Tell Me a Mitzi (1970)

The image shows the front cover of Tell Me a Mitzi by Lore Segal and illustrated by Harriet Pincus. The watercolor illustration is of three New York brownstone houses. One is pink, one is white, and one is brown. On the stoop to the brown colored house, one can see a milkman delivering bottles of milk while examining Mitzi pushing Jacob in his stroller. In front of the stroller is a tabby cat. Jacob is wearing a blue knit hat with a white fluff ball on top. He is wears blue pants, a brown jacket, and pink gloves. Meanwhile, Mitzi seems to be burdened with pushing the stroller. Mitzi, too, is dressed warmly in a jump suit that is purple with gold stars on it. Her hat is pink with red piping. Matching the red piping are the red mittens on Mitzis hands.

My first week of work at de Grummond began with a reference question about a book titled Tell Me a Mitzi, written by Lore Segal and illustrated by Harriet Pincus. The book had gone out of print, and the patron wanted to see about getting it republished. Her enthusiasm for the book piqued my curiosity, so I pulled it off the shelf to see if I "got" it.

It is a quirky little book about a girl who wants her mother to tell her a "Mitzi," which is another name for a story. Oddly enough, the main character of the book is also named Mitzi. Mitzi (the main character) is a little girl with a baby brother named Jacob, and there are three separate stories within the book. An independent thinker, Mitzi includes her baby brother in her adventures—or misadventures. The first story illustrates Mitzi's sense of independence. In it, she wakes up, gets her brother dressed, and decides they will take a cab to their grandparents' house! There is no sign of an adult, which might seem strange to adult readers. However, Mitzi and Jacob never make it to the grandparents' house because they don't have any money with which to pay the cab fare, so the driver deposits them back on the sidewalk.

The illustrations are just as quirky as the story, which makes the interdependence of text and story gel perfectly. In some cases, the illustrations received negative reviews. The faces of the children are oddly mature, looking much older than their years. Lore Segal was devoted to Pincus and her illustrations for the book. At one point, a publisher in Europe wanted to republish the book with different illustrations, but Segal would not hear of it. Both Pincus and Segal were paired together at the suggestion of Maurice Sendak, and Pincus' illustrations in this book have been compared to Sendak's work.

Harriet Pincus, whose papers reside in the de Grummond Collection, was a young talent when she was struck with polio at age 16, right before her graduation from high school. She was in an iron lung for two years, and because of her illness, Pincus used a wheelchair for the rest of her life.
Her illness didn't keep her from pursuing art. She illustrated books for other authors, and her book, Minna and Pippin, was written and illustrated by Pincus.

The book seems to have been important to Jewish children from the 1970s to the present. Lore Segal, in an interview with Marjorie Ingall for the Tablet, discussed the Jewish quality of the book. She stated, "It doesn 't talk about Purim or the Holocaust, but we have thumbprints…and you can tell this book is Jewish by its thumbprint. The way one looks, the way one thinks about things – it 's nothing specific. I have a beloved Irish daughter-in-law, and we have the same politics, but we eat differently and speak differently and we have different thumbprints. It is who you are, without setting out to be particular. There 's no way to explain that. The introduction to each story, the lines in which someone begs, 'Tell me a story'…it 's not explicitly Jewish. It just feels like home."

Booklist, in its starred review, rightly stated, "Author and illustrator have caught the essence of childhood in this captivating picture book. The three stories mix fantasy with reality and are told with naturalness and warmth. The illustrations, so filled with details and surprises they invite repeated scrutiny, have verity and vitality, poignancy and endearing humor."

To view Tell Me a Mitzi, visit Special Collections in McCain Library 305. If you have questions about this item or any of our children's literature materials, contact Ellen Ruffin at or 601.266.6543.

Text by Ellen Ruffin, Curator of the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection.