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Little Boy Blue
Leaping Over Clouds - What a Day for a Daydream
In this contemporary view of Little Boy Blue, the moral theme apparent
in most other illustrations is lacking. The wandering cows and sheep appear
to be more part of Little Boy Blue's dream state than they do of any workaday
reality of the child. Missing is the realism of most illustrations depicting
an actual rural setting with cows and sheep wandering about as the boy
sleeps in the hay. Alan Marks' illustration might suggest that the sleeping
boy has just been read the tale of Little Boy Blue and carried it with
him into his dreams. There are a sheep and a cow, each, near the sleeping
boy just beyond the soft hay in which he sleeps. But others are leaping
over clouds, suggestive of “counting sheep” to induce sleep
and dreams. This boy is not a laboring child of old, but a little boy
of today, free of the care of daily toil and in the caress of a sweet
dream. The colors and the fine lines of the hay, seeming both to protect
the boy and to point up to the dream sequence, support this interpretation.
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