In Beatrix Potter's Real Life Garden

 The vegetables in Beatrix Potter's children's have always come alive, appear fresh and ready to be harvested.  And did you know Ms. Potter was a gardener of gardeners, passionate about her land and what resided there--animals, vegetables, humans?  But what about those cuddly, adorable bunnies?         

"Those fuzzy little animals get all the press," says Marta McDowell, author of "Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life:  The Plants and Places that inspired the Classic Children's Tales.

Potter's love of gardening  began in childhood, with marvelous nature drawings and the chance to watch professional gardeners during her wealthy family's holidays in the British countryside. While Peter Rabbit's nemesis, Mr. McGregor, was not a real person, McDowell writes that he resembled the gardeners Potter would have encountered.

Potter's active gardening began when, at age 39, she bought a 34-acre working farm with a cottage in England's Lake District. Her gardening style, on full display in the book's period black-and-white photos and modern color images, was romantic and unpretentious.

"She wasn't a formal person, and she abandoned a lot of formality in all parts of her adult life," McDowell says. Potter married local lawyer William Heelis in 1913, when she was 47, despite her parents' objection that Heelis was beneath her. The couple had servants, but Potter also helped cut hay in her fields.

A nature lover who eventually accumulated more than 4,000 acres and willed them to the National Trust conservation group, Potter grew cowslips, dahlias, gooseberries, crab apples, phlox, yellow loosestrife, snowdrops and bellflowers on her increasing land holdings.


"She had a cottage garden, which is a style that nowadays we're all very comfortable with: loose groups of flowers and maybe some fruits and even some lettuce mixed in," McDowell says.

Peter Rabbit and the Tale of a Rogue Publisher

Many of us enjoyed the film, Miss Potter, and the rise of Beatrix Potter to fame and glory.  We watched Warne Publishers take her from virtual unknown to super star of the literary world. Today brings a different slant to the Warne victory. 

The tale of consumer culture is an interesting and sad one, indeed. This is true especially in the children’s market, where the almost unimaginable monetary value of derivative merchandise, sequels, and spinoffs, and the control and manipulation of original creations through copyright and trademark, can degrade the very characteristics that distinguished the work in the first place.

Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit, has brought out the worst in companies trying to make as profit out of it.  Born in London in 1866, Potter was an assiduous student of animal anatomy and behavior from childhood on. She and her younger brother Bertram furnished their nursery with exotic pets, wild and domestic, bringing home mice, lizards, bats, frogs, birds, and, of course, rabbits. The children became determined amateur naturalists, documenting their finds in sketchbooks, never squeamish about studying dead specimens.

Potter first told the story of Peter Rabbit in 1893 in a picture-letter sent to the bedridden son of her former governess. Its simple line drawings introduce the principals — Peter and his siblings; his mother; and his nemesis, Mr. McGregor — while its tiny tale of temptation and trial in an English garden unfolds in simple perfection. She quickly secured a contract with publisher Frederick Warne, agreeing to redo the illustrations in color.

The book proved an immediate success on publication in October 1902, rapidly selling out a first printing of eight thousand copies.To her dismay, the firm failed to register copyright in the United States, leading to piracies and loss of revenue. Although she helped save the company in 1917, after embezzlement by another Warne brother nearly bankrupted it, she scolded them on quality, condemning a copy of Peter Rabbit’s Almanac for 1929 as “wretched.”

After Potter died in 1943 at the age of seventy-seven, Warne cast itself as the guardian of her legacy. But eventually the guardian began behaving badly, seeking to wring profits from its most famous long-eared property. In 1983, Warne was acquired by Penguin, itself owned by the international conglomerate Pearson, the largest book publisher in the world. 

Warne has applied for trademarks here and in the EU for every imaginable Peter Rabbit–related item that might feasibly be sold, from “books and texts in all media” to “toilet seat covers” and “meat extracts.”

Warne’s zealous pursuit of its rights has not deterred it from crass acts of its own. In 1987, the same year it published its painstakingly remade edition, the firm allowed Ladybird Books, a purveyor of cheap paperbacks owned by the parent company, Pearson, to market The Tale of Peter Rabbit with bowdlerized text, eliminating Potter’s dry wit, and replacing her illustrations with photos of stuffed animals.

 Warne was excoriated in The Times of London, which condemned the new edition as “Hamlet without the ghost, Othello without the handkerchief.” Undaunted, a few years later Warne took out an advertisement in The Bookseller — “Peter Rabbit™ Packs a Powerful Punch” — threatening those who wandered into its garden with “expensive legal action."  Have a look below:

 

"Marcel the Shell with Shoes On" App from Penguin Young Readers

In this post, you will learn about (if you haven't already!) and see one of the hottest new apps to be available soon.  Here comes, Marcel the Shell.

(You can see Marcel the Shell in the video at bottom of post.)

Marcel the Shell

The Penguin Young Readers Group is expanding its line of enhanced e-books and is releasing a series of apps based on some contemporary bestselling picture books.  Several examples are: Judy Schachner’s SkippyJon Jones and Jacky Davis and David Soman’s Ladybug Girl and on classic works like The Night Before Christmas and Peter Rabbit.

In November the series will also feature a simultaneous print/app release of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp, based on a wildly popular YouTube video.

Penguin Young Readers associate publicity director Elyse Marshall said the house will release about one enhanced e-book a month though November with multiple releases planned after that date.

Initial releases beginning in August will be offered at the introductory price of $4.99 for a limited time. All releases will feature dedicated Web sites, interactive games, read-along functionality, animation and many other in-app activities for the young reader.

Adam Royce, v-p, digital content development at Penguin Young Readers, said the apps offered an “enhanced reading experience and interactive features that are true to the reading experience.”

Much the same for Ladybug Girl by Davis and Soman, which tells of a girl in a ladybug costume and her canine sidekick; and Anna Dewdney’s Llama Llama Red Pajama, a picture book about a baby llama who won’t go to bed.

Both are print bestsellers and the e-books include interactive costume changes for Ladybug Girl; and digital postcards that can be created in the Llama Llama app, which will also be released in a bilingual Spanish-language version.

Coming in November: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, an app with painted illustrations based on a YouTube video—more than nine million viewings—produced by Slate, a former Saturday Night Live performer. This title will feature a simultaneous book and e-book release.

Also coming in November are The Night Before Christmas, illustrated by Jan Brett (featuring the Boston Pops Orchestra); and Beatrice Potter’s Peter Rabbit, featuring interactive coloring, reading and matching games for early readers.

Penguin Young Readers associate publicity director Elyse Marshall said the house will release about one enhanced e-book a month though November with multiple releases planned after that date. Initial releases beginning in August will be offered at the introductory price of $4.99 for a limited time. All releases will feature dedicated Web sites, interactive games, read-along functionality, animation and many other in-app activities for the young reader.