The Skating Gander, by Alice Cooper Bailey. Published by P. F. Volland Company, New York 1927. A children's book with colorful illustrations containing antisemitic messages. An antisemitic story set in the Netherlands.
An antisemitic children's book about a young girl who comes to Amsterdam with a beautiful, special goose that is her playmate and companion in the new place. As she tries to settle into the new surroundings her goose goes missing. The story focuses on the girl's many searches for the goose all over town until one day, when she had almost lost hope, a local sailor tells her he saw a Jew boasting last spring that he has a goose that can slide better than any Dutch child. She tries to trace the goose stolen by the Jew and finally finds it sliding on the ice at one of the performance tents in Amsterdam. "The Jew" is portrayed as the evil thief without mercy, while the girl and other characters are depicted in an innocent light, just trying to live peaceful, pleasant lives.
Children stories like these were sometimes more dangerous than openly antisemitic books depicting hate, for a few reasons. First, they targeted children to instill from a young age the stigma of "the greedy, thieving Jew" as the villain. And second, the message was hidden within an innocent children's story, blending the antisemitic message into the plot without the reader realizing the subtle, implied antisemitism presented as unquestionable fact - "that's what Jews are like".
93, [1] p, 23 cm. Good condition.
