An exhibit featuring books from the University Library's Special Collections, Multicultural Children's Literature Curriculum Collection, and Private Collections
The UCSC University Library has built, with endowment assistance from John Secor of Yankee Book Peddler, a multicultural children's literature collection to support the needs of students in the education program. In recognition of the important role that children's literature plays in shaping children's visions of themselves and the world, we hope to create a model collection of children's literature which represents and depicts the ethnic, cultural and social diversity of the United States. The collection serves as a sample of the outstanding juvenile books by and about parallel cultures, and is of interest to educators as well as students and faculty in literature, creative writing, ethnic studies, psychology and art. The collection focuses on literature for grades k-8, although some selections are suitable for toddlers and young adults. Fiction, poetry, music, folk literature, history and picture are included.
Use the arrow to expand or collapse this section
In the last three centuries, books for children have evolved from select moralistic texts available only to middle and upper class children to big business picture book publishing with an imaginative variety of available titles-appropriate for any child development level and in all price ranges. During this time, printing techniques changed from anonymously engraved and hand-colored plates to digital color reproductions of famous artists. Throughout the last three hundred years, artistic expression used to educate and amuse children in the medium of book illustration has grown in importance and received increasing recognition.
In this exhibit, we present a selection of historically important illustrated children's books and highlight our activity in building the University Library's multi-cultural and award winning children's book collection used in UCSC's teaching curriculum. We thank Emily Abbink, Bruce Larsen, Eve, Christine, and Anna Bunting, Ann Gibb, Barbara Rogoff, and Sara Rajan of Westside Stories for loaning items from their collections to this exhibit.
Before the mid-18th Century, children's literature was used primarily to educate and promote proper religious observance and moral behavior. Small woodcut frontispieces or vignette insertions illustrated biblical stories, animal tales, and the lives of martyrs and saints. Simple illustrated alphabet books, horn books, and primers (originally prayer books, later alphabet books with verses) introduced reading to children. Children's books also became a place where stories previously recited aloud, such as fairy tales, fables, lullabies, and nursery rhymes, often with moralizing undertones, could be preserved on paper.
While William Caxton printed a woodcut-illustrated English edition of Aesop's Fables in 1484 that could be enjoyed by all ages, Johann Amos Comenius, an educational reformer, is credited with making the first picture book for children. His Orbis Sensualium Pictus (The Visible World of Pictures) of 1658/1667 contained illustrations of the natural world, each with a Latin caption. Comenius's innovative contribution was his recognition that a publication directed toward a child's reception would have different qualities from one meant for adult readers. Orbis Sensualium Pictus became the precursor of all illustrated schoolbooks.
In the 1750s, the Englishman John Newbery started publishing the first juvenile library. He selected texts in which the illustrations could ease the transition from adult stories to abridged ones for children, such as Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. He is best known for his History of Goody Two Shoes of 1765, in which hard work and moral behavior enable the main character to leave poverty behind for a good marriage.
The artists of books of entertainment, such as familiar nursery rhymes or the fables of Perault, usually remained anonymous. Only those with didactic aims of advancing the spiritual or intellectual growth of young readers sought credit. By the mid-18th Century, however, the rise in literacy, along with a more optimistic philosophical approach to education and a deeper understanding of the importance of childhood, characterized as "man's pure state," promoted the growth of publishing for children. The demand for book artists increased. Innovations in typography and printing encouraged alternative forms of reproduction and a skillful artist was sought after by name.
To meet the public's growing demand for reading material, publishers began offering chapbooks. Small in format (usually four 5" x 4" sheets folded and stitched) and cheap to produce, chapbooks contained tales of heroes and heroines, ballads and crimes, school lessons and rhymes. They were illustrated with inexpensive woodcuts, which were often hand colored by child labor, but they provided reading material for children who would not otherwise have access to books. Chapbooks were peddled throughout the countryside.
Booklets such as The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog; Illustrated with Fifteen Elegant Engravings on Copperplate were a great success. These cost a shilling a copy and could be found at the "Original Juvenile Library" at the corner of Saint Paul's churchyard in London.
Two plates from The Paths of Learning Strewn with Flowers, or English GrammarIllustrated . The entire nursery chapbook had fourteen panels and was issued in London in 1820 as part of John Harris's Cabinet Library. It is an example of the "Education by Amusement " school of illustration.
One of the first artists of books intended for children to be named on the cover was the Englishman Thomas Bewick. He apprenticed in engraving and printing firms that produced wood engraved bill headings and chapbooks. He went on to publish his own Tom Thumb's Playbook and The Pretty Book of Pictures for Little Masters and Misses. His books The General History of Quadrupeds (1790) and the History of British Birds (1797) are landmark publications in the history of printing. Bewick changed the production technique of book illustration by applying the method of intaglio metal-engraving to the end grain of boxwood. This new technique of wood engraving allowed for a more delicate and detailed look, and it enabled the printing of a page containing both text and images to be done in a single operation.
William Blake, English painter, poet, printmaker, and visionary, also trained as an engraver and perfected his own method of "illuminated" printing. The poems in his Songs of Innocence of 1789 was directly addressed to children and commented on the divine state of childhood. His Songs of Experience meditates on the fallen state of the material world. Each relief-etched illustration was hand colored by Blake or his wife Catherine.
By the 1800s, publishers had learned that illustration could attract the general public to buy books. Ephemeral and popular culture items such as almanac plates, printed Christmas cards, mass produced prints of bible scenes, all suitable for scrapbook collections, were avidly collected, and newspapers with engraved caricatures were popular reading material. The artists who often apprenticed with the commercial engravers and designers of broadsheets and penny lottery sheets and who contributed art to newspapers were also commissioned to illustrate books. George Cruikshank, who had illustrated frontispieces of adult books such Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist and was known for his political and satirical newspaper caricatures, published his own albums of engravings intended for family amusement. He is best known for the illustrations of the first English version of Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1824. Gustave Dore, also a caricaturist, became known for his illustrations of Perault's fairy tales. And later in the century John Tenniel, an illustrator for Punch was commissioned for the drawings of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865.)
"The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast," a thirty-two line poem written by William Roscoe and illustrated by William Mulready in 1807, is believed by scholar Peter Opie to be the first story in English written simply to amuse children. The cheerful illustrations for this "airy revel" proved wildly popular and indicated that the public was ready for less righteousness, more whimsy, and fairies. Irish painter and draughtsman Mulready, a single father raising four boys, often focused his artistic work on the concerns of childhood.
Other fanciful books of entertainment (some with cautionary tone, others without) were often published by the artist. German Doctor Heinrich Hoffman-Donner wrote and illustrated Struwelpete r (Slovenly Peter or Cheerful and Funny Pictures for Good Little Folks), a book for his child patients. In the chromolithographic plates, dirty, uncut nails trail to the floor, and a crybaby's eyeballs (cheerfully?) fall out. Scientific draughtsman and travel painter Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense of 1846 was written for the Earl of Derby's children. The capricious line drawings and verses inspired numerous later illustrators. Beatrix Potter designed her own small format books with specific children in mind. Her watercolored pieces with good and bad rabbits and helpful hedgehogs were produced as full color plates by publisher Frederick Warne.
Advances in printing technology and production occurring in the later half of the 19th Century allowed book illustration to be more colorful and subtle. Multiple copies could be produced inexpensively for the interested public. The change from hand colored lithographs and wood engravings to photo-engraving allowed artists to draw without thought of how their work would be printed. During this time, many classic works of juvenile fiction (Through the Looking Glass, Treasure Island) were paired with the work of well-known illustrators. In the picture book trade the illustrator's work became dominant and had social impact- children were dressed as book characters, and commercial outcroppings of dishware and tin toys followed.
Printer Edward Evans is credited with creating what has become known as the "golden age of illustration." He developed a luminous color printing method by transferring artists' drawings to woodblocks, and he is thought to be the first to "design" a book from cover to cover. In his publications, text and picture, sharing equal importance, complement each other. Working with Routledge Publishers, he promoted three important artists: Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, and Kate Greenaway. Their picture books contributed to the spread of Arts & Crafts, Stile Liberty, Jugendstil, and Art Nouveau styles.
Walter Crane, English painter, illustrator, designer, and friend of William Morris, developed a highly decorative and elegant style in which classically draped figures parade through fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and other toy books.
Kate Greenaway started as a Christmas card designer and later worked with Edward Evans in printing her illustrated verses in muted colors. Her Under the Window of 1878 sold 20,000 copies and town children began to appear in demure Greenaway-mode attire.
Randolph Caldecott also illustrated traditional tales and humorous nursery rhymes with a lively drawing style and subtle watercolors inspired by English caricaturists. The American Library Association's annual medal for most distinctive American picture book for children (begun in 1938) is named after this artist. The illustration of the dish running away with the spoon which is used in the poster of this exhibit was drawn by Randolph Caldecott.
1890s Frog, from an original in the Robert Opie Collection at the Museum of Advertising & Packaging, Gloucester, England.
The most important and influential children's book illustrator of the late 1800s was the French artist Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel. His Jeanne d'Arc, lithographically printed by Draeger Freres in 1896, provided new ideas of complex composition based on Renaissance painting. Once translated, his work became the rage in the United States, but its rich artistic quality led to a desire for luxury or gift books not meant for children's hands.
Also popular were the highly stylized illustrations by Ivan Bilibin, a Russian artist, costume and set designer, whose glorious depictions of fairy tales were influenced by folk and textile art and medieval manuscripts.
The watercolored fairy tales of Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, and the adventure stories of N. C. Wyeth were produced to be "tipped" into these deluxe creations that became collectors' luxury items in the early part of 20th Century.
Arthur Rackham was the master of the color half-tone process used in deluxe editions. Born in England, he trained as a journalistic illustrator before moving to book illustration. He is best known for creating magical worlds featuring mischievous fairies, menacing goblins, and animated trees. He illustrated Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle and J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Late in his life he worked at creating fantasy worlds for Walt Disney.
Newell Convers (N.C.) Wyeth studied art with Howard Pyle, the legendary illustrator and foremost American art teacher. He started as an illustrator for Saturday Evening Post, but gained a reputation as a book artist with Treasure Island, published in 1911 as part of Scribner's Classics. With the $500 advance he received for this book he purchased 18 acres in Chadds Ford, where he built his studio. He went on to illustrate Kidnapped, Last of the Mohicans, Robinson Crusoe, and Robin Hood , all for Scribner.
Jessie Wilcox Smith studied drawing with Howard Pyle at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art. Her reflective and idealized images of childhood were extremely popular in both America and England. She illustrated over thirty-five books.
World War I brought an end to deluxe book production, but the period between the wars became a new golden era of publishing in the United States. Children's rooms were set up in libraries and children's divisions were established in most successful publishing companies. American publishing was greatly inspired by Europeans firms which were committed to producing cheap but attractive books. The Parisian firm P*re Castor Books employed many of the illustrators, such as Nathalie Parain and Feodor Rojankovsky, who eventually relocated to the U.S. P*re Castor's series of educational picture books were the first to employ artists who used lithographed designs and plain text. The English publishing dynasty Penguin, founded in 1935 by Allen Lane, became immediately successful with its Puffin Picture Books. Puffin introduced paperbacks (a new format) with offset color lithographs, which were intended for children to use for their own education at home. Many of these books were published alongside calendars and board games. The tradition of licensed paraphernalia (Alice paper dolls and Peter Rabbit tea sets) which sustained the lives of fictitious characters and creatures, developed into a strong industry linked to the promotion and selling of books.
In England, the line drawing tradition of Caldecott and Punch caricatures continued, but in a more personal and intimate fashion, as seen in Margery William's Velveteen Rabbit of 1922 and Ernst H. Shepard's drawings for Winnie-the-Pooh of 1926.
Hugh Lofting, an Englishman who eventually resettled in the U.S., first wrote about an animal doctor in letters he sent to his children from the trenches of Flanders, where he served in the British Army in 1917. His Doctor Dolittle's Voyages won the Newbery medal in 1923.
Wanda Gag was born in New Ulm, Minnesota in 1893, but kept her family's old world traditions from Bavaria and Bohemia alive in her books. Every sibling in her large family was an artist, and the members often collaborated by hand lettering, drawing, and writing books together. She brought out the "bell-ringer" Millions of Cats in 1928. It is remarkable for its personal style of narration that stems from oral tradition and its sense of design in the way black and white illustrations rhythmically fit next to the text. She struggled to publish her work during her life, but only posthumously received recognition. In 1977, the Kerlan Award was given in honor of her life time achievements.
Charles B. Falls' ABC Book of 1923 is one of the first modern American picture books. Falls owns a debt to the English graphic artist William Nicholson and to the style and coloring of Art Deco.
A large number of European artists who immigrated to the U.S. in the 30s and 40s had a major impact on the success of children's book publishing. Miska and Maud Petersham, Boris Artzybasheff, and Feodor Rojankovsky, all from Russia, Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire from Norway and Germany, and Ludwig Bemelmans from Austria became dominant figures in publishing and all were awarded with Caldecott medals. Their work focused on the themes of Americana and on the culture and mythology of their homelands. Conversely, Americans like Thomas Handforth went East. His Mei Li introduces the China of the 1930s where he lived for several years.
Another major theme was biography of famous historical figures (both American and from other lands). Perhaps the best known authors and illustrators of this genre were Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire, who returned to early craftsmen's methods of making picture books by drawing the color illustrations directly on lithographic stones. In collaboration, they published books on George Washington, Pocahontas, Leif the Lucky, and Benjamin Franklin. Their book on Abraham Lincoln won the Caldecott Award in 1940.
Tales of contemporary Americana, in a world now dominated by the United States, caught the public's imagination. Mike Mulligan and his steam engine Mary Anne "lowered the hills and straighten the curves to make the long highways for the automobiles," and Homer Price read Super-Duper comic books and ate donuts in his uncle's "up and coming lunchroom."
Robert McCloskey, author and illustrator of numerous picture books, is thought to have created new American legends. His strong lithographic-crayon illustrations depict small town life in Centerburg Tales , the city and public gardens of Boston in Make Way For Ducklings , and the hills of Maine in Blueberries for Sal .
The sustaining interest of both children and artists in comic books (Winsor McCay's Little Nemo was greatly admired) led to a positive reception of work such as William Pene du Bois's Otto , Hans Augusto Rey's Curious George (first published in 1940), and to the stories of Babar the elephant begun by Jean de Brunhoff in 1931 and continued in many reiterations by his son Laurent.The many books of the amazing Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel), including the early reading "Beginner Books" like The Cat in the Hat of 1957, titles in the Little Golden Books series, and the many spin-off publications of Walt Disney continue the comic tradition.
Simon and Schuster introduced twelve Little Golden Books in 1942. Ten years later, two hundred more titles had been published and 300 million copies had been sold. In the tradition of Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, and the McLoughlin's "Toy Books" (where paper picture books were produced to be easily handled by children), each board-covered Little Golden Book contained 42 pages and cost only 25 cents. The content was standard nursery fare and other simple stories, but the artists were the most well known in the business, such as Feodor Rojankovsky, Gustaf Tenggren, and Garth Williams.
The toy and toy book trade encouraged the development of novelty books created around themes of theatrical pantomimes. Peep shows, harlequinades with pictured flaps which when open reveal another scene below, paper dolls, and printed sheets of scenery and characters which when cut out create miniature worlds, all were available by the mid 1800s. The intricate "moveable" books of the 1880s and 90s produced in Germany are considered the pinnacle of "toy books." These are the precursors of the pop-up books of the 20th Century where precisely designed discs, tabs, flaps, and standups are created by paper engineers and involve complex assembly.
Garth Williams (1912-1996) is perhaps the most beloved of children's book illustrators. His drawings of Wilbur and Charlotte, Stuart Little, and Frances are tender and expressive. Williams illustrated Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, as well as many books by Margaret Wise Brown, Randall Jarrell, and George Seldon. Although born in the U.S., he grew up in England, where his father was an illustrator for Punch, and he attended the Royal College of Art. His daughter Fiona was the model for Fern in Charlotte's Web.
While the children's book trade suffered during World War II, it revived in the 1960s. Great Society funding financed school and public libraries. For preschoolers, picture books became a prerequisite for reading readiness, and in the early grades picture books became part of the literature based "whole language" method of reading instruction. Fiction was used by teachers to help explain and elucidate the social studies curriculum. With this stimulus, publisher lists grew. Paperback editions and school reading clubs where books were marketed to students, such as Scholastic, flourished. Standard retellings of fairy tales and myths persisted, but publishing companies also sought authors and artists who explored what it was to be an American in a new age. They sought diversity and a reinterpretation or revision of the canon. Literary historian Barbara Bader states that in the children's book world "multiculturalism is an honorable word;" it has "made picture books into a cultural imperative and a political agent."
Ed Young, winner of the 1990 Caldecott medal for his Lon Po Po, a retelling of the Red Riding Hood story, is an illustrator of fantasy and folk tales. Born in China, he says he takes his inspiration from the philosophy of Chinese painting: "A Chinese painting is often accompanied by words. They are complementary. There are things that words do that pictures never can, and likewise there are images that words can never describe." Ed Young teaches art at Yale, and once taught at UCSC.
Jerry Pinkney's many books celebrate multicultural, particularly African-American, themes. He has illustrated the Uncle Remus tales and the story of John Henry, both retold by Julius Lester. His jewel- like watercolor illustrations have received many awards. He has received the Coretta Scott King award five times, and he holds three Caldecott Honor medals. Pinkney, who was born in 1939, says of his work, "when it sings it is magic."
David Diaz, who was born in Florida in 1958, apprenticed with the sculptor Duane Hanson. He is both an illustrator and graphic designer whose work has appeared in magazines such as Atlantic as well as children's books. He illustrated Gary Soto's Neighborhood Odes, about Mexican-American communities in the Central Valley, and Eve Bunting's Smoky Night, about the Los Angeles race riot. His unusual photographic collages of found objects and bold, heavily outlined representational style won him a Caldecott in 1995. He creates artist books with his wife Cecelia which are produced under the imprint Diaz Icon.
The last decades of the 20th Century have also seen the publication of books about the experience of the individual child and exploration of a child's psyche. In Barbara Cooney and Lee Kingman's Peter's Long Walk , a boy searches for a meaningful friend. In Where the Wild Things Are , Max, the king of all wild things, becomes lonely and wants to be where "someone loved him best of all." Changes in the culture of childhood are reflected in publishing over 300 years-from the moralizing and cautionary sermons presented in 18th Century primers to the representations of the personally expressive, sensitive child who reacts to life's events in the 20th Century picture book.
Maurice Sendak, son of immigrants from Poland, has worked in the tradition of 19th century wood engravers and pen and ink draughtsmen. He has published more than 75 books, designs sets and costumes for operas, and runs a theater company for children called "The Night Kitchen." Beyond Where the Wild Things Are , he is also known as the illustrator of Else Holmelund Minarik's Little Bear series. With Iona and Peter Opie, the world's foremost historians on children's lore and literature, he published I Saw Esau: The Schoolchild's Pocket Book , a collection of wit and wisdom of generations of schoolchildren.
Barbara Rogoff is not only an illustrator but a Professor in the UCSC Psychology Department. The Hen That Crowed , about a noisy rooster who saves the town of Bean Blossom, is her first picture book for children. The three original watercolor illustrations presented here were done by Professor Rogoff, two of them for The Hen That Crowed .
Illustrator Jo Ellen McAllister Stammen's preliminary sketches with notes from the editor of Atheneum, and the folded and gathered sheets for Eve Bunting's Swan in Love .
Use the arrow to expand or collapse this section
Aesop's Fables. Edited and illustrated with wood engravings by Boris Artzybasheff. New York: Junior Literary Guild, 1933.
The Baby's Bouquet: A Fresh Bunch of Old Rhymes & Tunes. Arranged & Decorated by Walter Crane; Cut and Printed in Colours by Edmund Evans; A Companion to The Baby's Opera: The Tunes Collected & Arranged by Lucy Crane. London: George Routledge and sons, [1879?]
Barrie, J.M. Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928.
Blake, William. Gates of Paradise. Boissia, Clairvaux, Jura, France: Trianon Press for the William Blake Trust, 1968.
Boutet de Monvel, Louis-Maurice. Joan of Arc. New York: Century Co., 1907. (First published in France 1896.)
Brunhoff, Jean de. The Travels of Babar. Translated from the French by Merle S. Haas. New York: Random House, 1961 (First published 1934)
Bunting, Eve. Smoky Night. Illustrated by David Diaz. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1994.
Bunting, Eve. Swan In Love. Illustrated by Jo Ellen McAllister Stammen. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, 2000.
Burnett, Frances Hodgson. The Secret Garden. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1911. (First published in 1909.)
Caldecottt, Randolph. Babes in the Wood. Old Mother Goose. London: George Routledge & Sons. [1888?]
Carroll, Lewis., Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Illustrated by Sir John Tenniel. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977. (First published in 1865.)
A Child's Garden of Delights: Pictures, Poems, and Stories for Children From the Collections of the New York Public Library. Compiled by Bernard McTigue. New York: Abrams, 1987.
Clark, Margery. The Poppy Seed Cakes. Illustrated by Maud & Miska Petersham. Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1924.
Cole, Sheila. The Hen that Crowed. Illustrated by Barbara Rogoff. New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1993.
Crane, Walter. The Baby's Opera. New York: Windmill Books, 1981. (First published in 1877.)
Creekmore, Raymond. Little Fu. New York: Macmillan Company, 1947.
d'Aulaire, Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire. Children of the Northlights. New York: Viking Press, 1935.
d'Aulaire, Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire. Leif the Lucky. New York: Doubleday, 1941.
The Death and Burial of Pretty Cock Robin. Uncle Frank's Series. New York: McLoughlin Brothers Publishers, ND [18--].
Diaz, David and Cecelia Diaz. Dreams. Diaz Icon, 1994.
Dougherty, James. Andy and the Lion. New York: Viking Press, 1938.
Falls, C. B. ABC Book. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1923
Forbes, Esther. Johnny Tremain: a Novel for Old & Young. Frontispiece by Lynd Ward. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1943.
Gàg, Wanda. Gone Is Gone or The Story of a Man Who Wanted To Do Housework. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc. 1935.
Gàg, Wanda. Millions of Cats. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1928.
Handforth, Thomas. Mei Li. New York: Doubleday, 1990. (First published 1938.)
I Saw Esau: The Schoolchild's Pocket Book. Edited by Iona and Peter Opie, Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Cambridge: Candlewick Press, 1992.
Jackson, K. and B. The Saggy Baggy Elephant. Illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren. New York: Golden Book, 1974 (Originally published 1947.)
James, Rev. Thomas. Aesop's Fables: A New Version, Chiefly From Original Sources. Illustrations designed by John Tenniel. New York: Geo. A. Leavitt, 1848.
Jolly Jump-Ups. Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. Springfield: McLoughlin Bros., 1946.
Kingman, Lee. Peter's Long Walk. Illustrated by Barbara Cooney. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1953.
Kozisek, Josef. A Forest Story. Illustrated by Rudolf Mates. Translated from the Czechoslovak by Raf. D. Szalatnay. New York: Macmillan Co., 1929.
Lester, Julius. The Tales of Uncle Remus: The Adventures of Brer Rabbit. Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney. New York: Dial Books, 1987.
Lindquist, Jennie D. The Golden Name Day. Illustrated by Garth Williams. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955.
Lofting, Hugh. Doctor Dolittle's Circus. New York: Fred a. Stokes, 1938 (First published 1924.)
MacDonald, George. The Princess and the Goblin. Illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith. Philadelphia: David McKay Company, 1920.
McCloskey, Robert. Homer Price. New York: Viking Press, 1961 (First published 1943.)
Milne, A.A. The House at Pooh Corner. Illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1928.
Minarik, Else Holmelund. A Kiss For Little Bear. Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. An I Can Read Book. New York: Harper and Row, 1968.
Morris, William. The Story of the Glittering Plain Which Has Been Also Called the Land of Living Men or the Acre of the Undying. Ornamented with 23 pictures by Walter Crane. Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, 1894.
Mother Goose. Illustrated by Kate Greenaway. Engraved and printed by Edmund Evans. London: Frederick Warne and Co., [1888?]
Mother Goose or the Old Nursery Rhymes. Illustrated by Kate Greenaway. Engraved and printed by Edmund Evans. London: Frederick Warne and Co., [1888?]
Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes : A Collection of Alphabets, Rhymes, Tales and Jingles. New York: McLoughlin Brothers, [18--?]
Mother Goose's Rhymes Jingles and Fairy Tales. Altemus' Illustrated New Illustrated Young People's Library. Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Company's Publications, 1896.
Opie, Iona and Peter. A Nursery Companion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Pene du Boys, William. Otto in Texas. New York: Viking Press, 1959.
Petersham, Maud and Miska Petersham. A Bird in the Hand: Sayings from Poor Richard's Almanac. By The Wise American Benjamin Franklin. New York: Macmillan, 1951.
Petersham, Maud and Miska Petersham. Miki. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1929
Pinocchio: A Pop Up Classic. Retold by Albert G. Miller. New York: Random House, ND.
Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. London: Frederick Warne, 1987. (First published in 1902.)
Pyle, Howard. The Story of King Arthur and His Knights. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921.
Quiller-Couch, Arthur Thomas, Sir. The Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales From the Old French. Illustrated by Edmund Dulac. London, Hodder & Stoughton, [1910]
San Souci, Robert D. Talking Eggs: A Folktale from the American South. Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney. New York: Dial Books, 1989.
Sanders, Charles W. Sanders' Union Reader: For Primary Schools and Families. Sanders" Union Series, No. 2. New York: Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co., 1861.
Sendak, Maurice. Where the Wild Things Are. New York: Harper & Row, 1984 (First published in 1963.)
Snow White and Rose Red. Pictures by Gustaf Tenggren. A Little Golden Book. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Kidnapped; being memoirs of the adventures of David Balfour the year 1751 ... written by himself and now set forth by Robert Louis Stevenson. Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913.
Stories from Hans Andersen, With Illustrations by Edmund Dulac. New York: George H. Doran Co., [1923]
Young, Ed. Lon Po Po: a Red-Riding Hood Story from China. New York: Philomel Books, 1989.
Verne, Jules. The Mysterious Island. Pictures by N.C. Wyeth. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920.
Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Illustrations by the Walt Disney Studio. Adapted by Campbell Grant. New York: Golden Press, 1952.
White, E. B. Stuart Little. Illustrated by Garth Williams. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1945.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House in the Big Woods. Illustrated by Garth Williams. New York: Harper Collins, 1981. (First published in 1932.)