Children's Book Study #11

A vintage book from 1937!

Hi everyone,

Since the newsletter is going out on a Friday this week, I figured a fun Friday topic would be flipping through a vintage children’s book! I found this treasure at a vintage book shop, and I’ve been excited to share it with you for a children’s book study.

If you enjoy these book studies, you can find 10 more children’s book studies here.

Fairy Fun, Oxford University Press, 1937

We’ll be looking at Fairy Fun published by Oxford University Press. The copyright page says it was reprinted in 1937, so the original must be from even earlier. I’m guessing it was a school textbook for learning to read. As a former elementary reading teacher, I thought that was so cool!

I’ve organized this book study based on some things I liked or noticed about this book: the end papers, the ink colors, character design, and classic imagery.

I hope you enjoy pursuing this vintage book!

End papers

Oh, I love end papers, so it was such a treat to see these ones! The icons give clues about all the tales within this book. Both sets of end papers are the same.

Black and white illustrations with orange spot color

This book is nearly 90 years old, but this printing process is still quite common today, which I think is pretty interesting considering all the other ways publishing has changed. Printing with one accent color is less expensive, so a lot of middle grade books will use this method of black/white plus a spot color. I recently tried this technique in an illustration. Here are some examples from Fairy Fun:

Here’s a contemporary example of this style from illustrator Hannah Peck using yellow as the spot color:

Character Design

I noticed that it is so easy to follow the goose character from page to page, but the goose is so realistic! More often than not, characters are stylized in modern children’s books. We’re often looking for the character to have certain energy, accessories, or personality. But in this type of book from the 1930s, having a realistic goose was perfectly fine. It reminds me of the style in Make Way for Ducklings, which won the 1941 Caldecott Medal.

Compare this goose from Fairy Fun and the ducks from Make Way for Ducklings with the pigeon in the Mo Willams pigeon series. Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus won the Caldecott Honor Medal in 2004. They both won awards for their art, which either speaks to how to we have valued various styles over time, or maybe how we can value various styles for what they are, ranging from realistic to stylized.

Comparing a 1941 Caldecott winner with a 2004 Caldecott Winner, both with birds as main characters

Classic Imagery

Bears are such classic characters in children’s books, so I had to include this page. There’s so much storytelling in this scene, and look at Mama and Baby Bear’s expressions. Baby Bear with his tongue out made me laugh, because that’s exactly how a kid could act in this situation. So this illustrator was probably going through the same process as all of us illustrators: imagining how a kid would act in real life and making the illustration believable.

It’s interesting to think about the similarities of our processes with those of illustrators nearly a century ago!

I hope you’ve enjoyed pursuing a 90 year old children’s book, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. What stood out to you? What do you thin about the characters, colors, or compositions? What vintage books have you found? Share in the comments!

I’ll see you all next week for another post,

Katie

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