Maybe this is a product of its times, but it is a lyrical photobook – something like Truffaut’s film l’Enfant Sauvage, with Persis cavorting with nature and ultimately falling falling falling from a tree across a 2-page spread. She cavorts with turtles and butterflies and takes off all of her clothes and has the bears help her into a leafy tutu. The Little One is, as well, but is an outlier in Wright’s doll books – one of only 2 books featuring a different doll – named Persis.

In retrospect, I can remember the images on the television and in Life magazine when I first read the book and it seems very much a product of its time – violence meets chaos meets peace and understanding – all tossed like a salad. Of course she charms him, much as Heidi did her grandfather, but along the way there are many opportunities to weave in rustic scenes of forest life. Edith was already known for a decade of Lonely Doll adventures when she ran into Big Bad Bill in the forest. The 2 books illustrated above are Edith and Big Bad Bill, which was my absolute favorite book as a child, and The Little One. No one knew that better than the Brothers Grimm.ĭare Wright, whose remarkable story was told in Jean Nathan’s biography, The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll, was a master of illustrating the inner thoughts and fears of children, and turning them into rather broad & engaging morality tales a la Grimm and Aesop. Granted, all librarians know that children really gravitate towards to the kind of books that deal with good and evil in really tangible ways. Nevertheless, when assessing books to read for a group of children in the library recently, I left these 2 favorites off in favor of some of the more benign works in fear that I might raise parents’ hackles.

Of course, they are stuffed Steiff bears, and these 2 girls are toy dolls I am referring to, and these are playful non-violent books. In the post-Law & Order SVU-era, they would raise too many red flags in showing, for example, bears carrying naked babies through the forest, or tying little girls to trees. I want to share some more photographically illustrated books for young people with you that I treasure because they are marvelous to discover, as well as unlikely to ever be published these days.

The secret life of the lonely doll film