The Golden Book Encyclopedia (1946, 1959, 1988) was an encyclopedia written for White American schoolchildren under the age of 12. The 1959 edition sold over 60 million volumes, making it the best-selling children’s encyclopedia of all time in America. This post is mainly about that edition. I have never seen the 1946 edition while the 1988 one (the one with the blue covers) was not nearly as good.
The 1959 edition came in 16 volumes and was sold throughout the 1960s, mainly at supermarkets. It was meant to give children “the most important facts of modern knowledge” in a form they could understand and find interesting. It was full of pictures and I was able to read it for myself by age seven.
Author: Bertha Morris Parker, who had taught science at the Lab School in Chicago from 1916 into the 1950s, in addition to writing science books for children. (The Lab School is where Obama’s daughters went. It was founded by John Dewey.)
Contributors and consultants: Among others, Walt Disney, J. Allen Hynek, Willy Ley, Norman Vincent Peale and Glenn T. Seaborg.
Pictures: Many of the pictures came from science books for children that Golden Press had put out between 1946 and 1957. Some are coloured drawings, others paintings. No photographs – the encyclopedia was printed on cheap paper.
Coverage: It was strong on science, geography and famous white people. It had articles on many countries of the world and every American state – but not on any Canadian province. The French and British still ruled much of Africa in green and pink. Oddly it did not have articles on any of the planets, not even Mars! Yet it had articles on things like Renoir, Alhambra and Walter Reed.
Race: It had a white liberal view of race:
On the one hand it tells us that according to scientists, “The people of one race can do just as well as those of another if they have the same opportunities.” To its credit it does not push the Bootstrap Myth. Its article on Negroes is clear about the lack of said opportunities, even if things are “far better” than they were.
On the other hand the pictures normalize white people and exoticize people of colour. A Chinese baby is called a “Chinese baby” while a white baby is just called a “baby”. Despite its claims to “up-to-dateness”, the Chinese still dress like it is 1899 while people of the Gold Coast (even then called Ghana) carry spears. White people hold test tubes, black people live in huts. It claims there are Negro doctors but never shows one.
When I was seven I copied articles from it, complete with the pictures (as best I could). Then I got the idea that I could write articles of my own based on original research. I remember doing one on earthworms. I tore one open to see what was inside and wrote down my findings. Now that I think of it, this blog is probably unwittingly modelled on the Golden Book Encyclopedia.
See also:
That picture is HORRIBLE, calling the three depicted hard working banana farmers Savages,…
Abagond
When I began to shun white books, art, movies and music, I truly learned to appreciate my Negro self. Whiteness takes all the “truth” out of culture, the excitement, the essence of what makes that culture special, transform into blandness and dullness, applies it to themselves for their betterment and lies about how the very culture they emulate is “savage”.
I have so much catching up to do.
Only a savage would *gasp* GROW BANANAS!
I remember my middle school having the 1988 version in the school library (practically everything in there was at least fifteen years old). I never even realized there were older versions.
I don’t think I ever heard of this book. However, if a young child were to see a picture like that with the word “savages” at the top, that child will likely internalize it. A black child may think that he or she is a savage while non-black children may think that black people are savages.
I tell ya.
Nah, they ain’t working.
Didn’t you notice the caption on that pic? “savages live by gathering food in the land about them”… Apparently “savages” have not yet reached the stage of agriculture.
It’s the good old race-realist phantasm of tropical countries as lands of aplenty, where one can afford to live just by picking fruits off the next tree.
There was a 1988 edition to this book?
In 1988 Michael Jackson sang “The Way You Make Me Feel”, and because Richard Feynman died that year, it made me think about his work on the theory of quantum electrodynamics — but it seems “savages” were still hulking bananas around…
And this represents the most progressist opinion about blacks in all world. At the time (and even today) the convictions of south-americans, north-africans, Indians, Chinese, etç… are much worse!…Slavery was legal in places like Mauretania or Saudi-Arabia until the 70s.
In 2012, millions of members of the Negro Race still suffer under slavery of White and Mulatoes Arabs/Berbers, in countries like Sudan or.
I thought the “savages” in the drawing were actually depicting South Sea Islanders….
My friends mothers old geography book (published sometimes in 1940′s) stated:
“Negroes live in hot place called Africa. They are happy and good singers, but they do not like to work hard. That is because they live in tropical land where they can get their food almost everywhere. They live in huts instead of houses and gather around big bonfiers at night to sing and tell stories. Negroes are also very superstitious.”
And of course it had a picture similar of those banana carrying fellows with spears and all the gear visible.
Needless to say, my friends mother was truly surprised when she as a very young student traveled to Paris France and met and saw black people who lived in Paris, spoke france, read the papers and were university students also.
My books at school were better but over political, perhaps because I went to school at 60′s and 70′s.
@Bulanik, did you miss the head of that buffalo? Syncerus caffer without a doubt, and that indicates AFRICA as well as a zebra.
@Dahoman X, the bananas carried by the gents concerned, are clearly cultivated and concerning the stage of ripeness indicated by its color either for immediate consumption (buffalo-avec-banana or for the local Banana based industry)
Teddy, did you think that the little drawing might be forensically accurate?
You are good to ‘see’ the head of that buffalo.
But how different-looking is Syncerus caffer to Bubalus arnee?
And the ‘zebra’. I can’t see that. I see something tan-coloured on the left.
I suppose, if I had seen a stripey horse on the beach it would have made me think – automatically and of course – “Africa”…. doh.
I was looking at the “savage” guys and their bananas.
@Teddy – you are so sure this drawing is of Africa…
The artists employed to make these drawings at the time were unlikely to have accurate source material and may not have cared either way – so we are probably looking at an inaccurate mis-match of fantasies parading as fact.
(I see that Walt Disney contributed at some stage to this book as well.)
Looking again at that drawing, the loincloths and buzz-cut hairstyles made me think the “savages” depicted in this fantasy were from some vague-sounding place like the South Seas. Like these guys here:
From the little I know about loincloths (!), the ones that are still worn in Africa are made usually from leather, and not tied or textile-like, as in the drawing.
My first impression, based on the guys’ attire, was Borneo, for some reason.
Why? If I recall correctly, the men of the Bakong people of this region wear (or used to) white loincloths not unlike what is shown in the drawing above.
They were also called “savages” too, of course.
Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And In Borneo And The Philippines
The “buffalo” could also be a gaur: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Bos_gaurus_male_m%C3%BCnchen_2003.jpg. As Bulanik pointed out however, this is a drawing and I wouldn’t put to much faith in the depiction of the animal.
More telling however is the depiction of the banana, not an African fruit at all.
@Joshua
“More telling however is the depiction of the banana, not an African fruit at all.”
Where did you get that information from? Bananas have been cultivated in Africa for roughly 4500 years.
A better question is “where did you get yours?” All the sources I see show bananas being introduced to Africa in relatively modern times – about 1000AD.
@Joshua
Actually that is not a better question because mine had to do with you trying to discredit someone’s comment about this topic…and another thing is that that dictionary was made 1959…so regardless of the actual “scholarly” date…it was still an abundant African fruit. But since you want me to show proof before you…http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2006/01/05-03.html
*encyclopedia
@ Teddy
I was being sarcastic in my initial post.
@ everybody
There is no point engaging an expertise debate about this picture. The artist obviously didn’t care about ethnological accuracy. He just depicted the generic “savage” that the public of the time was accustomed to.
Bulanik summed it best:
Bananas introduced to Africa? I was under the impression that plantains were the thing in Africa, and bananas came after.
My grandmother always said that the “banana family” is a huge family, and that there are probably 100s of varieties indigenous to the tropics. Some are like a fruit and some like a fruit, some starchy and some are sweet, some can be eaten raw and others must be cooked. She always calls it “Musa”, and that different types of banana were introduced to different countries during history and this is why there is some confusion about it.
I mean some are like a vegetable and some are like a fruit.
Did you even bother to read your article, Michelle?
Here a biologist is despairing.
The genus Musa is thought to have been unknown in Africa in pre-islamic times, it is as un-African as sugarcane. Banana/platain are indications based on the use of the fruit, rather than being different groups of varieties. They are always fruits, but often eaten as a vegetable.
And there is no way I would be mistaken about the typical horn structure of an African buffalo, but I grant you that there is no reason to assume that the artist understood the difference between Syncerus and Bubalus.
Bananas did come after, even if more recent findings are verified. Michelle’s article doesn’t say that bananas were cultivated for 4500 years, it says that they may have been cultivated 2500-4500 years ago. The banana is native to SE Asia. There is no country in Africa according to Faostat even in the top 10 producers. Bananas have been cultivated, which is quite different than the article implying that they are hanging around ready to be picked.
Oh no Teddy, there is no way could, and would not be mistaken….
Especially about a cartoony drawing which proves….what, exactly?
Quite simple, that that the artist thought it a good idea to give the “Savages” illustration a somewhat Africanish flavour, but the artist may not have been aware of that.
awww widdle abagond reading his encyclopedia when he was widdle boy! so cute!…that means you’re older than i thought though…i thought u were around barack obama’s age…just tell me abagond are you in your early fifties?
I am very close to his age.
Teddy – “Quite simple”?
Commenters weren’t exactly trailing behind on this nonsense-cartoon…(LOL)
Whilst “despairing” as you say, did you notice the un-Africanish loincloths, hairstyles – or – that the zebra you say you can see (?) does not have black and white stripes but appears to be tan-coloured.
That surprises me, since you are a biologist.
Peanut your last post kills me. LOL. ‘Widdle Abagond’ XD
@ Teddy
The genus Musa is thought to have been unknown in Africa in pre-islamic times, it is as un-African as sugarcane…
Joking aside, I am not sure what this proves:
Islam is only around 1500 years old, and Africa’s Islamization happened in stages throughout the continent, there are references to the plant in Hadiths (and elsewhere), but that’s neither here nor there.
Historians and archaeologists of the more recent past often thought that bananas were probably introduced to Africa via Madagascar, which was colonized by people from Southeast Asia in the first millennium A.D.
That is doubted now, since banana phytoliths (fossilized plant fragments) date back to 500 B.C. were found in Cameroon, thereby set back the date for the first appearance of bananas in Africa by about a 1000 years.
Findings of Christophe Mbide (Journal of Archaeological Science 27, 2000).
And, also add studies by Julius Lejju, (Ugandan botany professor at Mbarara University), who identified several banana phytoliths that were dated as more than 5,000 old.
Further, an Australian research team’s finding indicate that bananas were cultivated in New Guinea at least 6500 years ago (Science, July 2003) – which makes the early African dates all the more plausible.
Add in genetic evidence from other studies suggests that bananas were first introduced from New Guinea into southeast Asia. From there, sea traders could have brought them to East Africa across the Indian Ocean.
This is significant not just because it bears on African agricultural practices.
It is interesting and important because it also provides evidence of wide-ranging interaction that question assumptions about the antiquity of Africans’ interaction with other parts of the world.
@JT, how many of us can get away with calling Aba “widdle”? LOL>
@ Bulanik,
Stop it! LOL You’re gonna tempt me to type it out again. I can just hear the baby voice that goes with it too when i am reading/typing it out. Too much lololo!
I just used “zebra” as a comparison, to indicate that the presence of that animal suggests “Africa” more strongly than a traffic sign with “Nairobi 25 miles”. Look, it all fits clearly, if the artist used Tarzan comics or so as reference…
I used to have a collection of encyclopedia (adult ones, not the kiddie kind) and i would lOVE to read them when I was little. This was before we had google and quick searches on the internet, the encyclopedia was the best that I had. I’m a youngster and I even remember when encyclopedia was the best we had…now we can google stuff and get it in a hot second…it’s the good and bad side of technology and I agree that your blog abagond is very encylopedic in it’s layout…
ps.
abagond you too old to be my boyfriend
…and plus you’re still married!
you must know someone closer to my age who is like you abagond…i get the feeling your sons are too young for me…like maybe 12/13 ish…I need someone in their early-late twenties.
the last comment was a joke btw lol…abagond isn’t OLD!
[...] views of other groups, especially blacks, is still predominant. The drawing is from the Golden Book Encyclopedia. The 1959 edition sold over 60 million [...]
For some reason I always imagined Abagond as younger like in his mid to late thirties. I don’t know why though.
@ Peanut
Ah, youth. I remember when I was younger and thought people who were thirty were “old!” Now I’m the “old” one!
As they say in Africa: Keep on keeping on!
WHAT THE HELL??? I HAD THESE!!!! I grew up in the 90s…blast from the past!!!
I had a set of the 59-early 60′s edition when I was in pre-school (I’m 52); I read the hell out of them. Even at such an early age, I could tell that the writing was a bit racially skewed (and I’m white), but for its shortcomings, it was a great book for its general information, and the illustrations really kept your attention. I found this blog as I was trying to buy a set for my 4 year old. Still kinda on the fence for the aforementioned reason.
I had these as a child, about 1960, and I used to love to pick the clear plastic coating off the covers. I would try to resist, but after a while I would start to pick at it. Does any one else remember doing that ?