MAZA FLIP THU

Spring 2022
Issue 1

Table of Contents
03 The Mazza Goes to the Zoo
Our Amazzing Artists 17
07 If You Give Felicia Bond a Pencil Taking Flight on Sunday Funday 23
13 Pump Up the STEAM The Mazza Mission 25

our gallery
05 06

a conversation with illustrator, Felicia Bond
07
Felicia Bond, the second child in a
family of seven, was raised in New
York and Texas. She graduated
from the University of Texas at Austin,
where she received a degree in
Fine Arts, and lived for ten years in
New York City, writing and illustrating
books and working as an art director
in a publishing company. She
is one of the best-selling children’s
book writers and illustrators in the
world. Her first work, Poinsettia and
Her Family, has become a children’s
book staple in the 15 years
since its publication and If You Give
a Mouse a Cookie has sold over a
million copies.
She now makes her home in Austin,
Texas and her special interests
include animals (especially cats —
she has six!), reading, dancing, and
cooking. She has published over
08

cooking. She has published
over twenty books, including
Tumble Bumble (Front Street,
1996), which is the first in
several years she has written
as well as illustrated. Tumble
Bumble’s playful rhyming
text reflects the same vibrancy
and energy that distinguishes
her art, and her illustrations,
as always, reveal a
keen appreciation for what children
like. Felicia Bond’s work has captured
the hearts of a generation of
children and their parents —Tumble
Bumble is another enchanting
creation that is bound to become a
much-loved favorite. Tumble Bumble
was featured as a Best Book of
1996 in the December issue of
Parents magazine.
Ms. Bond says, “There was virtually
nothing that didn’t excite
me in the art I experienced as a
child —everything from the expressive
free-spirited paintings
by Ludwig Bemelmans in his
Madeline books to the graphic
and verbal wit and understatement
of Charles Schulz in his
Peanuts strip — I loved it all. I
couldn’t wait to grow up and be
an artist!”
If you give a mouse a cookie,
he’s going to ask you to shut up
about the welfare state. Or
at least, that’s what I imagine
every time I read another
reference to how a beloved
children’s classic is a
not-so-secret warning about
the perils of handouts.
The classic children’s book
If You Give a Mouse a
Cookie is a circular tale
of adventure, friendship,
and the comforting
safety of ending up
where you started. It
has been a celebrated
favorite of Laura Bush,
Michelle Obama, and
Oprah Winfrey, and
a particular comfort to
autistic children who
cherish its embrace of
returning home.
But after 30 years of being
ecumenically embraced, Laura
Numeroff and Felicia Bond’s
charming story was challenged
in 2015 when the Washington
Post wrote about the book’s
“secret political agenda.” The
Post’s sources were neither
children nor the book’s creators,
but instead an economist from
the conservative American
Enterprise Institute and Ron
Haskins, a former congressional
staffer who helped design federal
welfare programs during the Clinton
administration. If you give a mouse
a cookie, Haskins warned, the
mouse begins to expect the cookie,
and next thing you know, you’ve
created a culture of dependency
and he’s sleeping in your bed.
For the record, the mouse never
sleeps in his host’s bed; instead the
little boy makes him a tiny napping
spot out of ordinary household objects.
Nonetheless, Haskins’ message
has become a meme, and a goto
metaphor for the slippery slope
of unintended consequences. Ishani
Ganguli, a Harvard Medical School
professor writing in the Washington
Post, invoked the book last month
to describe “the downstream consequences
of a single, seemingly
innocuous decision,” leading to
painful long-term damage. Don’t
accept the cookie, Ganguli warns.
Stop after the glass of milk!
This gets the story and its moral all
mixed up. Numeroff and Bond were
not telling a “for want of a nail”–
type story about an endlessly slippery
slope. They just wanted to entertain
children and enjoy the absurdity
of animals eating human food.
Numeroff says the idea for the
book came to her on a long car trip
in 1981. In a bid to stave off boredom,
she imagined the mouse and
9 10

his cookie after first considering a
zebra eating Cheetos and a gorilla
eating pizza. The zany progression
took off from there.
“I’ve heard that kids love repetition
and they find it comforting that they
know that at the end they’re going
to be back at the same place,” Numeroff
said in an interview posted
on her publisher’s website. She
recounted how parents and educators
have praised the book for its
reception among autistic children:
“They feel safe when they get back
to the first place that they were.”
This is the special joy of a circular
journey, especially for younger
children. It offers a place to push
boundaries as well as the return to
a safe haven. The tale of the mouse
and the cookie also invites kids to
think creatively about what comes
next and how to design their own
entertainments.
Felicia Bond, the second child in a
family of seven, was raised in New
York and Texas. She graduated
from the University of Texas at Austin,
where she received a degree in
Fine Arts, and lived for ten years in
New York City, writing and illustrating
books and working as an art director
in a publishing company. She
is one of the best-selling children’s
book writers and illustrators in the
world. Her first work, Poinsettia and
Her Family, has become a children’s
book staple in the 15 years
since its publication and If You Give
a Mouse a Cookie has sold over a
million copies.
She now makes her home in Austin,
Texas and her special interests
include animals (especially cats —
she has six!), reading, dancing, and
cooking.
She has published over twenty
books, including Tumble Bumble
(Front Street, 1996), which is the
first in several years she has written
as well as illustrated. Felicia Bond’s
work has captured the hearts of
a generation of children and their
parents
12

our
amazzaing
kids
At the Mazza we love showing
off the work our kids do. Every
year work from kids all over the
community is showcased in our
Children’s Art Exhitbition. In this
exhibition the kids are asked to
create art based off some of their
favorite children’s books. All of
the children’s work is being shown
throughout the month of April, so
come on over an see the work of
some of our community’s bright
young artists.
17 18

The
Mazza Mission
The University of Findlay’s Mazza Museum
celebrates the original art of picture books
using education, exhibits, events and artist
visits. Giving world-renowned artists a platform
to share their creative process, the Museum
invites people to explore the art within
the story through its programs for children,
adults and educators. The Museum is home
to more than 17,000 pieces of artwork from
picture books, making it the largest and
most diverse collection of picture book art
in the world.
The mission of University of
Findlay’s Mazza Museum is to
promote literacy and enrich
the lives of all people through
the art of picture books.
Volunteer with us!
Volunteer opportunities include giving tours to school children,
working in the gift shop or library and helping out with Funday
Sunday. If you are interested in volunteering at Mazza or would
just like more information, email senselh@findlay.edu.
25

mazzamuseum.org