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| Back cover |
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| Endpapers |
Davey Crockett
Frank L. Beals, Jack Merryweather
Wheeler Publishing Co., 1941
Also in the American Adventure Series by Wheeler Publishing, Davey Crockett exemplifies still another facet of the great frontier mythology this country nourished itself with. Disparate historical persons, places and events, milled as they were into such robust fictions and often conflated always bore as much fatal flaw as they did any benevolence borne of the hagiography around them. The phenomenon for frontier accoutrement and ephemera spurred by the 1950's Disney Davey Crockett features is well documented. Coonskin caps flew off the racks as did myriad toys, rubber knives, lunch boxes, etc. Disney pre-emptively shorted the source of their gains by truncating the feature to only a few episodes before killing off the lead in the Alamo fiasco. They had not anticipated such a colossal hit. This backdrop is one of the major contexts in which frontier heroes are understood, especially by boomers. The Wheeler books precede this though and present a more subtle iconography although no less reverential.
Considering how insidious and virile these topics and their depictions were in the golden age of American children's books it's startling to think that they are virtually off the map now. The real and imagined events they fleshed out are receding to the point of irrelevance in kids imaginations and certainly don't weather well the brunt of that pesky hobble, political correctness, either.
Of note, nice endpapers ( as with the D. Boone).
Wheeler Publishing Co., 1941
Also in the American Adventure Series by Wheeler Publishing, Davey Crockett exemplifies still another facet of the great frontier mythology this country nourished itself with. Disparate historical persons, places and events, milled as they were into such robust fictions and often conflated always bore as much fatal flaw as they did any benevolence borne of the hagiography around them. The phenomenon for frontier accoutrement and ephemera spurred by the 1950's Disney Davey Crockett features is well documented. Coonskin caps flew off the racks as did myriad toys, rubber knives, lunch boxes, etc. Disney pre-emptively shorted the source of their gains by truncating the feature to only a few episodes before killing off the lead in the Alamo fiasco. They had not anticipated such a colossal hit. This backdrop is one of the major contexts in which frontier heroes are understood, especially by boomers. The Wheeler books precede this though and present a more subtle iconography although no less reverential.
Considering how insidious and virile these topics and their depictions were in the golden age of American children's books it's startling to think that they are virtually off the map now. The real and imagined events they fleshed out are receding to the point of irrelevance in kids imaginations and certainly don't weather well the brunt of that pesky hobble, political correctness, either.
Of note, nice endpapers ( as with the D. Boone).
