as a wee gentleman in a red coat and tall headgear with a St. Nicholas’s hooked staff. He had a few tiny elves in a wooden sleigh with toys pulled along behind it by delicate threads. Inside a handsome, austere four-story townhouse, the enchantment continued as the mouse is shown sleeping in his striped pajamas while upstairs six children rested their heads on one enormous pillow and a portly father sprang from his bed with amusing agility. 

These visual details came before the main event itself, which was the most magical of all. Using only five poses, Zwerger illustrated Santa going straight to work, filling small stockings with large toys, bringing in a stack of books, pulling the Christmas tree out of his bag, climbing up the tree to decorate it with little dolls and finally, smiling in farewell. The smile from this whimsical little man – along with his wispy “hat hair” after taking off his headgear – made this edition an impossible one to put down. Zwerger’s remarkable imagination over many years has graced children’s classics, fairy tales and folklore from around the world.

2006  Gennady Spirin (American, 1948-), Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish, 32 pp, 8”x10”

A small book with small type and only ten small watercolor illustrations, Spirin’s edition was a lap book begging for close attention. The moon cast long shadows in the snow as Santa, in his handsomely-carved sleigh pulled by bejeweled reindeer, glided up to the rooftop in the only double-page spread, putting on a show for a beautiful boy gazing out the window with pure joy. The child raced his cats downstairs to watch with eyes aglow as the Russian-born illustrator’s huge Santa broke into a jig in heavy boots. The jolly giant was having the time of his life with toys held high, and his exuberance was infectious. This small book with a not-so-elfin Santa offered a whopper of a gift – the unadulterated, feel-good happiness of Christmas Eve. Spirin has illustrated several other Christmas books, as well as folklore and fairy tales.

2006  Richard Jesse Watson (American, n.d.), Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, New York: HarperCollins, 40 pp, 10”x10”

A chat between Watson and St. Nick at the end of this edition answered the question: How does Santa deliver “so much to so many all in one night?” For one thing, according to Watson, Santa is a “reindeer whisperer” who’s developed a special feed concoction that “stimulates their ability to move very fast,” and he’s also got a super-duper rocket for a sleigh that’s tricked out by the Far North Airline “to expand the moment between ‘tick’ and ‘tock’ on Christmas Eve.” Santa as aviator wore vintage goggles and flight cap, and his rocket’s cockpit had such controls as a Geese Alert, Fast-Faster-Zoom switches and a hot drink machine that offered Tea, Hot Chocolate, Wassail, Espresso, Milk or Borsht. 

To study for his illustrations, Watson made a papier-mâché model of the rocket, which was featured along with the illustrator’s family, friends and a big dog Alfred, all of whom posed for characters. The reindeer invited the audience into the book while they flew past and by the father who reached off the page when he sprang from his bed. No one, young or old, could resist such invitations to join in the fun, certainly not the diverse group of elves (or rather, Watson’s own family and friends). He has also illustrated Biblical verses and fairy tales and wrote and illustrated The Magic Rabbit (2005). 

2007  Niroot Puttapipat (Thai, n.d.), Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas: A Magical Cut-Paper Edition, Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 24 pp, 9”x10”

The black-on-white elegance of silhouettes appeals to children when a bit of color attracts the eye and when something’s going on in the pictures. Add to that a turn-the-flap page, ingenious cutouts and a graceful pop-up, and you satisfy many youngsters’ need to manipulate things in mechanicals or moveable books. Once mechanics have been dissected to see what makes them work, the artistry of a single double page spread where nothing much happens makes its impact. This book’s masterful illustration was an exquisite, perfectly balanced portrait of a regal Santa simply filling a stocking, and the pose showed that the illustrator was a master of the picture-book craft of placement for elements either side of the gutter.

Natee -- as the illustrator prefers to be called -- now lives in London and expresses a strong artistic influence from, among other things, the “Golden Age” of illustrators, known for their delicate, precise characters and settings from the Victorian and Edwardian eras, just like those seen in illustrations here. The illustrator has added editions of Jingle Bells (2015) and The Nutcracker (2016) to a Christmas collection of pop-ups.

2009  Rachel Isadora (American, 1953-), Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, New York: Penguin, 32 pp, 10”x10”

In the first double page spread, a bright orange sun sets while snow began to fall over an African village. In the next spread, the sky and land changed to darkness as night came and the light snow covered all. As in other editions where Santa does not arrive from the sky, this sleigh glided on the ground outside the window before the reindeer flew “up to the housetop.” The whole family greeted the hearty, robust Santa who looked eager to dance, not an unusual attitude for Isadora since she danced professionally and her art often reflects her love for it. Richly textured cut paper with patterns and paint formed everything in her collages to stunning effect, especially the gaily-dressed dolls and colorful toy animals left for the children. Isadora was awarded the 1992 Caldecott Honor Book for Ben’s Trumpet (1991) and has had published almost two dozen other picture books in the 21st century, the latest being Do I Have to Wear a Coat? (2020). 

2010  Robert Ingpen (Australian, 1936-), Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, New York: Sterling, 48 pp, 9”x10.5”

Ingpen’s wrinkled and weather-beaten elf who fell calamitously down the chimney was the sootiest, grimiest Santa by far. He looked like one of those good-hearted rascals recognized the world over, and he instantly recovered from his inglorious descent with benevolent but mischievous charm. As Whatley did in his edition discussed above, Ingpen also devoted several double-page spreads to Santa’s reindeer, including an illustration for the problematic “dry leaves” stanza. The house was a stolid, imposing edifice set down in isolated ranchland far from town, and from nearby woods the reindeer ran onto the lawn, pulling Santa across the snow in a low-frame wooden sledge. Only after several pages did they “mount to the sky” and land on the roof. Ingpen’s several Illustrated Classics published by Sterling include his latest, Just So Stories (2018).

2010  Eric Puybaret (French, n.d.), Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge, 26 pp, 12”x10.8”

An edition by Puybaret began in the endpapers, done in colorful acrylics, bold and fanciful, with before and after scenes of Santa’s elves (one of them wearing sneakers) at his North Pole workshop. Then on the title page, a sweet smiling Santa himself welcomed us to his favorite night of the year. Soon, gliding down gracefully from the sky were eight identical, dignified reindeer as delicate as ceramic figurines in flowing capes and top hats. They escorted the red-robed Santa, who was much like a little porcelain doll, benign and unpretentious, with gorgeous beard, mustache and pointed cap. A lovely fairy witnesses the gift-giving inside the house, which has a décor as child-friendly and toy-like as a toddler’s first dollhouse. Puybaret has illustrated a series of classic children’s songs, complete with audio CD, as well as the story used for the ballet, The Nutcracker (2016), retold by John Cech.

2013  Zdenko Basic (Croatian, n.d.) and Manuel Sumberac (Croatian, n.d.), Illustrators. The Night Before Christmas, London: Hodder, 32 pp, 11”x 11”

Tiny tubby toddlers marched across endpapers in hooded onesies, carrying snacks, gifts and a stuffed bear. Basic and Sumberac are digital artists and animators with a history of art in the steampunk movement. Landing on the rooftop was a tangle of elegant, spider-like reindeer, with Santa and his truly humungous burlap bag of toys. Santa himself was a gigantic balloon of a fellow with round steampunk eyeglasses, wee mittened hands sprouting from a bulbous red coat and a dozen helmeted elves scurrying around to do all the work.  On every wall of this tilted old funhouse were framed pictures of the toddlers but none of grown-ups. No parents witnessed the craziness of this nighttime visitor -- just a threadbare toy bear sitting in an easy chair. Basic has illustrated a series of Steampunk Classics, featuring works by Dickens, Poe, H. G. Wells and Mary Shelley.

2013  Christine Brallier (American, n.d.), Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, St. Paul, MN: Brownian Bee Press, 32 pp, 8.8”x10.8”

Mosaics are a difficult medium for the creation of facial expressions -- not just for human faces but certainly for a jubilant, bugling reindeer or a decidedly suspicious cat. However, in Brallier’s stained-glass edition were not only subtle expressions for Santa and the father who crept downstairs but also for a couple of reindeer and more than a dozen exquisite poses of the artist’s own cat.  In fact, the cat itself might well have been the narrator, since the lovely creature obviously has “nothing to dread” when Santa approached on bended knee, then gently picked it up for a cuddle. One could almost hear the cat purring.

2013  Holly Hobbie (American, 1944-), Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, New York: Little Brown, 40 pp, 11.5”x9.5”

Every adult knows a child who can’t get back to sleep once awakened. On the cover of Hobbie’s edition, the sleepless one was a toddler squished in bed with three older kids and a cat. This little one was a real treat with thumb in its mouth, trailing a favorite blanket down the hall and too young to talk, therefore unable to divulge a secret. The baby went down the stairs on its bottom, into the living room to hide behind a chair while a magical little man in a red coat and suspenders entertained the cat. Dad came too but was unnoticed hiding in the hallway, or the silent scene would be interrupted. As the little man left up the chimney, the baby waved goodbye and all’s well, so back to bed, eyes wide with the wonder of it all.  Here were unadorned, uncluttered Hobbie watercolor paintings of the purest and simplest kind – perfect innocence. Among her many picture books since the early 1970s, Hobbie has illustrated another 21st century holiday title, I’ll Be Home for Christmas (2001).

2015 David Ercolini (American, n.d.), Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, New York: Scholastic, 32 pp, 10”x12”

If future archeologists unearth a house such as the one in this edition they might figure they’d found the American 21st-Century “Taj Mahal of Tacky.” Every Christmas decoration imaginable by digital-artist Ercolini was found here, inside the house and out, from Santa slippers and a red-nosed-reindeer nightlight to a stupendous inflatable Santa on the roof that was twice the size of the jolly old elf himself when he landed with his maps, megaphone, whistle and reindeer fitted out with costumes, carrots and cameras. Santa relaxed awhile to enjoy the smorgasbord of cakes, pudding, cookies, donuts and cupcakes and listen to family pets’ Christmas lists and play with their toys before he was surprised by Father, got quickly to work and finally scurried up the chimney with soot puffing out all around. That Ercolini sure knew how to throw a party. He did so again in the hilarious It’s a Moose! (2020) by Meg Rosoff.

2017  Charles Santore (American, 1935-), Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas or, A Visit from St. Nicholas Coloring Book, Kennebunkport, ME, Cider Mill Press, 48 pp, 11”x10.5”

In Santore’s traditional 2011 picture book, Santa was the only vividly colorful figure in otherwise dark illustrations. “The luster of midday” in outdoor scenes was missing as well as any light inside the house, except for a candle that Santa used to light his pipe. However, for would-be artists who might choose to lighten up the visuals, an opportunity became available in 2017 when pencil drawings of Santore’s original illustrations were published in a coloring book. The original double page illustrations were skillfully cropped to single-page line drawings in order to focus solely on the action. As adult coloring books became increasingly more popular, Santore’s was certainly one for serious hobbyists to create their own versions for family heirlooms. Coloring books have been issued for several other titles in his series called Classic Edition. 

2020 Loren Long (American,), Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, Harper

The charm of Long’s edition was the depiction of different kinds of families of diverse ethnicities residing in different types of homes, each group preparing for Santa’s visit — a trio of redheads in a farmhouse, a boy and girl in a trailer home, two boys in a downtown apartment and a girl in an island bungalow with palm trees outside the window. Fathers appeared at windows of three homes, and a mother took his place in the last. Santa, sleigh and reindeer were diminutive as exactly described in the poem, so the illustrator’s choices of settings and characters were the pleasant details not seen before that lend much toward reaching a wider audience of a variety of families. If only Santa would have magically put his finger aside his nose and become as diverse as the families he visits.

   

Note: Some of this information was included in the exhibition “The Night Before Christmas into the 21st Century” at the Museum of Arts and Sciences, Daytona Beach, Florida, 6 December 2018 – 21 January 2019, Ruth Grim, Curator, with Lyn Lacy, Guest Curator.

Ordering Bibliography

Basic, Zdenko and Manuel Sumberac,,Illustrators. The Night Before Christmas, London: Hodder, 2013, ISBN-10: 1444902423, ISBN-13: 978-1444902426

Brallier, Christine, Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, St. Paul, MN: Brownian Bee Press, 2013, ISBN-10: 0978968824, ISBN-13: 978-0978968823

Ercolini, David, Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, New York: Scholastic, 2015, ISBN-10: 0545391121, ISBN-13: 978-0545391122

Hobbie, Holly, Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, New York: Little Brown, 2013, ISBN-10: 0316070181, ISBN-13: 978-0316070188

Ingpen, Robert, Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, New York: Sterling, 2010, ISBN-10: 1402781822, ISBN-13: 978-1-4027-8182-7

Isadora, Rachel, Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, New York: Penguin, 2009, ASIN: B00EB0HX8C

Long, Loren, Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, Harper, 2020

Puttapipat, Niroot, Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas: A Magical Cut-Paper Edition, Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2007, ISBN-10: 0763634697, ISBN-13: 978-0763634698

Puybaret, Eric, Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge, 2010, ISBN-10: 1936140063, ISBN-13: 978-1936140060

Sabuda, Robert, Illustrator and paper engineer. The Night Before Christmas Pop-up, New York: Little Simon, 2002, ISBN-10: 0689838999, ISBN-13: 978-1403715821

Santore, Charles, Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas or, A Visit from St. Nicholas Coloring Book, Kennebunkport, ME, Cider Mill Press, 2017, ISBN-10: 1604336838, ISBN-13: 978-1604336832

Spirin, Gennady, Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish, 2006, ASIN: B00ERNS05I

Tavares, Matt, Illustrator. 'Twas the Night Before Christmas: Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas, Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press,2002, ISBN-10: 0763631183, ISBN-13: 978-0763631185

Watson, Richard Jesse, Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, New York: HarperCollins, 2006, ISBN-10: 0060757426, ISBN-13: 978-0060757427

Whatley, Bruce, Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas. New York: HarperCollins, 1999, ISBN-10: 0060266082, ISBN-13: 978-0060266080

Zwerger, Lisbeth, Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas, New York: Penguin, 2005, ISBN-10: 9888240889, ISBN-13: 978-9888240883

  

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: the Tin Man into the 21st Century

Article 1

by Lyn Lacy

3800 words

For Uri Shulevitz, whose steampunk Tin Man (2000) inspired this manuscript

For over a hundred years, readers of lavish picture book adaptations as well as editions of the novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) by L. Frank Baum (1856-1919), have been intrigued by the Tin Woodman, a figure made of tin who was decidedly an odd fellow for Dorothy to encounter in the woods. Easier to understand was the Scarecrow as a familiar and comforting character for a Kansas farm girl. And the author could be forgiven for introducing the Lion—far from his usual habitat in the African savannah—since after all, the story is a fairy tale. 

However, the Tin Man was a bit more like 19th century science fiction.

Baum’s son said his father got the idea when he created a hardware store window display with a figure made out of bits and pieces from the store. However, the book’s character was not made of pots and pans. Neither was he a robot. He was a man made of prosthetics, bit by painful bit. The Wicked Witch of the East had put a spell on Nick Chopper’s ax which had, true to fairy tale tradition of gory violence, cut him into pieces. A friendly tinsmith put him back together again with his young woodcutter’s personality and memories of happier times magically intact and even without a heart, he remained a generous and gentle man. He later got his own book, The Tin Woodman of Oz (1918), in which he explained, “as I lost parts of my meat body by degrees, I always remained the same person as in the beginning, even though in the end I was all tin and no meat.” In this twelfth title by Baum, the author also introduced the Tin Woodman’s twin, the Tin Soldier, and old Ku-Klip the Tinsmith who made them both.

Influences on the author were surely Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), whose fairy tales had been translated from Danish by the 1840s, and Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), who had published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 and Through the Looking-Glass in 1871. As a matter of fact, Baum had called the manuscript for his first Oz book “The Fairyland of Oz,” “The City of Emeralds” and “From Kansas to Fairyland,” hinting at his desire to publish a fantasy that would stand beside those abroad (The Best of the Baum Bugle, 1961-1962). A man made of tin may have appealed to Baum as an oddity like Thumbelina or the Mad Hatter. He had already published his American slant on British nursery rhymes, Mother Goose in Prose (1897), which had been successful enough for him to quit his journalism job, and Father Goose, His Book (1899), which had been that year’s best-selling children’s book in America (The Baum Bugle, Autumn 1987). For The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum began with a uniquely American tornado in Kansas farmland before transporting Dorothy into the fantasy world of Oz. 

He could also have been intrigued with Victorian Science Fiction. Likely he was a reader of Jules Verne (1828-1905) whose books had been published in English, like Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869). Also in print were fantastic tales by Bram Stoker (1847-1912), Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). H. G. Wells (1866-1946), and he might have especially been intrigued by Mary Shelley (1797-1851) and her Frankenstein’s monster, made up of bits and pieces.   

Likely Baum’s notion for the Tin Woodman was also inspired by the 19th century dime novel, The Steam Man of the Prairies (1868) by Edward S. Ellis (1840-1916). The story about the heroic frontier adventures of a teenage inventor and his steam-powered, human-like robot was fashioned after a real robot built in New Jersey by the actual American inventor Zadoc P. Dederick. An imitation of The Steam Man of the Prairies was the very popular series about Frank Reade and His Steam Man of the Plains (1876), which was serialized in the magazine Boys of New York. Baum had been a journalist and two of his four sons were teenagers during the 1870s, so the family must have been familiar with juvenile fiction. In a later Oz book, Ozma of Oz (1907), the author’s wind-up robot Tik-Tok is similar to the steam men from this era, and Ellis’s Steam Man and Baum’s Tik-Tok are considered to be the first robots in modern literature (The Baum Bugle, Spring1988). 

Baum chose William Wallace Denslow (1856-1915) as the first illustrator for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and the artist is still revered today for the black-and-white line drawings he created. In 1902, however, Denslow quarreled with Baum over royalties from production of a stage play based on the book, and John R. Neill (1877-1943) was commissioned to illustrate the author’s second book, The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), and the thirteen other Oz titles written by Baum himself. Neill chose to keep the Tin Woodman much as Denslow had pictured him with tin bow tie, funnel hat and spats. 

Starting in the 1930s, illustrated adaptations of the book began to be published in German, Dutch, Yugoslavian, Swedish, Spanish and Italian (The Best of the Baum Bugle, 1965-1966). In one German illustration the Tin Man had a box for a head, a cylinder for a nose, weird flat feet and was strung together like a marionette. In a Japanese edition he looked like he was put together with Tinkertoys. In a Russian version, he had a pinched-in belted waist and upturned nose like Pinocchio. The most surreal of all was a Romanian edition picturing medieval-type armor on a Daliesque, mustachioed Tin Woodman.

After Neill’s death, Evelyn Copelman (1919-2003)  became the illustrator for The New Wizard of Oz (1944). Her pictures were soft and out of focus, influenced by the MGM movie “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) with a Tin Woodman who rattled when he walked. Copelman’s Tin Man had the same sweet face as Jack Haley’s in the film. After 1956, when the book passed into the public domain, many illustrators continued to portray him as a cheerful, helpful companion. And in an 1970 edition with three-color illustrations by Brigette Bryan (and full-color cover illustration by Don Irwin), a child-like Tin Woodman looks more like a Munchkin with his Peter Pan collar and curly tin shavings for hair. 

Beginning in the 1980s -- and into the 21st century -- genuine works of art began to depict a mature Tin Man, either as a sleek, super-heroic robot or as an automaton, the 19th-century human-like robot designed to follow a sequence of operations. 

A movie that perpetuated helpful robots was “Star Wars: A New Hope” (1977) by 20th Century Fox, featuring Anthony Daniels as the protocol droid C-3PO whose gestures, mannerisms and even way of speaking were strikingly similar to MGM’s Tin Man. George Lucas (1944-) has said his inspiration was “Flash Gordon” but hard to ignore are characters so much like those in Baum’s book: Luke was raised on a farm by an aunt and uncle before leaving when disaster struck like Dorothy; R2-D2 was like little Toto; Han Solo was the Scarecrow; C-3PO was the Tin Man; Chewbacca was the Cowardly Lion; Leia was Glinda the Good Witch; Obi Wan was the Wizard and, in this first (chronologically) of Lucas’s films, Darth Vader was the Wicked Witch of the West. The Wizard of Oz was revisited as an epic space fantasy—brilliant!—and this author's 2017 Photoshopped composite above (from coloring books) is a humble tribute to the genius of Baum and Lucas.

Other Illustrators have depicted a Tin Woodman who was less than happy with his lot in life, pointing to a deeper analysis of his dreadful plight. A filmic influence might be Nigel Davenport as the perceptive computer HAL, whose calm, hypnotic voice was unemotional and irrational in the sophisticated “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) by MGM-British Studios. Moviegoers could not ignore HAL’s plaintive plea emanating from behind that glittering console as his consciousness degraded, leaving the unsettling realization that his was indeed an untenable existence. In yet another movie, “The Wiz” (1978), Nipsey Russell as the Tin Man explained—“That’s the whole tragic point, my friends—what would I do if I could feel?”  

Both images of the Tin Man as superhero and despondent lost soul contribute to the steampunk movement in literature, fashion and the arts that views old machines (especially powered by steam, cogs or springs) as intricate works of art. The following 20th-century illustrators were the first to venture into these different ways of imagining Baum’s man made of tin.  

Michael Hague (American, 1948-) illustrated The Wizard of Oz (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982) with a Tin Woodman as the brightest figure on the page, as spick and span as C-3PO. He was formally dressed but not in the usual way. He had been fitted out in a silly kilt, blouse and collar. His ears stuck out, he was pigeon-toed and he had a kitchen colander for headgear. All of these joined together made him a truly comical figure, but the expression on his face was one of dismay. 

Illustrated as a fellow decidedly unhappy with his transformation was the Tin Woodman by Greg Hildebrandt (American, 1939-) in an adaptation from the novel (Unicorn Pub House, 1985). This Tin Man had a melancholy visage and resembled a robot. He was red with rust, and vines grew up his legs. Thick cylinders formed his body, with ball bearings for joints, conical helmet as headgear and heavy belt, gauntlets and boots. Also in 1985, at the start of her picture book career, Jan Brett (American, 1949-) was the coloring book artist for a Random House “Color-and-Keep Storybook” based on The Wizard of Oz. Her line drawings of a friendly Tin Woodman showed flat arms and legs bolted together as if they were created using a Robot Erector Set.

Barry Moser (American, 1940-) had illustrations in his edition (University of California Press, 1986) that were the darkest of any Oz book. Not only were the black-and-white wood engravings somber and unforgiving, but also the Tin Woodman’s frozen posture emanated the gloomiest of spirits. His body was formed by layer upon layer of inflexible tin plates, and his face was a gruesome mask with a locked jaw, an oil can for a nose and a sieve upside down on his head. Etched into the tin were striations so he appeared sinewy, as if straining to keep his head turned, his arms raised, his fists tight around the ax handle. He was additionally burdened with a tool bag and heavy padlocked belt, while spiders’ webs and vines clung to his back, an illustration decidedly for fans of steampunk.

Pete Bishop (British, ), in The Wizard of Oz, retold by Neil and Ting Morris (Ideals, 1988) created a psychedelic edition in which the Tin Woodman was made of bits and pieces from the tinsmith’s rubbish pile. A rather fine head sculpted in overlapping scraps of tin sat on top of a body fashioned from electrical supplies riveted and wired together. He had a keyhole plate strapped where a heart should be, bed springs for legs and an ax handle that looked like somebody’s crowbar. Vines crept all over this ragtag of a fellow, who looked like a science project done by kids as a class assignment. Likewise, the Tin Man as shown by Jos. A. Smith in 1984 sported an upside-down saucepan for a head, strainer for a cap, inverted spoon for a nose and other odds and ends patched together for a body. 

Charles Santore (American, n.d.) in a condensed version (Jelly Bean Press, 1991) had a Tin Woodman who was the friendliest-looking of any in picture book editions. This was accomplished by the artist’s choice of a watering can for a head with its spout as an upturned nose, which gave him a cheerful, gentle look. His handsome body was made up of shiny hollow cylinders not unlike ductwork in a heating system, and they were held together at the joints by nothing more than magic. He looked quite spiffy when he was repaired and presented with a golden ax-handle and bejeweled oil can. By contrast, Michael Wimmer’s cover art for a 1994 Grosset and Dunlap edition with original 1944 text illustrations by Evelyn Copelman had a Tin Woodman who was quite severe, robotic, and covered with red rust. 

Lisbeth Zwerger (Austrian, 1954-) with her eloquent illustrations (North-South Books, 1996) showed the transformation of Nick Chopper into the Tin Woodman in a series of four vignettes across a double-page spread. Nick complacently accepted his first tin leg. Then he got all four tin limbs. Next he bid farewell in the mirror to his handsome blue coat and lovely red hair. Finally he turned into a fully tin-smithed and decidedly bemused young fellow. Zwerger endowed him with a lingering pink cast to his face, a tiny tuft of hair and a long red feather sticking up from his funnel cap. Despite his transformation, this Tin Woodman’s calm look was as if he was still determined to remain as contented as the human he used to be.

Victor G. Ambrus (British, 1935-), in an adaptation by James Riordan (Oxford University Press, 1999), had a Tin Woodman that moved about with flexible arms and legs, and his hinged jaw was in a perpetual grin. He was a thoroughly likeable fellow and quite unflappable, even when confronted with the great and terrible Wizard.

 

Turning to 21st century illustrations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, artists from abroad as well as from the U. S. have pictures that may be classically representational or variously surreal, comical, mystical, child-like or even primitive. Some of these fantastic illustrations would knock Denslow’s beloved guy from 1900 right off his dapper little spats.

2000  Uri Shulevitz (American, 1935-), Illustrator. The Hundredth Anniversary Celebration: Thirty Favorite Artists and Writers Celebrate One Hundred Years of Oz edited by Peter Glassman, New York: Harper Collins, 55 pp, 9”x11.5”

As the new century dawned and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz turned 100, Shulevitz contributed to this anniversary collection a whimsical, intriguing illustration that inspired the writing of this manuscript. The Tin Woodman was pictured in profile as a tall gentlemanly figure encased in tin, sporting a pink polka-dot tie and a benign expression. His unique system of wheels with coupling rods rotated his hips in order to move his legs, and he had a puff of steam coming from his funnel hat, both of which can be interpreted as an appropriate and playful allusion to steam locomotion in the era in which Baum wrote his masterpiece. As such, Shulevitz’s distinctive image became for the audience an example of steampunk (but in correspondence with the illustrator, he admitted he had no idea!). Worth noting in this same collection was Mark Teague’s contribution of his engaging Tin Woodman enjoying a sunny day in southern California and Maurice Sendak’s cover art in which the Tin Man sprouted big ears and wore tin moccasins. 

2000  Robert Sabuda (American, 1965-), Paper Engineer. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: A Classic Collectible  by L. Frank Baum, New York: Little Simon, 16 pp, 8”x10”

Illustrated with Denslow’s drawings, Sabuda’s mechanical edition showed the Tin Woodman popping up in perfect detail with arms stretched out and held up on each side by Dorothy and the Scarecrow -- all in a small 2”x5” space -- not really surprising from this master paper engineer, who also created a cyclone that stretched out 10” high. Sabuda won the 2002 Meggendorfer Prize for Best Paper Engineer from the Movable Book Society for this pop-up book. 

2002  Wayne Anderson (British, n.d.), Illustrator. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, London: Templar Publishing, 180 pp, 8.5”x6”

Adorning the Tin Woodman was a ruff, shoulder guards that drooped across his shoulders like a small cape, a handsome belt with buckle, and stylishly pointed boots. He might have a patch on his coat and spider webs attached to his limbs, but this was a dandy to make any tinsmith proud. He looked out at the audience as if hoping someone might do something to help him out about the unsightly rust beginning to take over. 

2005  Scott McKowen (American, 1957-), Illustrator. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, New York: Sterling Children’s Books, 176 pp, 6”x8”

A complex tin man was illustrated by scratchboard artist McKowen. Not only did the artist create an entire body that is precisely, evenly contoured, but he also created an intricate waist for the fellow that is composed of suspenders around a big ball bearing. The Tin Woodman had such a fine coat, skirt, boots and gloves that McKowen’s tinsmith must be a steampunk artisan beyond compare.

2009  Nick Price (British, n.d.), Illustrator. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz condensed and adapted by Suzi Alexander, paintings by Lee Wing Painting Workshop, Franklin TN: Dalmatian Press, The Grand Edition Children’s Library for Children, 92 pp, 13”x17”

This walloping edition illustrated by Price was more than a coffee table book. Open a double page out flat, and the book was the size of a coffee table itself. In 2002, the publisher featured Price’s pen and ink illustrations in a 7”x9” edition, which was reprinted as a Great Classics for Children edition in 2009 with a new full-color cover illustration by Mark Elliott of a charming Tin Man. In between, this huge Grand Edition Classic Library for Children was released, with Price’s line drawings digitally painted by Lee Wing Painting Workshop. Price’s comical Woodman was a loveable guy with a big head and spats, googly eyes and hinged jaw open to reveal shiny white teeth.

2011  Robert Ingpen (Australian, 1936-), Illustrator. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, New York: Sterling, 192 pp, 8”x9.5”

A powerful visual for transformation of the Tin Woodman was in Ingpen’s double page spread. A very handsome young Nick Chopper was shown metamorphosing from left to right, each stage shown after the tinsmith had replaced another missing part, piece by piece. Finally the poor guy was left with only his gloves and ax. The final metamorphosis was quite attractive – the tin torso was a tiered affair of nicely filigreed layers -- but this illustrator understood perfectly that the subject of all this lavish attention would not have been giggly with enthusiasm over his new form. Instead, Ingpen’s tin man looked confused and disconsolate, a sad figure of a man, obviously broken in spirit and utterly lost. The effect was breathtaking and heartbreaking. 

2013  Michael Sieben (American, n.d.), Illustrator. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, New York: Harper Collins, 224 pp, 5.8”x8.2”

Sieben’s artistic style was edgy, but the Tin Man was not that different from those by other artists who used a traditional approach. Compared to the other kooky, big-eyed characters in illustrations for this edition, the Woodman with his tidy mustache was a very serene figure. Sieben had a way of squashing the character—making him short and wide, with no neck—so the Tin Woodman ended up looking like a cuddly stuffed toy. Likewise did all characters appear child-like as pictured by Robin Robinson in the 2013 Penguin Young Readers edition. 

2016  Agnese Baruzzi (Italian, n.d.), Illustrator and paper engineer. The Wizard of Oz retold from the L. Frank Baum masterpiece, New York: Sterling Children’s Books, 27 pp, 10”x10”

The discovery of the Tin Woodman in the woods was one of the cut-paper double spreads by Baruzzi in this edition of only five three-dimensional silhouettes. Using only delicate paper cuts, the artist managed to convey astonishment on the Tin Man’s face when he happened to rust in place, immobilized for what might have been all time. Dorothy and friends were on the opposite page, coming to the rescue.

2016  Elodie Coudray (French, n.d.), Illustrator. The Wizard of Oz adapted by Anouk Filippini, Paris: Auzou Publishing, 40 pp, 10”x12”

In another edition from 2016, Coudray presented a whimsical Tin Woodman in laced-up, high top sneakers. His head was pulled down between his shoulders so only his eyes peeked out. His arms and legs were made of cans with labels “CORN”, “California PEACHES” and “Chile con Carne.” He had elbows, knees and waist fashioned with flexible hose like that used in ductwork. Wires were winding through the cans and hose to hold everything together. On his chest he had gauges, one of which was for oil, beneath which the Wizard bolted his new heart. 

2016  Kriss Sison (American, n.d.), Illustrator. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum, New York: Macmillan Seven Seas Entertainment, 400 pp, 5.9”x8”

In a third book from 2016, Sison’s manga-style edition had a Tin Woodman who was a futuristic, robotic superhero. He was shiny, with the barest hint of rust, and his arms and legs bulged with tin muscles. He was menacing with his heavy-duty ax and stomping boots, except when he got a heart from the Wizard and turned into a sweet, grinning pussycat.

2017 Amerigo Pinelli (Italian, n.d.). The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Thaxted, Essex: Miles Kelly, 160pp, 9”x11”

Pinelli created another friendly-looking Tin Woodman, and he appeared in half of the illustrations as well as on the book cover. He had been created from scraps the tinsmith riveted together, with ball bearings for joints and hinges behind the elbows and knees. The funnel hat sported a handle on each side, perhaps so he could lift it to fill his head with oil. His eyes were his most expressive feature as he winced, frowned, grinned and finally cried when the Wizard’s reward of a beautiful silk heart brought a tear sliding down his cheek.

Comic books, graphic novels and manga are worthy of mention, such as illustrations by Jorge Break in a 2010 Stone Arch Books series of abridged classics for young readers. A muscle-bound, robotic Tin Man had bronze curlicues, a hinged jaw and a funnel hat spewing steam. Far from being a fierce cyborg, this gentle giant was a grateful, teary-eyed friend, deserving of the plush red satin heart the Wizard had for him. Also in 2010, Kevin L. Jones illustrated another graphic novel edition published by Campfire with the Tin Woodman as a futuristic robot. Marvel Comics 2020 edition was a graphic novel partially released in 2009 in which Skottie Young gave a series of frames that told the story of Nick Chopper as he was transformed. The tinsmith had given him a little old man’s slouch, knobby joints, piercing eyes, bushy Groucho Marx mustache and later on, a slouchy hat on his bald head. 

In 2021 a Starry Forest Books “Baby’s Classics” board book with adapted text featured illustrations by Greg Paprocki of a rotund Tin Man with an engaging grin. Released in September 2021, MinaLima presented an  Interactive edition illustrated with four-color artwork and nine interactive features created by the award-winning design studio. This reimagining of the novel highlighted phrases from the original text. Except for a pair of clumsy boots, the Tin Woodman appeared as a beguiling knight in shining armor who was spiffy indeed.

Much credit goes to The Baum Bugle: a Journal of OZ (Arlington,VA) for its devotion to all things Baum, from which tidbits about OZ history are mentioned here. The International Wizard of Oz Club has over the years inspired this author to continue her study of the Tin Woodman.