Arrow in Sparrow, See in Seed
Sparrow Hawk, $13.95, and Little Brother of the Wilderness, the story of Johnny Appleseed, $9.95; both by Meridel Le Sueur, and both published by Holy Cow! Press, 1987; PO Box 3170, Mount Royal Station, Duluth, MN 55803.
Jim Perlman's celebrated Holy Cow! Press has re‑published two of Meridel Le Sueur's stories for children, both originally published during the post‑war political witch hunt era when the author could beat the blacklist by publishing stories only children might fully understand. Both stories tell the tale of freedom, true democracy, and the renewal of life and literature through nature.
Little Brother is for young readers; that is, the vocabulary is not complex but the ideas are too simple for the over‑ educate, over‑indoctrinated to comprehend. Le Sueur's Johnny Appleseed is not only a combination of Buddha and St. Francis but is in addition the model for the writer/poet who creates with no hope for immediate gain. And of course the merchants and those who see only short‑term profits laugh: "What an idea, carrying seed like a bird!" But his Buddha‑like compassion, his ability to speak with the animals, and his love of literature sustain him. While attending the wounded from a battle between Indians and whites "A bullet hit him square in the middle." He was unharmed: "He took out the big book he had in his blouse and there was the bullet gone clean through the book but it hadn't scratched his skin." Le Sueur, like any decent poet, merges message with language in a way perhaps only children, or those like Appleseed who attempt to be pure in heart, can appreciate. When Appleseed meets the frontier log‑slitter Abe Lincoln they both express their love for democracy through their language. They measure their heights and the seed planter says, "Well, I'm as tall for me as you are tall for you." Her faith in the democratic voice of genuine people might help children see the cynicism of the language of politics and commerce that assails us all. Le Sueur gives us with this short tale the bright side of the dark myth of avarice and greed that is the story of the whiteman's push ever west across the land of America. The book contains drawings by Suzy Sansom and an historical afterward about Le Sueur and Jonathan Chapman (1775‑1847), pioneer and mystic, who the children called Johnny Appleseed.
Sparrow Hawk tells the story of two youths, the Indian Sparrow Hawk and his white friend Huck, living along the Mississippi in 1832 in the heart of the heart of the country. This story might be considered a continuation of that planted by Johnny Appleseed. It ends in tragedy, but there is the hope, the essential optimism of the writer, that the message of resurrection, the essential optimism of the fruit of the earth, will triumph. The story is as much about the value of corn, economic and spiritual, as it is about the two boys' friendship. Le Sueur sings the song of the corn plant, establishing in a simple story about and for the young the corn plant as symbol for true democracy. We need to remember that it was the Indian nations that provided Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson with their model for democratic government not the Greek model adopted by the slave holding south. And we need to remember that the corn plant is nature's model for such organization, not the corn plant as we know it homogenized to grow to a standard height to accommodate the machinery to harvest it, but the corn plant as cultivated by the Indians so that it adapts to every growing condition and with kernels of all colors, white, red, black, yellow. Sparrow Hawk is a treasure, a tale of good and of evil; in short, a genuine story. The book is illustrated by Robert Desjarlait, with a forward by Vine Deloria, Jr. Praised by the New York Times upon first publication, the book needs to be praised again as we pass the story on to our own children. It belongs in all schools and library, and in our own homes.
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