putterings 485 < 486 > 487 index
old German folk tale; its small size better
For its delightful humor and pointed object lesson this retelling of a brief old German folk tale, heard by the author-illustrator in her youth, appeals to adults as well as to children. Told in informal conversational style, it follows one catastrophe after another as they happen in the brief space of a morning when a peasant farmer takes over what he calls the “puttering and pottering” of housework in order that his wife might toil in the fields and learn how hard his work is. The full flavor of the tale is conveyed in the numerous small drawings by the author. Excellent version for use in story-telling, but because of its small size better adapted for personal ownership than for circulation in the public library.
ex New York Libraries : “A quarterly devoted to the interest of the libraries of the state,” Vol 15 (1938) : 125
re-constructed from google books snippets only, link and link
taken together, a notice of
Wanda Gág. Gone Is Gone; Or, The Story of a Man Who Wanted to Do Housework, retold and illustrated by Wanda Gág (1935)
reprinted by U Minnesota in “The Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage Book Series” (2003)
via archive.org (currently 20241013 unavailable) : link
from the text :
Liesi had the house to clean, the soup to cook, the butter to churn, the barn yard and the baby to care for. She, too, worked hard each day as you can plainly see.
They both worked hard, but Fritzl always thought that he worked harder. Evenings when he came home from the field, he sad down, mopped his face with his big red handkerchief, and said: “Hu! How hot it was in the sun today, and how hard I did work. Little do you know, Liesi, what a man’s work is like, little do you know! Your work, now, ’tis nothing at all.”
“’Tis none too easy,” said Liesi.
“None too easy!” cried Frizl. “All you do is putter and potter around the house a bit — surely there’s nothing hard about such things.”
“Nay, if you think so,” said Liesi, “we’ll take it turn and turn about tomorrow. I will do your work, you can do mine. I will go out in the fields and cut the hay, you can stay here at home and putter and potter around. You wish to try it — yes?”
via archive.org : link (pending repairs)
—
see the author’s “about the book” at archive.org : link (pending repairs)
review of Gone Is Gone in New York Times (October 6, 1935) : link (paywall)
Wanda Gág (1893-1946), “bohemian” artist, writer, translator, illustrator
- wikipedia : link
- good bio/timeline, images, bibliography at mnopedia (administered by the Minnesota Historical Society) : link
references Wanda Gag’s “A Hotbed of Feminists,” being the “seventeenth and last of a series of anonymous articles giving the personal backgrounds of a group of distinguished women with a modern point of view” that ran in The Nation. The series title was “These Modern Women;” Gag’s contribution appeared in the June 22, 1917 number.
copy/scan (via google books) : link - New York Times obituary —
WANDA GAG, NOTED AS ILLUSTRATOR, 53; Author Also of Children's Books Is Dead — Her Work in Many Museums Here and Abroad (June 28, 1946)
link (paywall) - more at illustration art : link