The Little Engine That Still Can

Chug, chug, chug. Puff, puff, puff. I think I can, I think I can.

This is the story of a little blue engine that chugged and puffed up a mountain of book sales so high that no one could see the top. Her tale sold so many copies that even her publisher lost count. She became so ingrained in the American psyche that she turned into a myth and, in the end, no one could say for sure how she had come to be.

This fall is--officially speaking--the 60th birthday of “The Little Engine That Could,” which now exists in 14 different versions. In addition to the familiar edition, there are board books, pop-up books, pillow books, a book-and-cassette set, and--needless to say--a sequel: “The Little Engine That Could and the Big Chase.”

According to the Putnam & Grosset Group, parent of “The Little Engine’s” publisher, Platt & Munk, these various editions have sold roughly 3.2 million copies since 1978. Putnam says that no prior sales figures are available, but based on a 1976 New York Times Book Review piece claiming more than five million had been sold to that date, total sales may well exceed eight million.

The Little Engine has developed a glamorous mystique over the years, having outlived nearly all of the people who might know the particulars of her origins. For instance, her publishers are uncertain how their ballyhooed anniversary edition, illustrated by George and Doris Hauman, came to be labeled “original” even though it dates only to 1954. (The 1930 edition, which was sold for 24 years, was illustrated by Lois Lenski.)

Nor is anyone sure who really created this puzzling “character.” No author ever benefited from “The Little Engine’s” proceeds, since the name on her jacket, Watty Piper, was a pseudonym used by Platt & Munk for several “authorless” books.

But the absence of an author for “The Little Engine” has been a matter of some dispute over the years. In the 1950s, Mrs. Frances Ford of Drexel Hill, Pa., became a sort of Anna Anderson/Anastasia of the book business, a pretender to the book’s authorship whose claim was pressed by a diligent and tireless niece, Elizabeth McKinney Chmiel.

Arnold Munk, one of Platt & Munk’s founders, maintained that he had discovered the story in the early 1920s in an anthology that attributed it to another publisher’s story called “The Pony Engine.” Platt & Munk bought rights from that publisher and then, according to letters by Munk himself, made for six years “a most diligent effort” to trace the original author before publishing the book in 1930 under the Watty Piper name.

Chmiel’s claim on her aunt’s behalf appeared in the New York Herald Tribune Book Review in 1955. Chmiel insisted that Ford had written the story under the pseudonym “Uncle Nat” at least 40 years before, when she produced a newsletter of children’s tales. Sure enough, a reader wrote in to say that among the “Uncle Nat” letters she had saved, one dated 1912 contained a story by Ford called “The Little Switch Engine.” Grosset & Dunlap offered Ford a contract, and the New York Times announced that “the 101-year-old author of ‘The Little Engine That Could’ would finally start receiving royalties for the familiar children’s story she wrote 43 years ago.”

Arnold Munk quickly issued a press release insisting that although the “reputable research specialists” he had engaged had failed to locate an author, a $1,000 reward would be given to anyone who could provide evidence identifying “the true author of this celebrated childhood classic.”

The contest brought forth more sightings than an Elvis hunt. Informants reported having heard the “I think I can” theme in stories, Sunday School lectures and speeches as early as 1888 and as far away as Germany. But Platt & Munk concluded that “no evidence has been received that would show the positive identity of the author.”

Chmiel continued her campaign on Ford’s behalf. The Grosset & Dunlap version of her book seems never to have been published, and the relevant files have been lost during the course of several mergers in which Platt & Munk and Grosset and Dunlap ended up under the same roof.

Karen Mayer, v.p. and general counsel for the Putnam/Berkley Group, recently reviewed the material from Publishers Weekly’s files and concluded that Ford’s claim “was not well founded.” She adds that no claim of authorship of “The Little Engine” ever has been proven. “As with anything successful,” Mayer observes, “there will always be others who claim it’s theirs.”

Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by Cahners Publishing Co. copyright 1990 Reed Publishing USA.