1 year ago
58 Picture this: you’re browsing your section bookstore successful hunt of representation books for the small ones successful your life. You stumble upon a ample measurement with a beauteous illustration of 2 rabbits connected the cover. You glimpse astatine the title: The Rabbits’ Wedding. You promptly determine that, due to the fact that the rabbits successful question are achromatic and achromatic respectively, this publication is simply a sneaky mode of promoting interracial marriage. Not lone that, the specified thought that it whitethorn successful information beforehand matrimony equality infuriates you to the constituent that you bash everything successful your powerfulness to get it banned.
Sounds ridiculous? Of people it does. But this is what happened with Garth Williams’ 1958 children’s publication The Rabbits’ Wedding.
The Story
The communicative itself is elemental and straightforward: a antheral rabbit wants to wed a pistillate rabbit, but helium has a hard clip uncovering the courageousness to propose. Eventually helium does so, she says yes, and they get joined successful beforehand of their woodland friends. The publication closes connected a solemnisation successful the forest.
That’s it. That’s the story. This is what a radical of radical successful Alabama, led by State Senator Edward Oswell Eddins, recovered truthful enraging.
Both the communicative and the illustrations are the enactment of Garth Williams, illustrator of beloved children’s classics Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and Little House connected the Prairie. It was the lone 1 of his books to beryllium banned.
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Critical Reception
For the astir part, the archetypal critical reception was favorable: Commonweal wrote that “even successful the rabbit world, popping the question tin instrumentality a agelong time. The reviewer thought the illustrations brushed and amiable.” Horn Book said that “the communicative has the warmth and information tiny children emotion with a blessed ending […] the representation Mr. Williams has made of (the final) country has the magic prime of thing 1 mightiness beryllium allowed to spot if 1 were precise young so and retired unsocial connected Midsummer Eve.”
Library Journal‘s starred reappraisal was peculiarly complimentary, calling it “a ample representation publication of antithetic quality […] mysterious, enchanting […] A publication which volition delight the youngest ones.” Only the Bulletin for the Center for Children’s Books’ reappraisal was negative, some of the communicative itself and of the connection the reviewer inferred: “While the publication gives a precise elemental conception of emotion and marriage, disorder could originate astir marital practices successful the quality and carnal worlds.”
One wonders if this is however the achromatic Citizens Council of Montgomery, Alabama, heard of this book. However it came to their attention, they decided to antagonistic a saccharine children’s communicative astir 2 rabbits’ emotion with hatred.
The Controversy
The Rabbits’ Wedding was published connected April 30, 1958, 9 years earlier Loving v. Virginia legalized interracial matrimony each passim the United States. The existent contention started the twelvemonth aft publication, erstwhile Alabama legislator E. O. Eddins claimed that it was “propaganda for integration and intermarriage.”
He, on with the achromatic Citizens Council of Montgomery, challenged the publication and acceptable retired to person it banned. When Emily Wheelock Reed, manager of the Alabama Public Library Service Division, defended the book, Eddins claimed that she “put banal successful radical incorporation” and said that “this publication and galore others should beryllium taken disconnected the shelves and burned.”
Ah, yes. Burning books. Where person I heard that one before.
The achromatic Citizens Council and Eddins got their wish: The Rabbits’ Wedding was banned from each libraries successful Alabama. Reed recovered a mode to get astir that, however; she enactment it connected reserve, truthful that it would inactive beryllium disposable for librarians, but she could nary longer support it successful wide circulation. She past became a target. That aforesaid year, she distributed a speechmaking database which included Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Stride Toward Freedom; this awoke the Council’s ire erstwhile again.
Williams’ Response
Garth Williams response was masterful. In a 1959 interrogation with The New York Times, helium said that the publication “was not written for adults who volition not recognize it, due to the fact that it is lone astir a soft, furry emotion and has nary hidden messages of hate.” He went connected to say, scathingly, that helium “was wholly unaware that animals with achromatic furs, specified arsenic achromatic polar bears and achromatic dogs and achromatic rabbits, were considered humor relations of achromatic quality beings. I was lone alert that a achromatic equine adjacent to a achromatic equine looks precise picturesque.”
The Takeaway
When I archetypal heard astir this controversy, I had 2 main thoughts, precise adjacent together: a) They truly thought that a communicative astir 2 rabbits getting joined said thing astir quality marriage?; and instantly aft that one, b) So what if it had?
Then I realized however small things person changed: book banning is astatine an all-time high successful the United States, basal quality rights are contested each day, and hatred is inactive prevalent successful society. It was discouraging, for sure, but it reminded maine of the necessity of ne'er taking quality decency for granted — and of the value of calling retired bigotry erstwhile you spot it, of fighting publication bans, and, ohio yeah, of learning astir however colour works successful representation books.
