Some of my earliest reading adventures were with Homer Price. I read the crazy doughnut story, which has been made into movies, dozens of times and especially loved it when the poor kid -- Rupert Black -- got the doughnut with the diamond bracelet. Even though the passage below would surely give some folks fits, there seems to be a guilelessness to its offensiveness, and Robert McCloskey was such a mensch that it's hard to get mad.
"(T)onight (Friday) was the dress rehearsal of the Pageant. Homer and Freddy and a couple of their friends were taking the part of Indians. They were going to be powdered all over with cocoa, striped with mercurochrome, and draped with towels around their middles. Homer had to get to rehearsal right on the dot, because he started the Pageant by rubbing two sticks together to make a fire. Most of the Pageant was historical, all about Ezekiel Enders and the founding of Centerburg. The organist of the African Baptist Church wrote the words and music for a long choral work, which the choir was going to sing all the while the Pageant was being acted."
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment