Elizabite: The Story of the Book - Part III

McCain Library and Archives
University of Southern Mississippi

            In June 1941, Hans Rey was finishing the illustrations for Margaret Wise Brown’s The Polite Penguin, his first contract for Harper and Brothers. Anxious to retain Rey on her list, Ursula Nordstrom, director of the Department of Books for Boys and Girls at Harper, proposed the following in a letter dated July 16, 1941: “Now about the picture book to be written and illustrated by you. I am so enthusiastic over your work that we are eager to give you a contract even though the story for us is yet unwritten.”

            Rey responded the next day: “I am giving it some thought

McCain Library and Archives
University of Southern Mississippi

and some of my night's sleep, and I hope I can put something before you soon." Significant changes were made to the 1938 version of The Carnivorous Plant to transform it into the manuscript Rey showed Nordstrom on July 29, 1941. First, text was added. The British Bobbies were redrawn as New York City policemen, and the main character was given a name, although readers had to wait until the very last page to discover it was "Elizabite," which was printed on the sign affixed to her zoo enclosure. 

            “Elizabite: The Story of the Book” is based on “From Elizabite to Spotty: The Reys, Race and Consciousness Raising,” an essay published in the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Vol. 35, #4, Winter 2012.

Elizabite: The Story of the Book - Part II

McCain Library and Archives
University of Southern Mississippi

           After the Reys married in August 1935, Margret and Hans took a belated honeymoon trip to Europe in 1936. Their “honeymoon” lasted four years and during their stay in Paris, the couple began their publishing career. On a visit to friends in London, Hans met with editors at Chatto & Windus, who agreed to publish Zebrology, another of Rey’s wordless books. This success prompted him to revise a Planta Carnivora: Romance Botanico em 26 Capitulos, in order to make it more appealing for a British audience.  

McCain Library and Archives
University of Southern Mississippi

            Using the same format of three pictures to a page, Rey redrew the book replacing the few Portuguese words with English. A professor, called to examine the strange plant, is given a proper English pinstripe coat, and the small brown dachshund is replaced by a black Scottish terrier. Lastly, Rey added British Bobbies to the story to serve as guards when the plant is escorted to the zoo.

            In spite of his best efforts, The Carnivorous Plant was never published. A rejection letter dated September 18, 1938, from I. M. Parsons stated that while the story had “great charm,” the timing for its publication was not convenient, given that Chatto & Windus was publishing two of Rey’s other works in the next twelve months. With that news the bound watercolor manuscripts were forgotten until a letter from Ursula Nordstrom, their editor at Harper & Brothers in New York, arrived at the Rey apartment in July 1941.

            “Elizabite: The Story of the Book” is based on “From Elizabite to Spotty: The Reys, Race and Consciousness Raising,” an essay published in the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Vol. 35, #4, Winter 2012.

Elizabite: The Story of the Book – Part I

Harper & Row, 1962

       H. A. Rey’s first work about a mischievous carnivorous plant was a wordless picture story titled a Planta Carnivora: Romance Botanico em 26 Capitulos. Created in Rio de Janeiro prior to 1935, he once said the idea for the story came to him during a dinner lecture when he spied a carnivorous plant at the table where he was seated. Seemingly bored with the speaker’s talk, Rey began to wonder if the plant would eat a piece of his steak. Not content to just imagine the outcome, Rey allowed the question to inspire a humorous picture story about a carnivorous plant so out of control that it finally had to be relocated to a zoo.

McCain Library and Archives
University of Southern Mississippi

            Rey created a Planta Carnivora: Romance Botanico em 26 Capitulos solely to amuse himself and his Brazilian friends. Elizabite: The Story of the Book recounts various revisions Rey would make to the story before it was published in its final form in 1962. The story of Elizabite also reveals Margret and Hans Rey’s efforts to market their work to various audiences in Britain and the United States and provides insight into their working relationship with their editor at Harper & Brothers, Ursula Nordstrom.

            “Elizabite: The Story of the Book” is based on “From Elizabite to Spotty: The Reys, Race and Consciousness Raising,” an essay published in the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Vol. 35, #4, Winter 2012.