Courtesy of blommi.com
Aldous Huxley was a pretty prolific author — he penned 12 novels, 7 short story collections, multiple books of poetry, drama and journalism — but one area of this LSD-inspired wordsmith’s work is often overlooked: his children’s writing.
Abrams Books for Young Readers just published a reprint of his children’s book The Crows of Pearblossom, which was written for his niece Olivia, and tells the story of a mean-spirited snake who keeps stealing the eggs of Mrs. Crow. Here’s how Wikipedia describes the plot:
This story, written Christmas of 1944, tells the story of Mr. and Mrs. Crow, who live in a cotton-wood tree at Pearblossom. Due to the Rattlesnake living at the bottom of the tree, Mrs. Crow’s eggs are never able to hatch. After catching the snake eating her 297th egg that year (she does not work on Sundays), Mrs. Crow requests that Mr. Crow go into the hole and kill the snake. Thinking better of it, Mr. Crow confers with his wise friend, Mr. Owl. Mr. Owl bakes mud into two stone eggs and paints them to resemble Mrs. Crows eggs. These dummy eggs are left in the nest to trick the Rattlesnake, who unknowingly eats them the next day. When the eggs get to his stomach, they cause the Rattlesnake such pain, that he thrashes about, tying himself in knots around the branches. Mrs. Crow goes on to hatch “four families of seventeen children each” and “uses the snake as a clothesline on which to hang the little crows’ diapers.”
Pretty trippy stuff, right? The manuscript was written in 1944, but almost never made it out (Huxley’s manuscript was destroyed by a fire, but thankfully a neighbor had an extra copy). It was published previously in 1967 by Random House (with illustrations by Barbara Cooney).
The new edition is illustrated by Sophie Blackall (Ivy and Bean, Ruby’s Wish), which thankfully takes advantage of the vivid colors one would expect to see in a Huxley work.
