From Cut Paper to Fairyland Stage

By C.J. Hirschfield

So many classic, best-selling children’s books are illustrated with collage that you may assume the technique – sticking various materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric onto a backing – has always been associated with children’s literature. What would The Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle), Tar Beach (Faith Ringgold), Swimmy (Leo Lionni) and The Snowy Day (Ezra Jack Keats) be without their playful and vibrant collage illustrations?

In fact, though, the first American children’s book illustrated with collage, Caps for Sale, wasn’t published until 1940. The story of its author/illustrator, Esphyr Slobodkina, itself reads like a novel – and a version of the book is now being adapted into a magical, musical production exclusively for Children’s Fairyland. “Circus Caps for Sale,” our co-production with the talented folks at San Francisco’s Circus Center, opens in our Aesop’s Playhouse on July 7 and continues on weekends through July 29.

Esphyr Slobodkina (ess-FEER sloh-BOD-keen-ah) was born in 1908 in Chelyabinsk, Russia, and died in 2002 in Glen Head, New York. Her legacy is kept very much alive by Ann Marie Mulhearn Sayer, president of the Slobodkina Foundation in Northpoint, New York. Herself an accomplished musician and performer, Ann Marie lived and worked with Esphyr for seven years, serving as her all-around assistant. When I spoke with Ann Marie, she shared some details of the artist’s remarkable “riches to rags” life, which intersects with the tumult of the Russian Revolution and the development of American modernism.

Esphyr (left) and her sister Tamara at the train station in Harbin, China, in 1919.

Esphyr’s family escaped from Russia prior to the 1917 revolution, landing in Harbin, Manchuria, a Russian enclave at the time. When she was 19, Esphyr immigrated on a student visa to New York, where she studied at the National Academy of Design while holding down multiple jobs. One by one, she brought all of her family members to the United States. In 1936, she became one of the founding members of American Abstract Artists.

Esphyr Slobodkina working on Caps for Sale in 1938.

It’s worth backtracking at this point to note that when Esphyr was 5, she had contracted scarlet fever, which forced her to spend long periods alone. To pass the time, she cut shapes out of newspapers, magazines and scrap paper, sometimes layering, sometimes adding leaves and dried flowers. Without knowing it, she was making collage.

Fast forward to 1938, when renowned children’s book author Margaret Wise Brown (“Goodnight Moon”) hired Esphyr to illustrate a book called “The Little Fireman,” considered the first American children’s book to be illustrated completely with cut-paper collage. Esphyr had singlehandedly combined modernism with children’s literature, a fusion that continues to this day.

Branching out on her own, Esphyr based Caps for Sale on a story she had heard when she was a child. The book was published in 1940 and became an instant hit; it has since sold millions of copies and been translated into 17 languages, most recently Mandarin.

After “Caps,” Esphyr’s painting career took off. Her art has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and our own San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Esphyr returned to publishing in the 1960s, ultimately completing 22 children’s books. It was during this period that she wrote Circus Caps for Sale, the story of a peddler who finds himself caught in the middle of a circus on parade. Before he knows it, he becomes the star of the show.

The book has never been presented with accomplished circus performers, and Ann Marie says she’s “thrilled” about the new Fairyland/Circus Center production, which will feature Circus Center's tumblers and aerialists. She’s especially pleased that Esphyr’s art will be on display as the production’s backdrop.

Ann Marie Sayer, left, with Esphyr Slobodkina in 1997.

Today, the charitable Slobodkina Foundation “actively preserves the legacy of the artist’s prolific, unusually multifaceted career through traveling exhibitions, programs for children of all ages and an online presence.”

When I read a quote from Esphyr Slobodkina, I became convinced that she was a kindred spirit and that Fairyland is the perfect place to feature her work. See what you think:

“I believe that the formative years of childhood are relatively brief but very important segments of a person's life. The parents, the teachers, the librarians, and, yes, the writers and illustrators of children's books must take their responsibility most seriously, for the images, the verbal patterns, and the patterns of behavior they present to children in these lighthearted confections are likely to influence them for the rest of their lives. These esthetic impressions, just like the moral teachings of early childhood, remain indelible.”

To buy tickets to Fairyland’s production of “Circus Caps for Sale,” visit ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­the Circus Center website.

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C.J. Hirschfield has served for 16 years as executive director of Children's Fairyland, where she is charged with the overall operation of the nation's oldest storybook theme park.