Products of an Earlier Era

I recently came across something that fascinated me: a 1933 catalog for Macmillan Books.



Inside were single- and double-page spreads introducing new books by such authors as Helen Sewell (BLUE BARN), Rachel Field (JUST ACROSS THE STREET), Berta and Elmer Hader (SPUNKY: THE STORY OF A SHETLAND PONY), Dorothy Lathrop (THE LITTLE WHITE GOAT), Alice Dalgliesh (AMERICA TRAVELS), and Padraic Colum (THE BIG TREE OF BUNLAHY.) It's entertaining to read the somewhat old-fashioned text. Authors are referred to as "Mr." and "Miss." One ad begins, "You flatter the intelligence and ambition of an older girl if you give her this book." The future Newbery Honor BIG TREE OF BUNLAHY is advertised in "the exact center of the catalog" because it's "the very heart of the new list, THE book of the fall for young and old." And I like the nod to us book collectors at the end of JUST ACROSS THE STREET, which asks: "Are you a Field collector?" then lists several of her titles before adding "Of course you have Hitty!" Of course.

I was familiar with all of the above titles, but one book was new to me -- NANCY by Ruth Alexander Nichols. Strangely, the catalog itself is "Dedicated to the real 'Nancy'" who is shown reading on the frontispiece:


Several pages later we find the ad for NANCY, which begins, "We have never seen her -- but she is so real to us, that she has the frontispiece and dedication of this catalog. Mothers will 'oh' and 'ah' at these beautiful photographs. Children of Nancy's own age will appreciate her serious work (she washes and irons and hammers just like grown-ups) and her merry play." The photo on the opposite page shows the doll-like Nancy hammering nails into a board.


At first I was surprised to see such a non-sexist depiction in a 1933 book. My next thought was: a three-year-old using a hammer and nails? That picture would never be printed in a book these days without a note somewhere in the volume saying Children should not use tools without adult supervision! Nancy's mother was nearby when these pictures were being photographed!

I wanted to learn more about NANCY, but there is almost no information out there regarding this book. According to the Library of Congress, only seventeen libraries currently own the volume. And just one copy is listed for sale on the internet -- at $100. However I did find a copy of BILLY, the author's 1934 follow-up to NANCY, which features a curly-headed boy at work and play. I was lucky to find this book in the library because at present only ten other libraries are listed as owning it and not a single copy is available for sale.


This is another book that I can't see being published today. Although ahead of its time in showing a boy engaged in activities outside 1930s sex role stereotypes, Billy is also pictured in some potentially unsafe adventures that probably wouldn't cut it these days. Like Nancy before him, Billy is shown pounding nails into a board. We also see him sawing wood, standing precariously on the sloping edge of a pond to launch a sailboat, and blowing-up balloons. (Today's books would note: Children should not use saws without parental permission! Do not play near the water without a parent or lifeguard nearby! Balloons are a choking hazard and should not be handled by children under ten years of age!)

Even this innocent picture probably wouldn't make it into a 2008 publication:


("Get me the permissions department and see if we can use a picture of Mickey Mouse in one of our new books. Disney says no? Okay, we'll airbrush Mickey out.")

And photos such as this, as well as others depicting Billy disrobing and romping in the bathtub, might be considered too prurient and likely to attract the wrong kind of reader:



And would a book today ever show Billy dressed as an Indian or holding a gun?




Don't get me wrong: some of these pictures would, depending on the publisher, likely find their way into books published in 2008. Others might not, due to twenty-first century sensitivities never considered in 1933 and 1934.

I'm not saying one era is wrong and the other is right. I'm just noting that children's books (like, no doubt, Nancy and Billy themselves, who must now be about eighty years old today) have certainly changed with the passing of years.

I wonder what images we find innocuous today will be considered "questionable" seventy-five years from now?

Wash-and-Wear Books

Here's a book that gets right down to basics. No hardcover binding, no text. It's a cloth book and its title is (what else?) CLOTH BOOK.


Published by Holiday House in 1939, it's illustrated by future Caldecott-winner Leonard Weisgard. Each page features brightly colored objects that toddlers can point at and identify: a cup, a fork, a spoon, a clock, a house, a tree, a broom.


Although not stated explicitly, this volume deals only with objects. Later volumes (and there appear to be at least five books in this series) feature animals (illustrated by Glen Rounds), vehicles (Leonard Weisgard) and food (Glen Rounds.)

I do not know what type of cloth was used here nor do I know how the pictures were reproduced. All I can say is that the book was well manufactured; sixty-nine years after publication the stitched binding remains strong and the illustrations are brilliant and bold.

Whenever I find something new like this (well it's OLD...but new to me) I realize how much I still have to learn about the history of children's books. Did cloth books originate with homemade books made from scrap material? Were these Holiday House volumes the first to be commercially produced or were there others before them? How were they designed and manufactured? Do people collect them and are they considered valuable?

I obviously have a lot of research to do on this matter.

In the meantime, I have an idea for a new assignment on Project Runway.

More Soul Searching at the Unpronounceable Restaurant

It was another Sunday at the Unpronounceable Restaurant (aka Qdoba.)

I always get there about three in the afternoon.

I always bring my "restaurant book." (I have certain books set aside for reading in restaurants and certain books that stay in the backseat of the car in case I stop somewhere and need something to read. There are specially-designated bedtime books and bathroom books and books that I carry to work so I can read them on my break.)

At the Unpronounceable Restaurant I always have the same thing for lunch and the person behind the counter almost always starts fixing it before I even place my order.

This past Sunday was no different: same time, same place, "restaurant book" in hand, meal halfway prepared before I even got to the counter. I even had the exact amount of money ready, including the four loose pennies, because my weekly lunch is always the exact same price.

Then I turned from the counter and saw that someone was sitting in my regular seat!

No, I did not turn into an enraged Papa Bear and demand, "Who's been sitting in my chair?" I just looked around and found another seat maybe six feet away from my usual spot. Let's face it, every institutional chair and table in that restaurant is identical and interchangable -- yet I still felt so flummoxed and agitated by this change in routine that I could barely focus on my "restaurant book."

That's when it hit me that I've become an awful creature of habit. And awfully old. Despite the fact that I'm on this blog every day doing as much as I can to share my love of children's books, I'd almost forgotten one of the things I like best about them. Books for kids are nearly always about lives in transition. They capture moments when change is not just possible...but pretty much necessary and inevitable. Nearly every children's book protagonist makes a journey of change and growth, usually (though not always) accompanied by optimism and hope.

It's something I need to remember.

Next Sunday I'll deliberately find a different seat...order a different lunch...bring a book from the "bedtime pile" instead of the "restaurant pile." Maybe I'll even go to a DIFFERENT restaurant. One I can pronounce.

Change is possible, always possible.

I read it in a children's book.