However, the Petershams partially transform the image by making the cane chewer a child who meets the reader’s gaze. In earlier production stories, the cane chewing figure originated with proslavery literature, which depicted slaves eating cane during harvest to contradict accounts of starvation in cane fields. While encouraging readers to sympathize with producers, such images also spread a cheerful veneer over questionable labor practices. What is this figure’s perennial appeal? One possibility is that the harvester chewing cane encourages readers’ empathy without challenging their privilege: The image reassures privileged consumers who purchase and eat sugar far away from where cane is grown that children involved in the sugar labor force have plenty of food-indeed, they enjoy treats, just like children everywhere.
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The figure appears in sugar production stories over the past two hundred years, changing to represent the labor force primarily responsible for sugar production, from enslaved Africans to free workers of different races and ethnicities. And a similar boy appears in the corner of an image depicting the cane harvest, titled “In the Sugar-Cane Field.” This cane harvester, chewing cut cane, has a long history. Another child chewing cane appears on the dust jacket for The Story Book of Foods from the Field. The title page for The Story Book of Sugar features a black child chewing cane.
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This way of organizing a series by related commodities follows the same marketing strategy used by John Wallis, over a hundred years earlier. Most of the contents from The Storybook of Sugar (1936) also appear in the volume Foods from the Field (Bader, 93-97).
Each of these five contain sections on different commodities that could be purchased as separate volumes. With publishers’ renewed interest in children’s books about everyday life, the production story genre was revived in the US with a series by Janet Smalley, closely followed by the Petersham’s comprehensive series comprised of five textbooks: The Story Book of The Things We Use (1933), about houses, food, and transportation The Story Book of Earth’s Treasures (1935), about gold, coal, oil, iron, and steel The Story Book of Wheels, Ships, Trains, Aircraft (1935) The Story Book of Foods from the Field (1936), about wheat, corn, rice, sugar and The Story Book of Things We Wear (1939), about wool, cotton, silk, and rayon. During the interwar period, author-illustrator team Maud and Miska Petersham created some of the most memorable fiction stories and textbooks for children.
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