Books Received
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Books Received
The Baltimore Bibliophiles at Fifty, 1954–2004. Edited by Donald Farren and August A. Imholtz, Jr. Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Bibliophiles, 2009.
Book collecting is often a solitary pursuit, but once in awhile book collectors gather together in groups, and one such group is the Baltimore Bibliophiles. Founded in 1954, this group recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, and they published this volume to mark the occasion. Some members of this group collect children’s books, and this interest is reflected in their volume. The volume includes a scholarly essay by Linda Lapides titled “For Amusement and Instruction: Children’s Books in Bygone Baltimore.” The volume also includes an annotated bibliography of children’s books published in the Baltimore area during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Children’s Literature Gems: Choosing and Using Them in Your Library Career. By Elizabeth Bird. Chicago: LAL Editions, 2009.
A long-time librarian with the New York Public Library’s Children’s Center, Elizabeth Bird draws on her extensive experience in this practical and insightful resource for children’s librarians. Bird emphasizes children’s books of lasting value, and she provides advice on making building collections and programs around such books.
Considering Children’s Literature: A Reader. Edited by Andrea Schwenke Wyile and Teya Rosenberg. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2008.
The editors of this anthology bring together 32 essays about children’s literature by leading literary critics and children’s authors. The essays are organized under the following rubrics: Introducing the Study of Children’s Literature; Historical Children’s Literature; The Picturebook; Poetry and Nursery Rhymes; Fairy Tales and Fantasy; Young Adult Literature; Drama and Theatre; Film Adaptation; and Theoretical Explorations and Practical Issues. This anthology would work well as a supplementary text in college-level children’s literature courses.
Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales. By Kurt Schwitters. Translated and introduced by Jack Zipes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Known as an German artist in the Dadaist movement, Kurt Schwitters also wrote fairy tales. These tales were [End Page 285] written in German between 1925 and 1948, and most of them were never translated into English until now. In this new collection, Jack Zipes provides English translations of 32 of these stories. He also provides a scholarly introduction in which he covers the life and creative career of Kurt Schwitters.
The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia. By Laura Miller. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2008.
In this autobiographical work, Laura Miller discusses the evolution of her responses to C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. As she explains, she loved these books as a child, disliked them as a teenager, and renewed her appreciation of them as an adult. For those who are interested in the Narnia books or in reader-response theory, this book has much to offer. [End Page 286]
