Crayons Down, Kids. It’s Hillary Story Time Two new picture books depict Mrs. Clinton with a hagiographic glow that even kindergartners might find hard to swallow. By Meghan Cox Gurdon
http://www.wsj.com/articles/crayons-down-kids-its-hillary-story-time-1452211638
Nuclear threats aside, North Korean political propaganda seems pretty silly to wised-up, postmodern American sophisticates. Who do these guys think they’re fooling, with their cheesy posters of happy children flocking around the knees of a benevolent Great, or Dear, or Current Leader? And surely only the brainwashed or the very young could ever swallow the regime’s steady supply of tales extolling the miraculous achievements of the Kim dynasts.
Yet perhaps we Americans are not entirely immune to this sort of thing, especially in an election year. Two new picture books put such a gloss on the life and career of the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president that book editors in Pyongyang could take a few tips from them. In the doctrine of these tales for children 4 to 8, not only has the mark of greatness been upon Hillary Clinton since her birth, but she has also been the liberator of her people—that is, of women.
Michelle Markel’s “ Hillary Rodham Clinton: Some Girls Are Born to Lead” (HarperCollins) begins with an alarming account of the darkness that enfolded this land as recently as the 1950s, when, horrible to relate, “it was a man’s world. Only boys could grow up to have powerful jobs. Only boys had no ceilings on their dreams. Girls weren’t supposed to act smart, tough, or ambitious.”
When children read these words—or hear them read aloud, more likely—they will be looking at LeUyen Pham’s lively illustrations of high-achieving midcentury males rendered in glum shades of gray. Here is Albert Einstein, no ceiling on his dreams. There is Albert Schweitzer with his pith helmet: smart, tough, ambitious and cradling an African baby.
ENLARGE Yet, wait: What’s that gemlike glow in the far corner of this maudlin masculine montage? Could it be a girl? It is a girl. It is Hillary Rodham, age 8! Yes, we read, “in the town of Park Ridge, Illinois, along came Hillary, wearing thick glasses and a sailor dress, acing tests, upstaging boys in class, and lining up sports events to raise money for the poor.”
“Take that, 1950’s!” (These would be the same 1950s in which future Justice Sandra Day O’Connor graduated from law school, Indira Gandhi ran India’s Congress Party, and Margaret Thatcher took her first seat in Parliament. But never mind.) In the following pages of this paean to Hillary, we see the future Mrs. Clinton striding at the head of a pack of multiracial students at “a prestigious East Coast women’s college,” her arm raised in dear leadership.
Now, it is possible that one or two children may perceive some disjointedness in the idea that women were not “supposed to be” smart or ambitious in those benighted times, yet there existed a prestigious women’s college. But it is not a child’s job to perceive the historical framework beneath layers of deceiving gauze. That is the job of grown-ups, and the grown-ups who created this work are not about to let context knock the halo off the “cool” and “fearless” HRC.
Nor, for that matter, are the grown-ups behind “Hillary” (Random House), a jamboree of Rodham-puffery that puts the former Arkansas first lady on an absurdly grandiose female continuum. “Once there was Queen Elizabeth, perhaps the wisest ruler England has ever had,” author Jonah Winter begins.
In a pallid illustration that departs from his vibrant custom, illustrator Raul Colón shows the Virgin Queen looking baleful on the throne. The text continues: “Once there was Joan of Arc. She carried a sword and led men in battle,” and, “Once there was Rosie the Riveter. She was a fictional character used by the U.S. government. She was patriotic. She was strong.”
Then we turn the page and find, in full color, a noble picture of the eponym: “And now there is Hillary.” Mr. Colón poses her in front of a hazy portrait of George Washington, as if the first president is bestowing his ghostly blessing.
From this fabulously pompous opening, the book leads, ultimately, to a silhouette of Mrs. Clinton against a golden sunrise—and the promise that she “may soon change the world.”
These vainglorious picture-book renditions of the life story of an American machine politician give an illuminating glimpse into the mind-set of those who offer themselves as cogs in that machine. Like the Kim family’s posters in North Korea, they are so richly and inadvertently comic that only true believers or the very young and trusting could find them persuasive. Unfortunately, it is the very young for whom these works are intended.
Mrs. Gurdon writes about children’s books for the Weekend Journal.
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