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.