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American Children's Books
| Article
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20061 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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12 / 1992 |
2,026 Words |
| Author
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Judith Bell
Judith Bell writes on arts and fashion and resides in the
Washington, D.C., area. |
"As a child I didn't read chapter by chapter," recalls children's book collector Betsy Beinecke Shirley, "I read illustration to illustration. I always looked at the pictures, that was how I decided if I wanted to read the book." Shirley's interest in children's literature has been an abiding one. An avid collector of American first editions for many years, she has assembled one of the country's most comprehensive private collections of children's books and the original art created for their illustration. Included in her collection are hundreds of rare books and original drawings and painting--ranging from an eighteenth-century schoolchild's hornbook and illustrations from such nineteenth-century classics as Little Lord Fauntleroy to twentieth-century characters like Raggedy Ann and Andy and current favorites by Maurice Sendak and Dr. Seuss.
The collection provides a condensed history of illustrated books in America. Many people have their first experience viewing art in the pages of children's books. These stories and their images are fondly remembered for a lifetime.
While book collecting is an inherited tradition for Shirley, whose father and brother endowed the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale, it was her husband's hobby that led to her rediscovery of children's books. He made reproductions of Kentucky rifles, the guns "we beat the British with," she says, and she decided a children's book with illustrations of Daniel Boone using a Kentucky rifle would make an ideal gift for him. "I ended up at Jefferson Schiller's, a New York book dealer specializing in children's books, and found myself in love."
"I'm not a historian, but I think books are the best guide to what people were like, how they wanted their children to behave, what they wanted them to read, how they were bringing up children. And nine out of ten times, if you find a children's book in good condition, you know the child had no interest in it. But if you find one with a broken spine and torn or missing pages, that's been drawn and written in, you know it was a well-loved book."
The character of American children's books has changed over time. While today, for example, it is assumed that children's books will have engaging illustrations, in the eighteenth century, American children's books typically contained woodcuts that had appeared elsewhere and had little bearing on the text.
In the eighteenth century, children were often considered to be miniature adults.
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