View source for Children on Their Birthdays (short story)

{{About|the short story|the television adaptation|Children on Their Birthdays{{!}}''Children on Their Birthdays''}}
{{Infobox short story
| name          = Children on Their Birthdays
| title_orig    =
| translator    =
| image         = ChildrenonTheirBirthdaysShortStory.JPG
| caption       = Solo book form
| author        = [[Truman Capote]]
| illustrator   =
| cover_artist  =
| country       = United States
| language      = English
| series        =
| genre         = [[Southern literature]]
| publisher     = Penguin (for image shown)
| pub_date      =
| english_pub_date = 1948
| media_type    = Print
| pages         = 96 (for image shown)
| isbn          = 978-0-14-119586-5
| preceded_by   =
| followed_by   =
}}
"'''Children on Their Birthdays'''" is a short story by [[Truman Capote]], published serially in the late 1940s and appearing in ''[[A Tree of Night and Other Stories]]'' in 1949; it is noted as one of his better quality early short stories.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,794722,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110131073338/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,794722,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=January 31, 2011 |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |title=Books: Private Light |access-date=2011-09-08 |date=14 March 1949}} (Review of ''A Tree of Night and Other Stories'')</ref>
==Conception==
Capote wrote "Children on Their Birthdays" in the summer of 1948 while traveling in Europe, from London to Paris, and on to Venice, where he worked alongside [[Donald Windham]].<ref>Clarke, Gerald. ''Capote: A Biography'' (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), page 175.</ref>
== Synopsis ==
{{Expand section|date=September 2011}}
The story is set in rural Alabama, where Miss Lily Jane Bobbit, a precocious 10-year-old girl, moves to town with her mother. The young girl is pretty and attracts the positive attention of the town boys, and the negative attentions of the town girls. The narrator's younger cousin Billy-Bob and his best friend Preacher fight for Miss Bobbit's affections. She befriends a black girl named Rosalba after the town boys bully her. She enters a talent show being put on by a con man and does a provocative and patriotic dance routine that everyone in the town loves. At the end, she gets the con man's money back for all the people in the town who were cheated out of it, and as she is setting off to leave and go to Hollywood to become a movie star, she gets run over by a bus.
==Characters==
Miss Lily Jane Bobbit: the 10-year-old protagonist of the story who always goes by Miss Bobbit.  Her character is said to be the inspiration for the young socialite Holly Golightly in Capote's novella ''[[Breakfast at Tiffany's (novella)|Breakfast at Tiffany's]]''.<ref>Clarke, Gerald. ''Capote: A Biography'' (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), page 485.</ref>  Truman Capote's aunt [[Marie Rudisill]] notes that both characters are "unattached, unconventional wanderers, dreamers in pursuit of some ideal of happiness."<ref>Rudisill, Marie & Simmons, James C. ''The Southern Haunting of Truman Capote'' (Nashville, Tennessee: Cumberland House, 2000), page 100.</ref>
Billy Bob: one of the local town boys who is lovesick for Miss Bobbit.
Aunt El: the narrator's aunt who is a model of traditional values in the community.
Manny Fox: a [[Confidence trick|con artist]].
==Critical reception and analysis==
The short story has been described as resembling less complete writing by [[Eudora Welty]].<ref>Price, Reynolds, introduction to ''The Complete Stories of Truman Capote'' (New York: Random House, 2005), page xii.</ref>
It has been praised as "the jewel" of the collection ''A Tree of Night and Other Stories'' and is said to be a "perfect illustration of Capote's blending of Southern Folk writing with [[Henry James|Jamesian]] classicism."<ref>Long, Robert Emmet. ''Truman Capote, enfant terrible'' (New York: Continuum, 2008), page 32.</ref>
==Adaptations==
As early as 1980, Capote's estranged friend Alan Schwartz asked for permission to sell a television script, which he had adapted with Capote's encouragement. Capote refused, saying he had written a television script himself.<ref>Clarke, Gerald. ''Capote: A Biography'' (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), page 175.</ref>
In 2002, the short story was adapted to ''[[Children on Their Birthdays]]'', an American independent film by director [[Mark Medoff]]. The screenplay written by Douglas Sloan.
==References==
;Notes
{{reflist}}
;Bibliography
{{refbegin}}
*{{cite book | title=The Complete Stories of Truman Capote | last=Capote | first=Truman | author-link=Truman Capote | publisher=Random House | location=New York | edition=Vintage International | year=2005 | isbn=978-1-4000-9691-6}}
*{{cite book | title=Capote, A Biography | last=Clarke | first=Gerald | author-link=Gerald Clarke (author) | publisher=Simon & Schuster | location=New York | edition=1st | year=1988 | isbn=978-0-241-12549-6}}
* {{cite book | title=Truman Capote, Enfant Terrible | last=Long | first=Robert Emmet | publisher=Continuum | location=New York | edition=1st | year=2008 | isbn=978-0-8264-2763-2}}
* {{cite book | title=Truman Capote: A Study of the Short Fiction | last=Garson | first=Helen | publisher= Twayne Publishers | edition=1st | year=1992 | isbn=978-0-805-70851-6}}
*{{cite book | title=The Southern Haunting of Truman Capote | last1=Rudisill | first1=Marie | last2=Simmons | first2=James | author-link=Marie Rudisill | publisher=Cumberland House | location=Nashville, Tennessee | edition=1st | year=2000 | isbn=978-1-58182-136-9}}
{{refend}}
{{Capote}}
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[[Category:1948 short stories]]
[[Category:Short stories by Truman Capote]]
[[Category:Short stories adapted into films]]