Gorgeous Vintage and Modern Illustrations from Aldous Huxley’s Only Children’s Book

by Maria Popova

A brave old world of beautiful art and subtle undertones of misogyny.

At Christmas time in 1944, more than a decade after the resounding success of Brave New World Aldous Huxley

(July, 26 1894–November 22, 1963) penned his one and only children’s book, The Crows of Pearblossom (public library) — the story of Mr. and Mrs. Crow, whose eggs never hatch because the Rattlesnake living at the base of their tree keeps eating them. After the 297th eaten egg, the hopeful parents set out to kill the snake and enlist the help of their friend, Mr. Owl, who bakes mud into two stone eggs and paints them to resemble the Crows’ eggs. Upon eating them, the Rattlesnake is in so much pain that he beings to thrash about, tying himself in knots around the branches. Mrs. Crow goes merrily on to hatch “four families of 17 children each,” using the snake “as a clothesline on which to hang the little crows’ diapers.”

Like Gertrude Stein’s alphabet book To Do, Sylvia Plath’s children’s verses The Bed Book, and William Faulkner’s The Wishing Tree (also his only book for wee ones), it never saw light of day in Huxley’s lifetime but was published posthumously, in 1967, with stunning black-white-and-green illustrations by Barbara Cooney.

And just when you think it couldn’t get any more delightful, it did: In 2001, the inimitable Sophie Blackall — whose illustrated missed connections will melt even the stoniest of hearts — brought her soft, dimensional visual magic to a new edition of The Crows of Pearblossom (public library), which you might recall from this omnibus of little-known children’s books by famous “adult” authors and which outcharmed even Cooney’s hopelessly charming original artwork:

In this excerpt from Debbie Millman’s altogether fantastic interview with the artist, Blackall discusses the challenges of handling the misogynistic undertones of Huxley’s narrative, something particularly worrisome given its audience is children, and the very delightful visual “Easter egg” (pun possibly intended) she hid in the book:

Though the original edition is sadly out of print and only findable in the pre-loved books market, the Blackall edition is unspeakably wonderful and a sublime addition to other little-known children’s gems by literary icons like Mark Twain, James Joyce (twice), Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, John Updike, Anne Sexton, T. S. Eliot, James Thurber, Carl Sandburg, Salman Rushdie, Ian Fleming, and Langston Hughes.

Cooney images via My Vintage Book Collection