Policeman Bluejay
Encyclopedia
Policeman Bluejay is a children's novel written by L. Frank Baum
and illustrated by Maginel Wright Enright. First published in 1907
, it has been considered one of the best of Baum's works.
published, a set of six tales for young children, called The Twinkle Tales
after their little-girl protagonist. The six were issued in in separate chapbooks
, but later collected into a volume titled Twinkle and Chubbins: Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland. The series was a hit; Reilly & Britton sold 40,000 copies of the little books in a short time. Such commercial success justified a sequel: Baum took his Policeman Bluejay character from the Twinkle Tale "Bandit Jim Crow" and cast him in a separate novel, to be issued the following year.
Baum published many works — adventure stories, melodramas, and juvenile novels — under pseudonyms; early experience had taught him that he ended up "competing with himself" if he released too much material under his own name. Both The Twinkle Tales and Policeman Bluejay were printed under the pen name "Laura Bancroft" — the only Baum fantasy works published under a pseudonym. Tongue-in-cheek, Katharine Rogers has called Policeman Bluejay "her best work...." Oz author and "Royal Historian" Jack Snow
thought Policeman Bluejay Baum's finest fantasy apart from the Oz books.
Policeman Bluejay was another success for Baum and his publishers; a second edition appeared in 1911 under the alternative title Babes in Birdland. The third edition of 1917, also under the new title, dropped the pseudonym and acknowledged Baum's authorship. The book was issued in a facsimile edition in 1981, and was printed again in the second issue of the annual Oz-story Magazine
in 1996. A volume that combined all the "Bancroft" material appeared in 2005.
This goal motivated the most extreme element in Policeman Bluejay — the hunting scene in Chapter IX, "The Destroyers," an extraordinarily violent scene in a story designed for young children.
, alkonosts
, and gamayuns
of Russian folklore.) Policeman Bluejay, the force of order in the avian world of the forest, leads the two child-larks on a flight through the sky; he esconces them in an abandoned thrush's nest in a maple tree, and with the help of a friendly eagle he retrieves their picnic basket (so that they don't have to eat bugs, worms, and grubs).
Twinkle and Chubbins learn of their new maple-tree neighbors, a squirrel, an owl, and an o'possum; and Policeman Bluejay introduces them to the community of birds. The children see that the world of living beings in the forest has structure, relationships, and conflict. They hear stories of human cruelty to animals — and soon they witness it firsthand, when hunters enter the forest. The hunters kill Mrs. 'Possum and Mrs. Hootaway and Wisk the squirrel; Twinkle tries to protest, but she can only make a skylark's chirp. The hunters' dog almost catches Twinkle — but she and Chubbins are rescued by their friend the eagle, who swoops down, kills the dog, and leads them to safety.
Or relative safety, at least: the eagle takes the two lark-children up to his eyrie, where his hungry hatchlings want to eat them for breakfast. (Baum acknowledges that animals, to survive, have to prey upon each other. Yet he maintains that "love" is the Grand Law of the forest.) Policeman Bluejay escorts the children to a safer location. Soon he takes them to the Paradise of Birds, where the contentions and violence of the forest never penetrate. The children are given a tour of its splendors, and meet the King Bird of Paradise. In the "suburbs" of Paradise, the child-larks are introduced to the community of bees, and meet the Queen Bee; and they witness a spectacular flight of butterflies.
Beyond Paradise, in "the coarse, outer world," there is trouble in birdland; Policeman Bluejay must cope with a rebellion among the rooks, who would make the other birds their slaves. By uniting, the smaller birds beat the rooks in a battle. The King Bird of Paradise and his Royal Necromancer have told the children that they can restore themselves to human form by eating a fruit called "tingle-berries." They do so, and return to their normal bodies — though Chubbins almost gets stuck halfway. Their adventure done, the children make their way home in the waning light of evening.
Policeman Bluejay delivers his young charges to the Guardian of the Entrance to Paradise (the Jay himself is too deeply tainted by the outer world to enter). The Guardian accepts them and turns them over to Ephel, the Royal Messenger, who guides them on their tour. Ephel brings them to the royal court of the King Bird of Paradise; the King's lecture on the virtue of vanity is the comic high point of the book. Ephel shows the children the Lustrous Lake with its singing fish, the curious lake of dry water, and the Gleaming Glade where the birds perform their Beauty Dance.
The Paradise of Birds is in fact Eden
: "There is a legend that man once lived there, but for some unknown crime was driven away. But the birds have always been allowed to inhabit the place because they did no harm." Since these are "fairy Birds of Paradise," they occupy their own domain of reality; the reader does not need to picture actual Birds of Paradise in an actual American woodland. (Baum's combination of Eden with fairyland raises interesting complexities.)
Baum exploits concepts and images that are used by fantasists before and after him; readers familiar with the genre will perceive echoes of other works. The Paradise of Birds has trees "not made of wood, but having trunks of polished gold and silver and leaves of exquisite metallic colorings" — reminiscent of the gold and silver foliage in The Twelve Dancing Princesses
. The barrier of wind that prevents entrance to the Paradise foreshadows the similar barrier in Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter
. And the flowers with human faces in Chapter XV have a range of parallels.
The Parliament of Fowls
is probably the best-known work in this vein, though various others can be cited, most commonly involving birds, and in Indian, Persian, and Arabic literature as well as Western. The trope re-appears in twentieth-century poetry, and in the early twenty-first it is still used to reach and teach young children.
In regard to bees, John Day's
play The Parliament of Bees
is arguably the most famous of a number of related works. (One major distinction applies: writers like Chaucer and Day were primarily interested in commenting on human society, and used their animal metaphors as means to that end. In Baum's book, the animals and their welfare are the central consideration.)
More generally, talking animals and human/animal transformation are virtually universal in world folklore. Baum's animal fable participates in this ancient tradition.
L. Frank Baum
Lyman Frank Baum was an American author of children's books, best known for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz...
and illustrated by Maginel Wright Enright. First published in 1907
1907 in literature
The year 1907 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:* June 26 - Mark Twain receives an honorary doctorate of laws degree from Oxford University.*James Joyce meets Ettore Schmitz for the first time....
, it has been considered one of the best of Baum's works.
The book
In 1906 Baum wrote, and his publisher Reilly & BrittonReilly & Britton
The Reilly and Britton Company, or Reilly & Britton was an American publishing company of the early and middle 20th century, famous as the publisher of the works of L. Frank Baum.-Founding:...
published, a set of six tales for young children, called The Twinkle Tales
The Twinkle Tales
The Twinkle Tales is a 1905 series by L. Frank Baum, published under the pen name Laura Bancroft. The six stories were issued in separate booklets by Baum's publisher Reilly & Britton, with illustrations by Maginel Wright Enright...
after their little-girl protagonist. The six were issued in in separate chapbooks
Chapbook
A chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...
, but later collected into a volume titled Twinkle and Chubbins: Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland. The series was a hit; Reilly & Britton sold 40,000 copies of the little books in a short time. Such commercial success justified a sequel: Baum took his Policeman Bluejay character from the Twinkle Tale "Bandit Jim Crow" and cast him in a separate novel, to be issued the following year.
Baum published many works — adventure stories, melodramas, and juvenile novels — under pseudonyms; early experience had taught him that he ended up "competing with himself" if he released too much material under his own name. Both The Twinkle Tales and Policeman Bluejay were printed under the pen name "Laura Bancroft" — the only Baum fantasy works published under a pseudonym. Tongue-in-cheek, Katharine Rogers has called Policeman Bluejay "her best work...." Oz author and "Royal Historian" Jack Snow
Jack Snow (writer)
John Frederick "Jack" Snow was an American radio writer and scholar, primarily of the works of L. Frank Baum. When Baum died in 1919, the twelve-year-old Snow offered to be the next Royal Historian of Oz, but was politely turned down by a staffer at Baum's publisher, Reilly & Lee...
thought Policeman Bluejay Baum's finest fantasy apart from the Oz books.
Policeman Bluejay was another success for Baum and his publishers; a second edition appeared in 1911 under the alternative title Babes in Birdland. The third edition of 1917, also under the new title, dropped the pseudonym and acknowledged Baum's authorship. The book was issued in a facsimile edition in 1981, and was printed again in the second issue of the annual Oz-story Magazine
Oz-story Magazine
Oz-story Magazine was an annual periodical devoted to the literature and art of Oz, the fantasy land created by L. Frank Baum. It was published in six volumes between 1995 and 2000....
in 1996. A volume that combined all the "Bancroft" material appeared in 2005.
The illustrations
Maginel Wright Enright was in her mid-twenties, and still near the start of her artistic career, when she created the illustrations for The Twinkle Tales and Policeman Bluejay. Her pictures for the "Bancroft" books have been described as having "a child-like grace, a clear clean outline, and a sometimes highly refined decorative sense."The theme
The "Bancroft" works of 1906 and 1907 are united by a general concept: kindness to animals rather than cruelty. Baum recalled from his own childhood, and observed in his own sons, how harsh children can be to vulnerable animals. Baum wrote a preface to Policeman Bluejay that expressed this goal unambiguously; he noted that along with the "amusement" the story provides, he hoped it would inspire "a little tenderness for the helpless animals and birds" his young readers encountered in their lives.This goal motivated the most extreme element in Policeman Bluejay — the hunting scene in Chapter IX, "The Destroyers," an extraordinarily violent scene in a story designed for young children.
Synopsis
At the story's start, Twinkle and Chubbins are lost in a "great forest." They encounter a "tuxix" — a creature that looks like a spiny turtle, but is in reality "a magician, a sorcerer, a wizard, and a witch all rolled into one...and you can imagine what a dreadful thing that would be." The evil tuxix casts a spell on the children, transforming them into little bird-like beings, with their own heads but the bodies of skylarks. (They resemble the human-headed, bird-bodied sirinsSirin
Sirin is a mythological creature of Russian legends, with the head and chest of a beautiful woman and the body of a bird . According to myth, the Sirins lived "in Indian lands" near Eden or around the Euphrates River....
, alkonosts
Alkonost
The Alkonost is, according to Russian folklore, a creature with the body of a bird but the head of a beautiful woman. It makes sounds that are amazingly beautiful, and those who hear these sounds forget everything they know and want nothing more ever again, rather like the sirens of Greek myth. ...
, and gamayuns
Gamayun
Gamayun is a prophetic bird of Russian folklore. It is a symbol of wisdom and knowledge and lives on an island in the east, close to paradise. Like the Sirin and the Alkonost, the Gamayun is normally depicted as a large bird with a woman's head....
of Russian folklore.) Policeman Bluejay, the force of order in the avian world of the forest, leads the two child-larks on a flight through the sky; he esconces them in an abandoned thrush's nest in a maple tree, and with the help of a friendly eagle he retrieves their picnic basket (so that they don't have to eat bugs, worms, and grubs).
Twinkle and Chubbins learn of their new maple-tree neighbors, a squirrel, an owl, and an o'possum; and Policeman Bluejay introduces them to the community of birds. The children see that the world of living beings in the forest has structure, relationships, and conflict. They hear stories of human cruelty to animals — and soon they witness it firsthand, when hunters enter the forest. The hunters kill Mrs. 'Possum and Mrs. Hootaway and Wisk the squirrel; Twinkle tries to protest, but she can only make a skylark's chirp. The hunters' dog almost catches Twinkle — but she and Chubbins are rescued by their friend the eagle, who swoops down, kills the dog, and leads them to safety.
Or relative safety, at least: the eagle takes the two lark-children up to his eyrie, where his hungry hatchlings want to eat them for breakfast. (Baum acknowledges that animals, to survive, have to prey upon each other. Yet he maintains that "love" is the Grand Law of the forest.) Policeman Bluejay escorts the children to a safer location. Soon he takes them to the Paradise of Birds, where the contentions and violence of the forest never penetrate. The children are given a tour of its splendors, and meet the King Bird of Paradise. In the "suburbs" of Paradise, the child-larks are introduced to the community of bees, and meet the Queen Bee; and they witness a spectacular flight of butterflies.
Beyond Paradise, in "the coarse, outer world," there is trouble in birdland; Policeman Bluejay must cope with a rebellion among the rooks, who would make the other birds their slaves. By uniting, the smaller birds beat the rooks in a battle. The King Bird of Paradise and his Royal Necromancer have told the children that they can restore themselves to human form by eating a fruit called "tingle-berries." They do so, and return to their normal bodies — though Chubbins almost gets stuck halfway. Their adventure done, the children make their way home in the waning light of evening.
The Paradise of Birds
Baum enriches the text of Policeman Bluejay with realistic details of the natural world. Yet Baum was not a naturalist but a fantasist, and the seven chapters (XII — XVIII) that he devotes to the Paradise of Birds are the heart of the fantasy. The author restricts himself to a simple language for his young audience; yet within this simplicity he paints a lush, lustrous, luxuriant prose poem of imaginative effects.Policeman Bluejay delivers his young charges to the Guardian of the Entrance to Paradise (the Jay himself is too deeply tainted by the outer world to enter). The Guardian accepts them and turns them over to Ephel, the Royal Messenger, who guides them on their tour. Ephel brings them to the royal court of the King Bird of Paradise; the King's lecture on the virtue of vanity is the comic high point of the book. Ephel shows the children the Lustrous Lake with its singing fish, the curious lake of dry water, and the Gleaming Glade where the birds perform their Beauty Dance.
The Paradise of Birds is in fact Eden
Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...
: "There is a legend that man once lived there, but for some unknown crime was driven away. But the birds have always been allowed to inhabit the place because they did no harm." Since these are "fairy Birds of Paradise," they occupy their own domain of reality; the reader does not need to picture actual Birds of Paradise in an actual American woodland. (Baum's combination of Eden with fairyland raises interesting complexities.)
Baum exploits concepts and images that are used by fantasists before and after him; readers familiar with the genre will perceive echoes of other works. The Paradise of Birds has trees "not made of wood, but having trunks of polished gold and silver and leaves of exquisite metallic colorings" — reminiscent of the gold and silver foliage in The Twelve Dancing Princesses
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
"The Twelve Dancing Princesses" is a German fairy tale originally published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 in Kinder- und Hausmärchen as tale number 133...
. The barrier of wind that prevents entrance to the Paradise foreshadows the similar barrier in Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter
The King of Elfland's Daughter
The King of Elfland's Daughter is a 1924 fantasy novel written by Lord Dunsany. Written before the genre was named, it is considered to be among the pioneering works of modern fantasy. Its importance was recognized in its later revival in paperback by Ballantine Books as the second volume of the...
. And the flowers with human faces in Chapter XV have a range of parallels.
The form
Baum's Policeman Bluejay partakes of a deep tradition in literature and storytelling, folklore and myth, which employs the animal world, especially birds and bees, as metaphor for the human condition. Chaucer'sGeoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
The Parliament of Fowls
Parlement of Foules
The "Parlement of Foules" is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer made up of approximately 700 lines. The poem is in the form of a dream vision in rhyme royal stanza and is interesting in that it is the first reference to the idea that St...
is probably the best-known work in this vein, though various others can be cited, most commonly involving birds, and in Indian, Persian, and Arabic literature as well as Western. The trope re-appears in twentieth-century poetry, and in the early twenty-first it is still used to reach and teach young children.
In regard to bees, John Day's
John Day (dramatist)
John Day was an English dramatist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.-Life:He was born at Cawston, Norfolk, and educated at Ely. He became a sizar of Caius College, Cambridge, in 1592, but was expelled in the next year for stealing a book...
play The Parliament of Bees
The Parliament of Bees
The Parliament of Bees is the best-known of the works of the Elizabethan dramatist, John Day. It was probably written sometime between 1608 and 1616, but not published till 1641....
is arguably the most famous of a number of related works. (One major distinction applies: writers like Chaucer and Day were primarily interested in commenting on human society, and used their animal metaphors as means to that end. In Baum's book, the animals and their welfare are the central consideration.)
More generally, talking animals and human/animal transformation are virtually universal in world folklore. Baum's animal fable participates in this ancient tradition.