Mike Mulligan and More
Virginia Lee Burton
* * *
MIKE MULLIGAN
and More
MIKE MULLIGAN
and More
A Virginia Lee Burton Treasury
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Boston
* * *
Compilation copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company
Introduction copyright © 2002 by Barbara Elleman
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
Copyright © 1939 by Virginia Lee Demetrios
Copyright © renewed 1967 by Aristides Burton Demetrios and Michael Burton Demetrios
The Little House
Copyright © 1942 by Virginia Lee Demetrios
Copyright © renewed 1969 by Aristides Burton Demetrios and Michael Burton Demetrios
Katy and the Big Snow
Copyright © 1943 by Virginia Lee Demetrios
Copyright © renewed 1971 by Aristides Burton Demetrios and Michael Burton Demetrios
Maybelle the Cable Car
Copyright © 1952 by Virginia Lee Demetrios
Copyright © renewed 1980 by Aristides Burton Demetrios and Michael Burton Demetrios
All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce
selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title.
ISBN 0-618-25627-X
Printed in Singapore
TWP 10 9 8 7 6 5
Introduction
6
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
11
The Little House
63
Katy and the Big Snow
111
Maybelle the Cable Car
155
Introduction
VIRGINIA LEE BURTON BELIEVED IN CHILDREN. For her, preparing a new book meant getting children's input in the early stages of creation. She would often gather up her two young sons and their friends, offer ample portions of hot cocoa and cookies, and then watch their reactions while she read the story aloud. If the youngsters lost interest and began to fidget, she later commented, "It was back to the typewriter, back to the drawing board."
As a result, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, The Little House, Katy and the Big Snow, and Maybelle the Cable Car are solidly built stories with well-integrated text and images. They evince her intense belief that stories written for children should be loved by children. That idea has proved valid: written five to six decades ago, these books not only continue to appeal to children but also remain, permanently etched, in the minds and hearts of adults who have read them in childhood. The author Ann Tyler says, "I have returned to The Little House over and over, sinking into its colorful, complicated pictures all through childhood and adolescence and adulthood," and the television talk-show host Jay Leno mentions Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel as a shaping force in his career as a comic.
Born in Newton Center, Massachusetts, in 1909, Burton spent most of her childhood and adolescence in California. In 1928, she returned to the East, planning to join her sister's traveling dance troupe. However,
when her father broke his leg, Virginia stayed behind to care for him: "That was the beginning and end of my dancing career, which was just as well, because I wasn't very good, anyway."
The accident proved fortuitous for the world of children's books. Virginia abandoned thoughts of a career on stage and instead channeled her artistic talents into drawing and illustration. She worked for a time at the Boston Transcript newspaper, attending theatrical and sporting events. From a seat in the audience she sketched participating personalities, learning to capture the human form quickly and skillfully. A job teaching children art at the YMCA brought understanding of children's interests and needs. She later incorporated both of these experiences into her books.
After a friend suggested she enroll in a figure drawing class at the Boston Museum of Art taught by the highly regarded George Demetrios, Virginia's life took a decided turn. Six months later, in a happy turn of events, she married her teacher. The couple soon settled in Folly Cove in what was then—and is still to some extent—an isolated area on Cape Ann. Folly Cove nurtured Jinnee, as she was called, on several levels. There, she fostered close relationships within her family, developed ties with the local artist community, drew strength from living intimately with nature, and found inspiration for her work. Those who knew Jinnee speak of the joy that radiated from her life—a joy, it seems, that infected everyone who came in contact with her.
Important in her personal life, place played a major role in her books as well. Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, for example, is set in Popperville—a place so real that children's letters to the publisher ask for directions to the village. In reality, Popperville is based on West Newbury, Massachusetts, a place Virginia often visited and whose town hall provided the model for the building under construction in the story.
In Katy and the Big Snow, Burton used Gloucester as her fictional Geoppolis. She created a pictorial double-page map of Geoppolis for the book, but those familiar with Gloucester will find distinguishing landmarks. Maybelle the Cable Car, of course, is set in San Francisco, a tribute to a place well remembered and loved, where Virginia studied art and dance. Published in 1952, the book was dedicated to Mrs. Hans Klussman for being "a leading light" in the battle to save the cable cars from extinction.
Place, perhaps, played the biggest role in Burton's The Little House. When she and her husband bought their home in Folly Cove, they thought it too close to the highway and had it moved several hundred feet back into an apple orchard. That experience, Burton tells, stimulated the writing of The Little House. Children and adults alike respond to the story. A small pink house, beloved by several generations, gradually suffers the indignities of urban sprawl and becomes bedraggled and boarded until it is finally rescued and happily returned to a pastoral setting. The Little House won the prestigious Caldecott Medal in 1942 for its outstanding contribution to
children's literature and has stayed in print for its entire sixty years. Like all of Burton's books, it is grounded in the author's innate enthusiasm and glows under her artistic polish.
Though not included in this compilation, Choo Choo: The Story of the Engine Who Ran Away also has roots in Burton's family life. The idea for the story came, Burton once revealed, while taking her eldest son, Aris, then five, to watch the switching of the railroad cars at nearby Rockport Station. Her last book, Life Story, which she worked on for eight years, is another book that exemplifies the close connections Burton made with the world around her. In the course of presenting an illustrated, geologic history of the world, Burton devoted the last twenty pages to her Folly Cove home, where a seasonal cycle shows the family planting a garden, tending the yard, gathering apples, and shoveling snow. They also find the author at her drawing board and reading under the apple tree. The book closes with, "And now it is your Life Story and it is you who play the leading role. The stage is set, the time is now, and the place wherever you are. Each passing second is a new link in the endless chain of Time. The drama of Life is a continuous story—ever new, ever changing, and ever wondrous to behold." As in the other twelve books she illustrated, Burton offers hope and comfort and joy in life. The messages she gave are as real and meaningful today as they were when written so many decades ago.
—Barbara Elleman
MIKE MULLIG
AN
AND HIS STEAM SHOVEL
MIKE MULLIGAN
AND HIS
STEAM SHOVEL
STORY AND PICTURES BY VIRGINIA LEE BURTON
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY • BOSTON
TO
MIKE
Mike Mulligan had a steam shovel,
a beautiful red steam shovel.
Her name was Mary Anne.
Mike Mulligan was very proud of Mary Anne.
He always said that she could dig as much in a day
as a hundred men could dig in a week,
but he had never been quite sure
that this was true.
Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne
had been digging together
for years and years.
Mike Mulligan took such good care
of Mary Anne
she never grew old.
It was Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne
and some others
who dug the great canals
for the big boats
to sail through.
It was Mike Mulligan
and Mary Anne
and some others
who cut through
the high mountains
so that trains
could go through.
It was Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne
and some others
who lowered the hills
and straightened the curves
to make the long highways
for the automobiles.
It was Mike Mulligan
and Mary Anne
and some others
who smoothed out the ground
and filled in the holes
to make the landing fields
for the airplanes.
And it was Mike Mulligan
and Mary Anne
and some others
who dug the deep holes
for the cellars
of the tall skyscrapers
in the big cities.
When people used to stop
and watch them,
Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne
used to dig a little faster
and a little better.
The more people stopped,
the faster and better they dug.
Some days they would keep
as many as thirty-seven trucks
busy taking away the dirt they had dug.
Then along came
the new gasoline shovels
and the new electric shovels
and the new Diesel motor shovels
and took all the jobs away from the steam shovels.
Mike Mulligan
and Mary Anne
were
VERY
SAD.
All the other steam shovels were being sold for junk,
or left out in old gravel pits to rust and fall apart.
Mike loved Mary Anne. He couldn't do that to her.
He had taken
such good care of her
that she could still dig
as much in a day
as a hundred men
could dig in a week;
at least he thought she could
but he wasn't quite sure.
the new gas shovels
and the new electric shovels
and the new Diesel motor shovels
had all the jobs. No one wanted
Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne any more.
Then one day Mike read in a newspaper that the town
of Popperville was going to build a new town hall.
'We are going to dig the cellar of that town hall,'
said Mike to Mary Anne, and off they started.
They left the canals
and the railroads
and the highways
and the airports
and the big cities
where no one wanted them any more
and went away out in the country.
They crawled along slowly
up the hills and down the hills
till they came to the little town
of Popperville.
When they got there they found that the selectmen
were just deciding who should dig the cellar for the new town hall.
Mike Mulligan spoke to Henry B. Swap, one of the selectmen.
'I heard,' he said, 'that you are going
to build a new town hall. Mary Anne and I
will dig the cellar for you in just one day.'
'What!' said Henry B. Swap. 'Dig a cellar in a day!
It would take a hundred men at least a week
to dig the cellar for our new town hall.'
'Sure,' said Mike, 'but Mary Anne can dig as much in a day
as a hundred men can dig in a week.'
Though he had never been quite sure that this was true.
Then he added,
'If we can't do it, you won't have to pay.'
Henry B. Swap thought that this would be
an easy way to get part of the cellar dug for nothing,
so he smiled in rather a mean way
and gave the job of digging the cellar of the new town hall
to Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne.
They started in
early the next morning
just as the sun was coming up.
Soon a little boy came along.
'Do you think you will finish by sundown?'
he said to Mike Mulligan.
'Sure,' said Mike, 'if you stay and watch us.
We always work faster and better
when someone is watching us.'
So the little boy stayed to watch.
Then Mrs. McGillicuddy,
Henry B. Swap,
and the Town Constable
came over to see
what was happening,
and they stayed to watch.
Mike Mulligan
and Mary Anne
dug a little faster
and a little better.
This gave the little boy a good idea.
He ran off and told the postman with the morning mail,
the telegraph boy on his bicycle,
the milkman with his cart and horse,
the doctor on his way home,
and the farmer and his family
coming into town for the day,
and they all stopped and stayed to watch.
That made Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne
dig a little faster and a little better.
They finished the first corner
neat and square...
but the sun was getting higher.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The Fire Department arrived.
They had seen the smoke
and thought there was a fire.
Then the little boy said,
'Why don't you stay and watch?'
So the Fire Department of Popperville
stayed to watch Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne.
When they heard the fire engine, the children
in the school across the street couldn't keep
their eyes on their lessons. The teacher called
a long recess and the whole school came out to watch.
That made Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne
dig still faster and still better.
They finished the second corner neat and square,
but the sun was right up in the top of the sky.
Now the girl who answers
the telephone called up the next towns
of Bangerville and Bopperville and
Kipperville and Kopperville and told them
what was happening in Popperville.
All the people came over to see
if Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel
could dig the cellar in just one day.
The more people came, the faster
Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne dug.
But they would have to
hurry.
They were only halfway through
and the sun was beginning to go down.
They finished the third corner ... neat and square.
Never had Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne
had so many people to watch them;
never had they dug so fast and so well;
and never had the sun seemed
to go down so fast.
'Hurry, Mike Mulligan!
Hurry! Hurry!'
shouted the little boy.
'There's not much more time!'
Dirt was flying everywhere,
and the smoke and steam were so thick
that the people could hardly see anything.
But listen!
BING! BANG! CRASH! SLAM!
LOUDER AND LOUDER,
FASTER AND
FASTER.
Then suddenly it was quiet.
Slowly the dirt settled down.
The smoke and steam cleared away,
and there was the cellar
all finished.
Four corners ... neat and square;
four walls ... straight down,
and Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne at the bottom,
and the sun was just going down behind the hill.
'Hurray!' shouted the people. 'Hurray for Mike Mulligan
and his steam shovel! They have dug the cellar in just one day.'
Suddenly the little boy said,
'How are they going to get out?'
'That's right,' said Mrs. McGillicuddy
to Henry B. Swap. 'How is he going
to get his steam shovel out?'
Henry B. Swap didn't answer,
but he smiled in rather a mean way.
Then everybody said,
'How are they going to get out?
'Hi! Mike Mulligan!