We are so excited to share an amazing and generous donation we received from Jim Silverman.
We received a couple of copies of California Kids: A Bilingual Book edited by Jim Silverman, two volumes of Fairy Tales from the Gold Lands and about thirty editions of The Horn Book Magazine. Our editions of The Horn Book Magazine are copies from published between 1937 and 1971. The Horn Book Magazine is published two to three times a year, sometimes including a Christmas edition.
The cover of California Kids
California Kids is a beautiful bilingual book published in 1992 by California Kids History Catalog. Everything about California Kids is truly stunning, but what first draw our eyes was the artwork. Rick Wheeler’s illustrations are incredible. I believe the illustrations are intricately carved wood block prints, possibly carved by hand. The wood block appears to be hand carved based on the fine details and organic etching of lines flowing through each illustration. Wheeler designed and printed the artwork in the book himself.
California Kids follows Lucy Young in “An Indian Girl,” Ygnacio Villegas in “A Boy Rancho,” and Eleanor Swinnerton in “A Gold Rush Girl.” Silverman describes each of their stories.
Eleanor (on the right of the cover), born Eleanor Josephine Harvey, was born in Butte County. Her ancestors arrived in America before the Revolutionary War and her father was constantly travelling. As a baby, Eleanor’s cradle was a small rocker that had been used for mining gold (Silverman 25). She went on to become a teacher. I loved how Silverman shows not just what Eleanor did for work, but what she loved to do in her free time. She loved growing plants, especially petunias. She pollinated them by hand with a brush, and she raised prize plants and sold the seeds to support her family. As she grew older, Eleanor wrote childhood memoirs which were later included in the book Isaac Julian Harvey, California Pioneer. Part of Eleanor’s section in California Kids is told from Eleanor’s point of view.
Double-page spread in "Lucy, An Indian Girl"
This is an image from California Kids: A Bilingual Book in which Lucy tells of her grandfather and his musings about the “White Rabbit” (10). The woodcutting is gorgeous and frames an equally compelling story.
At the very end, California Kids includes a section “My History/Mi Historia” to encourage readers to write their own history so far. The entire book is incredibly engaging, and this section allows for children to see the ease of writing their own stories after being shown how engaging it was to read of Lucy, Ygnacio, and Eleanor’s lives.
Our new collection of Horn Book Magazines!
Bertha Mahony Miller is considered a figurehead of the children’s literature movement. She founded one of the first children’s bookstores, the “Bookshop for Boys and Girls” in 1916. The Bookstore was in the Women Education and Industrial Union’s (WEIU) headquarters. (https://www.hbook.com/?detailStory=roots)
Christmas
1937
Christmas
1937
Christmas
editions from 1937, 1941, and 1943.
As the other editions do, the Christmas edition of Horn Book highlights recently published books, such as Elin’s America by Marguerite de Angeli and Pete and Peter by Charlotte Steiner. These books range from 75 cents to a whopping two dollars. It also suggests books for Christmas, including An Introduction to Television by C. J. Hylander which writes about the background and development of the “interesting new science of television”, and Career for Jennifer by Adele de Leeuq, which follows a young girl who turns her photography hobby into a successful career.
After tons of suggestions for books for young people, The Horn Book includes stories such as The Shepherds by Ruth Sawyer. The Shepherds is a Christmas story “about God, meaning Good” (Horn Book, 1941, 431).
Following The Shepherds is another review, Animals in Wonderland by Alice M. Jordan, which reviews Animal Stories by Walter de la Mare and other fairytales of animals. She searches for “how far the authors have kept the sense of man’s old-age beliefs concerning the animal world.” Although the fairytale is not new, Jordan argues “the arrangement is new, displaying the variety and richness of animal folk tales” (Horn Book, 1941, 439). She explores the symbolic nature of animals, such as the association of witchcraft and magic with cats. The cat, she argues, “demands” this association with “his inscrutable mien and lordly independence” (Horn Book, 1941, 442).
“What
Do Children Read in Mexico?” By Edith Agnew and Dorothy Weatherby
“What
Do Children Read in Mexico?” By Edith Agnew and Dorothy Weatherby
“What
Do Children Read in Mexico?” By Edith Agnew and Dorothy Weatherby
The January-February 1938 issue contains an article in which two scholars describe their experience searching out the children’s literature of Mexico. While they were initially pointed towards schoolbooks, the researchers rummaged through book shops to find children’s books written in Spanish. Agnew and Weatherby were told that the volumes of fairy tales they uncovered were from Spain, and that few children were able to read them because of the high cost. There were also cheap books that contained familiar tales, but “Peter Rabbit and all his ilk were really too expensive for Mexico” (48). After a scavenger hunt around the city in search of the library’s children’s books, they found the reading room where children had worn through the few books available. The article concludes with the hope that future generations will have access to “the written treasure that seem to us the natural heritage of childhood. That is a hope reserved for their grandchildren” (50).
October,
1954 - 30th Anniversary Issue
October,
1954 - 30th Anniversary Issue
This issue contains
an article describe how to create Batik illustrations by essentially stamping
designs. The beautiful illustrations alongside the article depict the process.
The magazine also nods to diversity in the latest issue we received, which was published in August of 1971. Above is an image illustrated by a Japanese painter named Fuku Akino, and below is an image captioned by a part of the story “How Ananse Brought Stories to the World,” an African story.
We are so grateful to have these issues of The Horn Book Magazine to read and share with you. They are housed in the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature office, so please drop by to take a look at all of them in more detail! Once again, thank you to Jim Silverman for your gracious donation!
-
(SS) and (AN)
Citations: Jenkins, Christine A. "The History of Youth Services Librarianship: A Review of the Research Literature." Libraries & Culture 35 (Winter 2000), p. 111.
No comments:
Post a Comment