Picture Books: L is for Light & Libertarian or The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf & Robert Lawson

Munro Leaf wrote the story. Robert Lawson illustrated the text. 

The combination is the best illustrated picture books can offer--an artistic work where text and image together convey an overmastering impression. 

It's a delightfully simple and funny story. However, the purpose of this post is not to extol the combined art of illustration & text (which deserves to be extolled) but to tackle the issue of what children actually get out of picture books. 

The Story of Ferdinand is often haled at a deeply profound, thought-provoking lesson about the virtues of pacifism. 

Yet as a child, I never read the book and thought, "Diversity!" or "Peace!" 

I do now because it is hard for a Humanities-trained brain to ignore possible subtext. (The book was published in 1936.) Nevertheless, even now what primarily strikes me is the individual characters. Ferdinand is an individual bull with an individual idiosyncrasy and individual outcome. 

That is, Ferdinand is Rocky Horror Picture Show, not Rent. 

On this blog, I use Rocky Horror Picture Show to reference artists/characters who go their own, unique, outside-the-box way and don't care what other people think. 

Rent is all about the socially superior (in the "woke" sense) clique insisting that everyone else ought to love them (otherwise, they will burn everything down because other people are sooo awful). 

The pleasure of Ferdinand is that he just doesn't care what others think. 

To be absolutely honest, in my youth, I just thought Ferdinand was cute.