The Secret Lives of Toys and Their Friends

Image from the 1895 story, The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg, by Bertha Upton and Florence K. Upton

The Secret Lives of Toys and Their Friends contains items drawn from The Miriam Snow Mathes Historical Children’s Literature Collection and is on exhibit in the lobby of the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives (Third Floor of the Science Library) beginning in August 2006. This exhibit features a small sampling of the many stories written for children from either a toy’s point of view or about adventures based on the lives of living toys or objects. The M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives houses many book collections, including the one used for this exhibit: The Miriam Snow Mathes Historical Children’s Literature Collection. The over fifty items in the physical exhibit, including the small number shown here, are a fraction of what the Mathes Collection contains on the subject of animated objects and/or toys. The Mathes Collection includes over 10,000 children's books and periodicals published from the early 1800’s through to around 1960.  The exhibit was curated by Kali M.D. Roy, Collection Management Assistant, Miriam Snow Mathes Historical Children's Literature Collection.

The idea of toys and/or objects leading their own lives is not new and it continues to fascinate children and adults. It has been an exceedingly popular topic of children’s literature from the time of the 1816 work, The Nutcracker and The Mouse King by E.T.A. Hoffman (which inspired the Nutcracker Suite ballet) straight through to the 1995 Pixar movie, Toy Story and even beyond that. Within that time frame there exist many stories that have been forgotten, but there are also those that never seem to lose their popularity or allure such as: Alice in Wonderland, Winnie The Pooh, The Raggedy Ann and Andy Stories and the folk tale of The Little Gingerbread Man.

Do nursery toys, household objects, or baked goods move about, think, and talk when people are not paying attention? We may never know. But this exhibit explores the themes and ideas that make such enchanting prospects seem possible. Although stories with animated objects and toys did exist before The Nutcracker and The Mouse King (not currently part of the Mathes Collection) this story seems to have started a trend in children’s literature where impossible things can happen with the help of three specific elements: Christmas Eve or Christmas Day Magic, the clock striking the powerful hour of Midnight, and the Dreams of “sleeping” children. These themes are constantly recycled as a way to explain why such things may be happening in a particular story, but they are by no means the only ideas ever explored. Adults sometimes fall victim to the “dreams” though only on rare occasions; and adults almost never hear toys or objects speak. Sometimes, all that is needed is child-like faith to make an object live, as with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1849 work, The Snow Image.

Sometimes a doll or a toy has decided to share their lives or adventures with the reader only, and not with their owners or anyone they happen to meet, as with the memoir style books like: Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, 1929, by Rachel Field, or Memoirs of a London Doll: Written by Herself, 1846, by Richard Henry Horne. Other writers simply tell the tales of nursery toys in a direct style that contains no particular magic element, and no child sees them move or speak. The toys have their own lives that only they themselves know about (and only they themselves know that they can think and communicate with each other.) Such is the case with the Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate pseudonym) nursery toy series that includes stories such as: The Story of a Monkey on a Stick, The Story of a Calico Clown, The Story of a Sawdust Doll, and others.

In 2006, Newbery Medal winner Kate DeCamillo, wrote a story in this vein entitled The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, who happens to be a china rabbit. In this story, the timeless element of love comes to the fore as with the ever popular Velveteen Rabbit, story of Margery Williams Bianco, from 1922. Whether brought to life by a child’s love, unwavering faith, Christmas magic, midnight, enchanted dreams, or in rare cases “Elixirs of Life,” there seems to be no end in sight for this genre of children’s literature in which toys, household objects, or even foodstuffs secretly lead their exciting lives.