This version of the Dick and Jane and Baby Sally tale was influenced by Dorothy Bloch, who stresses the role of childhood fear that the parent will kill the child. An alternative title, “The Scissors Bird,” is intended as a reference to “The Story of Little Suck-aThumb” in Hoffman’s Struwwelpeter, in which little Conrad has his thumbs cut off. The clearest issue from the stormy advance of family history over... see more