Introduction (2021)

Introduction David Russell, Karin Westman, and Naomi Wood In this issue of The Lion and Unicorn, we explore challenges to conventional ways of thinking about the familiar. Katie Sciurba's "March of the Coup Clutz Clowns: David LaMotte's White Flour and the Clowning of White Supremacy" could hardly be more timely given recent history of racial unrest in the United States. The essay examines LaMotte's 2012 picture book that uses an historical event to raise our racial consciousness. In 2007 in Knoxville, Tennessee, a Ku Klux Klan march was overtaken by a group of clowns dubbed the "Coup Clutz Clowns," evoking chaos and laughter and subverting the message of hate being promoted by the Klan. This was not the first time the Klan's message of hate has been subverted by clownish antics, and since then events have occurred in other cities, including Charlotte, NC, Memphis and Knoxville, TN, and others. Using the antics of the Coup Clutz Clowns, LaMotte examines the use of humor to debunk the racist messages and antics of the Klan by reducing them to ridicule. In a close reading, Sciurba demonstrates how LaMotte presents an alternative to the "angry resistance on which the Klan thrives," providing an examination of the carefully chosen language of the book and of the symbolism in the illustrations. At the same time, Sciurba acknowledges the difficulties in presenting this subject to very young readers—she does recommend it as a book that adults might wish to share with children. She argues, nevertheless, that such books are necessary in beginning the conversation in the United States, and elsewhere, regarding racial awareness, and encouraging both critical thinking and social action. Joanna Cole's popular series, The Magic School Bus, illustrated by Bruce Degen, made its initial print appearance in 1986, and was transformed into a popular PBS children's program airing from 1994–98, and then was resurrected by Netflix in 2017, reaching millions of children around the world. Rebecca Rowe's "Who Gets to Be on the Bus?: Tracing Conceptions of Race in and around The Magic School Bus from 1986 to 2018," [End Page v] explores the treatment of racial diversity in the popular book series and the subsequent children's television programs throughout over three decades of broadcasting. These are the fanciful stories of an eccentric teacher, her clever third-grade students, and a magical bus that can transform itself and transport the class to virtually anywhere. From the beginning, the stories included a racial mix of characters. As Rowe notes, the books portrayed a ratio of 10:7 White characters to children of color, and the television programs eventually achieved a ratio of 10:9. However, Rowe suggests that these figures are deceptive. She argues that the series' attempts at multiculturalism result in what Rudine Sims has termed "melting pot books," or books that only recognize the universality of the characters and ignore their individuality, their differences. Rowe commends the concerted efforts of The Magic School Bus, in both the books and television programs, at racial diversity and inclusion, but she also argues that racial equity requires that everyone acknowledge and move beyond the "lens of Whiteness" that has long dominated the culture, often in subtle ways. For example, the two central characters in The Magic School Bus, Miss Frizzle and Arnold Perlstein, are both White. Further, Rowe points out that "Whiteness" is taken as the norm, with all other cultures viewed as deviations from that norm. Rowe argues that "we cannot allow our love for childhood texts to blind us to social and racial issues." Instead, to paraphrase Miss Frizzle, "we need to take chances, make mistakes, and get messy, and we cannot do that if we are not willing to get off the bus." Richard Gooding's essay, "We do not have whims on the moon": A Wrinkle in Time, The Lotus Caves, and the Problem of American Exceptionalism in 1960s Science Fiction for Children," provides an insightful comparative reading of two works with similar plot elements—particularly, the encounters between young humans and alien characters. In a close reading of Madeline L'Engle's classic fantasy, A Wrinkle in Time (1962), and John...