Ferdinand - No Bull

I've had a special relationship with the book The Story of Ferdinand since I was in first grade. Being kind of a precocious reader, I was chosen to read the book aloud during a school presentation while another first grader acted out the various scenes. (remember, this is pre-internet, three tv channel times.)

It's one of Audrey's favourites too, one of a handful of books she had as a child and re-bought as an adult. She even bought a Ferdinand toy from the movie that came out back in 2017 with John Cena as the voice of the titular bull, despite not enjoying the film very much.

The 1936 book, for those unfamiliar, was written by Munro Leaf and brilliantly illustrated by Robert Lawson. It tells the tale of a gentle bull on a farm outside Madrid who would rather sit beneath his beloved cork tree and smell flowers as opposed to fighting with the other bulls. 

Mistaken for a true killer by visitors unaware that Ferdinand has sat on a bee, he is taken to the bull ring in Madrid, but they cannot make him rekindle his earlier ferocity. 

It is a lovely book, and it has been said that perhaps there out of four adults who buy it do so for their own enjoyment, and not necessarily as a child's gift. At face value, it is a humourous tale with a positive message about being true to oneself, but as Audrey informed me tonight, one notable historical figure really did not like Ferdinand in the slightest.

Adolf Hitler.

Perhaps this is unsurprising, but I was still stunned at her discovery (via Ferdinand's Wikipedia page) that Hitler found this tale of a pacifistic bovine to be "degenerate democratic propaganda" and banned it from Germany. Coming out as close as it did to the Spanish Civil War, perhaps it is not as surprising that it was also banned in Spain for its pacifism, and that ban was not lifted until Franco died in 1975

On the other hand, it was not only immensely popular in the United States and Canada, it was also the only American children's book in Stalinist Poland.

It turns out that people have applied all manner of metaphorical and allegorical baggage on poor Ferdinand's horns. In 1938, Life magazine said "too-subtle readers see in Ferdinand everything from a fascist to a pacifist to a burlesque sit-down striker," while The Cleveland Plain Dealer accused the book of "corrupting the youth of America."

More recently, the New York Times profiled the story for its 75th anniversary in 2011, and characterized it as a parable about exclusion, and lionizing the title character as "an icon for the oustider and the bullied," which feels much closer to the mark for me.

Following D-Day, British Air Transport auxiliary ferrying in aircraft to Europe as non-combatants used Ferdinand as a most appropriate call sign. And after the end of the war, 30,000 copies were printed out and distributed free to German children as a sign of encouraging peace.

This is a book that, in addition to never being out of print (as of 2019 anyways), has been a fond memory for both Audrey and I for much of our lives. I am grateful to Wikipedia (and another article from Sotheby's I have yet to get into) for the opportunity to learn so much about the hidden history and controversy surrounding a popular children's book.