"Best In Children's Books"

I've recently discovered an amazing series of 42 books published by Doubleday between 1957 and 1961 called "Best In Children's Books." According to Dee Jones of the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection,
"Each volume contained a mix of classics, new stories, and non fiction. Included were numerous folk and fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm; Mother Goose rhymes; retellings" etc.

She continues in her introduction to an incredible 50 page index of the authors and illustrators of the series:

"For a researcher in children's literature, perhaps the most intriguing part of the series is the illustrators. Their names are not given on the table of contents page, but are found only on the title page of the individual story. Because of this lack of credit, most of the illustrations done in this series are not mentioned in bibliographies of the artists' work."

It's amazing how many now-famous illustrators (and plenty of my personal favorites) have their earliest work included in these books: Ezra Jack Keats, Barbara Cooney, Feodor Rojankovsky, Richard Scarry, the D'Aulaires, the Petershams, Marjorie Flack, and on and on.

One person's work that I was not familiar with is illustrator Charlotte Steiner. She has a number of stories in many of the volumes about a little girl named 'Kiki" and I just love her simple line and 50s/60s style.


Gotta get 'em all!

Rocks in the head

I painted these tiny little rocks with comic book/cartoon characters when I was around eleven years old. I've always loved tiny things, which would explain why I can sometimes fit an entire picture book's worth of final artwork on one or two pieces of 22" x 30" watercolor paper. Is it any wonder that M.B. Goffstein is one of my all-time favorites?

More cover talk

Here are two possible jacket design layouts for the book that I've just finished, written by Sarah Wilson. (You can see an interior piece of artwork in a previous post.) The font is not final, it's more just a placeholder until I do the painting and the book is designed. Then we'll decide whether or not to use the oval or not.

I love our new Print Gocco

Here's my first print (the buggish critter) from our new Print Gocco (A very cool, easy to use home screen-printing system). I made a bunch of notecards with this little guy on them, in various colors. Since it was my first attempt, I stuck to a line drawing in black. My wife Mary chose to get complicated her first time out and did this beautiful print of our dog Rosie, using three screens of brown/red, black, and a little bit of white.
Another fun thing to distract me from getting my work done!