Changing a cartoon depicting an Indigenous ceremony

In 2005, the first of my two books called Vocabulary Cartoon of the Day came out, featuring 180 single panel cartoons for grades 4-6. To get the joke, kids must learn the bolded word in each caption.

In 2020, my publisher, Scholastic, told me that a reader in Canada had contacted them to report a cartoon that he/she/they felt was a “stereotypical representation of Indigenous people.” My editor asked me to replace it with a new cartoon for future printings.

 

* Please do not repost without a link to this post, for context. *

I have no doubt I referred to photos and images of rain dances to create this cartoon, for two reasons. One, I go to significant lengths to ensure my work is accurate, including art (even when I am not the one illustrating, as with all of my picture books). Two, then and now, I couldn’t even begin to pull from my brain what such a scene should look like. 

But in this case, I neglected to save my sources—which is both regrettable and uncharacteristic, since I keep meticulous notes on sources for my writing. 

Admitting that glaring lapse, I sought perspective from tribal chairpeople and organizational directors of multiple Indigenous nations whose customs have included rain dances. 

The feedback I got included differing opinions, some with historical frameworks—all tremendously helpful and equally appreciated. I suspect you’ll also find them illuminating. Quoted verbatim:

1)

The cartoon is not acceptable and is disrespectful. Do not incorporate it into your work.

—Osage Nation Wahzhazhe Cultural Center

2)

Perhaps the complaining person thought the immediate rain might was disrespectful. The rain dance is done as a spiritual ceremony. I suppose some Indians would say that the head dress does not depict their traditions. It is so with the Potawatomi Nations containing 10 Indian Tribes. All tribes that I know of were long pants, not short pants.  Even so, I can’t imagine anyone complaining about a picture cartoon. Also, all Tribes that I know wear long pants, not short pants. 

I don’t think it is in good taste to complain about a picture cartoon in a children’s book. I would not do so, but there are “different strokes for different folks” all around the world. 

—Citizen Potawatomi Nation

3)

Since Rain Dances are really prayer dances, some may have taken exception to a humorous portrayal of a religious ceremony. Personally, I do not find the cartoon offensive, given your intent to demonstrate or illustrate a vocabulary word for educational purposes. People need to lighten up a bit on ethnic outrage. Your cartoon was not intended to offend, and did not.

—Citizen Potawatomi Nation [different person than previous]

4)

Insulting.

—Osage Nation Historic Preservation Office

5)

I would state that “rainmaking” is an old trope that marginalizes the realities of complex Native science and religion. This perpetuates harmful stereotypes that infantilizes Native ceremony by removing all context of Native ceremonial life and imposes Western concepts of dance as entertainment.

Also, your cartoon depiction of Native dress is not accurate. “Rain Dance” ceremonies were not practiced by the Osage. From your cartoon it seems you are using an amalgam of Plains tribe stereotypes, but the majority of ceremonies of that nature were practiced by indigenous people of the southwest.

Overall, given the criminal lack of basic cultural sensitivity and knowledge of Native history, using any tribal ceremony as a vehicle for children to learn English vocabulary is offensive. The majority of children are not even taught whose land they live on. At most, they would see your work and continue to think of Native peoples as cartoons and their ceremonial life as silly.

—Osage Nation Historic Preservation Office [different person than previous]

6)

With greater public awareness of cultural appropriation, and its effects on Indigenous people, we do not endorse the depiction of Cherokee ceremony by non-tribal citizens. Furthermore, upon reviewing your piece, it does not appear to depict Cherokee people, but rather a pan-Indian notion of all “Indians” with feathers and headdress. We cannot verify if you correctly depicted any sort of North American Indigenous “Rain Dance.” 

It may have been considered palatable by the general public in the past. However, Indigenous people have been advocating heavily for accurate cultural representation, and ending harmful stereotypes for many years. Today, many long held stereotypes are being dismantled and it appears that is the case with this piece. Going forward, we encourage non-Indigenous people to fully research a culture before attempting to characterize it, and consider the notion that the people of that culture prefer to represent themselves, rather than have a person from a different culture do it for them.

—Cherokee Heritage Center

I don’t imagine I’ll be making any more cartoon books, but regardless of the project, now I do my due diligence better than I did with this cartoon. I continue to learn...

The replacement:

caption: 

Her juggling skills are inimitable. Obviously I’m just a beginner.

I’ve always (and sometimes explicitly) welcomed readers notifying me about any mistakes or insensitivities in my work. Keep it up, citizen editors!

Rejections for my cartoons

From 1998-2003 and then in spurts since, I split my time between writing books and writing (plus drawing) single panel cartoons. 

Here are four of my favorite responses to submissions—two rejections, one acceptance, and one something else. This was back when things were done on paper, via postal mail.

 Punch was an influential, long-running humor 

magazine in the United Kingdom. In fact, it helped 

define “cartoon” to mean a humorous illustration.

This part of the last line of the letter is what sells it:
“To be honest, I don’t think you stand much chance.”

(I went on to license cartoons to Punch 

fairly regularly till it folded in 2002. I also

befriended this editor, Steve Way.)

 Not all Playboy cartoons have adult themes.

I tried unsuccessfully to sell to the magazine

for a while, then sent a note with samples to 

Playboy CEO Christie Hefner because she

and I both went to Brandeis University

(separated by 20 years). Again, the last

line is what made this a keeper.

A bit more than six months later...

(Different editor. First of several cartoons I licensed to HBR. The moral: as long as no one will get hurt, try whatever you want as many times as you want to.)

My Phi Beta Kappa cartoon controversy

In 1998, upon revisiting my bucket list, I began drawing single-panel cartoons (aiming for 10 a week) with the sole objective of selling one to The New Yorker. At least 2,000 cartoons later, I haven’t (and in fact haven’t tried since about 2003), but I hope to resume that pursuit one day. In the meantime, I ended up licensing cartoons to more than 100 other publications including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Barron’s, Good Housekeeping, the iconic Punch (in the UK), and the venerable Saturday Evening Post.

Another was The Key Reporter, the magazine of Phi Beta Kappa, the university-level national honor society for academic achievement, of which I am a member.

The first time TKR published one of my cartoons was in its spring 2001 issue, which was also the first time the magazine published any cartoon.

The summer 2001 issue ran a second cartoon of mine—and also a three-page article entitled “Do Phi Betes Have a Sense of Humor? Some Philosophical Thoughts about Jokes.”

I found it intriguing (and, at first, strange) that the traditionally staid publication would run a cartoon and a treatise on humor in back-to-back issues. Then I realized that this defense of the value of laughing was because of me.

A 1972 alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania had sent TKR a letter in which he stated:

As a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Professor in a University School of Medicine and a practicing physician, I was distressed by the cartoon on page 16. This derogatory, abusive and near-slanderous depiction of the physician as buffoon is inexcusable and deserves an apology.

My first controversy! Well, my first “controversy.”

I was surprised that TKR had not told me about this before the issue went out. (More so, I was surprised that someone would have such a reaction to a particularly innocuous cartoon.)

But I was thrilled at the sly way TKR chose to address the criticism. Rather than stop running my cartoons, or place any parameters on the cartoon topics I submitted, they published a thoughtful analysis on the nature of humor itself. Looking back, that seems like the only approach an esteemed organization like PBK would take.

More than thrilled, I was proud that my little cartoon (indirectly) took up so much real estate.

And it wasn’t over yet.

In the fall 2001 issue, under the headline “That Cartoon Critique,” two letters were printed. Excerpts:

letter 1:

I am a retired professor of surgery and pediatrics, and I’d like to twit my fellow PBK for being so exercised over a cartoon which depicted a physician as a buffoon.

letter 2:

I found the quote from the Phi Beta Kappa alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania regarding the Reporter’s Spring 2001 cartoon rather unsettling.

...

The inability to find humor in the Spring 2001 cartoon conveys to me an elitist state of mind. As in, “I am a physician AND a PHI BETA KAPPA member...how dare you poke fun at me or anyone like me.”

Both in law school and now professionally, people feel a need to share lawyer jokes with me. And you know what? I like them. I usually have the ability to top them with some of my own.

No one is above being the target of good-natured humor.

Amen.

This time sans guns and smokes

In the early 2000s, upon learning that I was a cartoonist as well as writer, my Scholastic editor Virginia Dooley proposed an update to a 1960s book that used cartoons to teach vocabulary. She (postal) mailed me samples from the book. The cartoons included pistols, cigarettes, and other elements you would not see in a children’s book today.

The book may not have been aimed at young people.

In any case, the idea was to create 180 cartoons, one for every day of the school year—new words, new gags. It seemed like a fun challenge.

Vocabulary Cartoon of the Day (grades 4-6) came out in 2005.

A keynoter at a SCBWI conference I’d attended sometime before then said that in 1945, the average schoolchild’s vocabulary consisted of 10,000 words…and now, only 2,500. 

At professional development seminars where I spoke, I would tell the audience that, if nothing else, this book would help increase that number to 2,680.

After repeated requests at those professional development seminars, we did a second one for a younger age range (illustrated by the total pro Mike Moran). It came out in 2010.

In late 2013, I went looking for those cartoons Virginia sent me more than a decade ago. I didn’t remember that they were not sent digitally. But when I didn’t find them either on my computer or in my file, I asked Virginia. She also could not find or remember the source but did not think it was Scholastic.

So I took to Google. But it turns out my searches for books with “vocabulary” and “cartoon” in the title were for naught.

The title of the book, I believe, was Word-a-Day, by Mickey Bach. It came out in 1964, and it does appear that it was indeed published by Scholastic (or at least one edition was).

Apparently, Mickey Bach (1909-1994) churned out these illustrated vocab builders (they were not called vocabulary cartoons) from the 1940s to the mid-1980s.

Here are a few demonstrating why the plan was redo rather than reissue:

Guns.

Smoking.

Boozing.

Beating.

Heaps of thanks to the kind and resourceful Rebecca Knab of Loganberry Books for solving this mystery, especially with so little to go on.

"Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Dating Game" cartoons

Eleven of my cartoons appear in Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Dating Game. I like how the type design is reminiscent of the 1960s, the decade in which the game show of the same name debuted. 

Here are three of my favorites:

I'm bypassing a watermark because I trust you. 

Please don't take without asking, okay?

Cartoons for "Publishers Weekly"

BookExpo America opens today. 

At BEA eleven years ago, my cartoons appeared in the Publishers Weekly Show Daily.

The Dinobunnies dominate

On 3/8/11, I spoke at Pleasant Ridge Elementary in Overland Park, KS, notable for being the first school in which I sat in a bathtub in the library. (Also notable for being a great school.)

More than a year later, the school shared some flattering news about its Battle of the Books competition. A group of 4th graders who had lost the previous year changed their team name and tried again as 5th graders. In 5/11, they won. The team name?

The Dinobunnies.

 posted with permission (two stuffed animals were harmed in the making of that mascot)

During my presentations, after polling the audience, I sketch a couple of characters. Invariably, one ends up being a dinobunny (sometimes rabbitosaurus).

(not taken at Pleasant Ridge but he always looks the same)

National Cartoonists Society

In 1999, the way I partied like it was, well, that year was by joining the National Cartoonists Society.

This entitled me to a copy of the NCS membership album from 1996—the 50th anniversary edition. 

It also entitled me to an entry in the next edition. Rather than copy and submit my high school yearbook entry, I cobbled together something new:

That site is defunct but the cartoons live on.

Happy National Cartoonists Day. You are convincing in your act that you did not already know it was today.

Batman is not the lead

Jerry Robinson, one of the first (and best) ghost artists on Batman, who passed away in 2011, was a member of the National Cartoonists Society.

For a time, so was I.

And so I was given a copy of the NCS membership album (50th anniversary edition, no less). 

Robinson had a long, renowned career—so long and renowned that he did not mention Batman till halfway through his NCS bio! 

Imagine having a string of accomplishments so impressive that you don’t lead with the fact that you drew the first Joker story…

We all miss you, Jerry. You were truly the goldest of the Golden Age.

MTN Cartoons 1999-2013

On 11/3/99, I launched my first website.

MTN Cartoons (mtncartoons.com) was devoted mostly to my single panel cartoons (AKA gag cartoons); the page listing the books I had written did only that—list my books. No descriptions, reviews, background. It was almost an aside.

Around 2007, I set out to overhaul the site to reflect that writing had become the primary focus of my career. I bought the (pricy) design software. I bought the Dummies guide. I mapped out what I wanted.

But then in 2008, I launched this blog.

It soon began to serve my objectives in having an online presence and I decided that, at least for the time being, I didn’t need another site.

I let MTN Cartoons linger only because my primary email was through that URL. But eventually my gmail became more convenient.

So on 1/31/13, I canceled my hosting for MTN Cartoons. In a matter of days, the site was down. One of those depressing “placeholder” sites of useless links was up.

I remember being proud that I was one of the first people (let alone first cartoonists) I knew to have a site. And I’m proud that it lasted as long as it did, though I had not updated it since 2005.

I remember asking someone with web design experience about “framing” the cartoons with the blue border I ultimately used along the left side. He said it’s not the way the web works; because screen resolutions differ from computer to computer, you create a site that flows down (vertical) rather than one hindered by horizontal aesthetics.

I remember being happy with the way I showcased my cartoons, though even then it was not the most functional approach. (Of the hundreds of cartoons I’d done, I included only 30, and there was no thumbnail gallery or “view by category.” You simply clicked from one to the random next, though I did think I presented a clever way to skip ahead—three choices of “1-10,” “11-20,” and “21-30.” Ah, simpler, un-savvy days.)

I will continue to sprinkle cartoons throughout this blog, and there are plenty elsewhere online for the googling.

Here are screenshots of most of the pages, a nostalgic romp through.memorial to my contribution to Web 1.0.

 

Favorites from "Vocabulary Cartoon of the Day" (grades 2-3), round 3

artist: Mike Moran

 

Favorite cartoons from this book, round 1 of 3.

Favorite cartoons from this book, round 2 of 3.