DON’T ISOLATE THE ARTIST

I am responding to Tobi Tobias’s effusive recommendation (Book Review, “Trust Me On This,” August 15, 1993), of the children’s book “Goldie the Dollmaker.” Both Tobias’s descriptions and the illustrations reproduced from the book appear to reinforce the outmoded, unhealthy and pretentious mythology of the solitary, starving artist who is too sensitive (“crazy”?) for the workaday, social realm. That a child should want to identify or emulate such a character as Goldie seems disturbing to me, at the very least.

While the book may offer comfort to children from dysfunctional families who often find themselves estranged from their peers, it also places value in the perpetuation of childhood isolation. Artists are not “blessed”; nor are they any more special than the next person. By implying this, both “Goldie the Dollmaker” and Tobias delimit, rather than encourage, the creativity and joy that is every child’s prerogative.

MICHELLE PLOCHERE

LOS ANGELES