VLB Thoughts for Gallery A4
Martha OAKS  Curator, Cape Ann Museum

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of Virginia Lee Burton’s beloved children’s book The Little House. In recognition of this milestone, the Cape Ann Museum is pleased and honored to be joining with its colleagues at Gallery A4 at the Takenaka Corporation in Tokyo, Japan, to mark this happy occasion and to celebrate the life one of the most accomplished children’s book authors of the 20th century.

Virginia Lee Burton (1909-1968) was a multi-talented person whose skill as a dancer, a designer, a writer, an illustrator and a teacher, touched the lives of many people. It was through her work as a children’s book writer and illustrator, however, that she reached her widest audiences. The Little House was Burton’s fourth work published by the Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston, Massachusetts, and appeared on book shelves in this country in 1942; Burton was awarded the coveted Caldecott Medal for the work in 1943. By 1954, the book had been translated into Japanese by Momoko Ishii and was on its way to becoming an international success. Ten years later, Burton made a two-week long pilgrimage to Japan, invited by the American Cultural Center in Tokyo and hosted by Momoko Ishii. Since that time, The Little House has been as loved by Japanese readers as it has been by Americans.

The story Virginia Lee Burton weaves in The Little House is simple yet powerful. It is the tale of a small ordinary house that watches its once quiet neighborhood change as urbanization takes hold in the mid-20th century. Familiar surroundings become unrecognizable and menacing. The change of seasons that defined the daily rhythms of life is no longer discernible. And when the moon and the stars are no longer visible in the night sky, the owners move out abandoning the little house. Just as all seems lost, the inherent worth of the house is recognized by descendants of the original owners who arrive on the scene. The city that has grown up around it pauses just long enough for the house to be lifted off its foundation, loaded onto a trailer and slowly moved out of harm’s way. “At first,” Burton writes, “the Little House was frightened, but after she got used to it she rather like it. They rolled along the big road, and they rolled along the little roads, until they were way out in the country.” Safely away from the city and set down on a firm new foundation, the house is saved, given a new lease on life.

While at first, The Little House seems a simple story, with her remarkable skill as an artist and her straightforward narrative, Virginia Lee Burton created a much more complex and meaningful story and it is because of this that the book has found such a large base of enthusiastic fans of all ages over the past 75 years. It is a story about the importance of honoring the past, of respecting the built world and, at the same time, the natural world. It is a story about the importance of living in harmony with nature and the restorative powers of peacefulness and beauty. And it is also the story about second chances and the importance of family, home and legacy, and about remaining useful and productive. Values and visions such as these are not exclusively American but rather are something that we share in common with the people of Japan and indeed throughout the world. Virginia Lee Burton realized the importance and power of this inclusivity and so did Momoko Ishii when she translated the work for Japanese readers.

Although Virginia Lee Burton known to her friends and admirers as “Jinnee” was neither born nor raised here in Gloucester, the community has long thought of her as their own. Jinnee came to Gloucester and Cape Ann through her marriage to artist George Demetrios who had first visited as a student of the great American sculptor Charles Grafly. In 1935, married and new parents, Jinnee and George purchased a house in Gloucester’s Folly Cove neighborhood and, in time, had the structure picked up and moved back away from the busy street. As Barbara Elleman wrote in her 2002 biography of Burton, “the small turn-of-the-century house…became the anchor” of Jinnee’s life, providing “the quiet oasis” in which her life and work would flourish. The moving of the Burton-Demetrios house in the early 1930s provided the inspiration for Burton’s The Little House. Although we here in Gloucester will always think of Virginia Lee Burton as our own, it gladdens us and enriches our lives to know that she is as equally admired and loved by the people of Japan.

The Cape Ann Museum hopes that when this special exhibition closes at Gallery A4 in Tokyo and the traveling exhibitions, the scale model of Virginia Lee Burton’s little house, designed and built by our Japanese friends for the exhibit, will be lifted off its foundations and lovingly transported to Gloucester to be enjoyed and appreciated by residents of the community that inspired The Little House so many years ago.

Translation: Atsuko Tanaka

a. The house (right) and Burton’s barn studio
b. Flowers of daisy in Folly Cove
c. Burton spent time alone at this small sea-shack
  The sea-shack was dismantled for the development of the cape
Photo: Hiroyo Kaneko