There Was a Crooked Man

Mapping the Mile – It’s the Journey That Counts

The most difficult of the seven elements to illustrate, and the one most often ignored, is the “mile.” Craig, however, emphasizes the crooked mile by making a map the focal point of her illustration. The insets of the crooked man, presumably at the beginning and end of his mile-long walk, show him getting as far as finding “a crooked sixpences against a crooked stile.” There is no evidence, however, of the cat, the mouse or the house commonly seen in these illustrations. The details of the map convince readers of the centrality of that mile-long walk.