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On Arnold Lobel

 When Arnold Lobel was finding his footing as a writer, he had a little daughter. She was naughty; she was just five.


The naughtiness inspired Lobel to create one of his first books--"Prince Bertram the Bad"--and any new parent will recognize the truth of the opening pages. The little boy Bertram cries excessively, tears roses from rosebeds, and swats at other babies. (Each of these problems is, literally, a problem that I now face in my daily life. Who knew that I would be giving so much thought to rosebeds?)

One day, Bertram is antagonizing birds with his slingshot--when, by accident, he hits a witch. The ensuing punishment is that Bertram must live life as a dragon, and the townspeople see the suffering as a joke: "Bertram has been a beast for so long, he has actually now assumed the *shape* of a beast!"

Forced to have a taste of his own medicine, Bertram changes. He becomes kind. He demonstrates compassion by "thawing" the witch--with his fiery breath--during a particularly fierce snowstorm. And, as in "Beauty and the Beast," a sin is forgiven: Bertram is allowed to become a prince (once again).

This is a sweet and weirdly suspenseful story. The details--the spiders in chicken soup, the wounded swans in the royal lake, the coachman and the pea-shooter--are all unforgettable.

The book resurfaced in 2018, after a period of obscurity, and Lobel's daughter "outed" herself as the inspiration for Bertram. She seems not to have any residual bitterness over this stage in Lobel's creative life.




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