The Important Books: Children’s Picture Books as Art and Literature, and: Once upon a Time: Illustrations from Fairytales, Fables, Primers, Pop-Ups, and Other Children’s Books (review)

These two recent books present rather opposite approaches to the study of text and image in the literature of childhood: Once upon a Time offers many reproductions and few words; The Important Books offers many words and no images. As we shall see, both are usefully browsable, but for very different reasons.

The Important Books is a collection of six separate essays on six recent picture book authors and illustrator-collaborators (Margaret Wise Brown, Arnold Lobel, Maurice Sendak, Donald Hall and Barbara Cooney, William Joyce and Chris Van Allsburg) preceded by a brief introduction. Most of the essays were delivered at conferences or previously published and have been revised and updated for this publication; all include academic notes and works cited and sometimes bibliographic resources. Although Stanton repeats some ideas, each essay stands alone, and there is no particular effort to link them in any fashion other than general chronology (not by theme, style, audience, or other method). The volume simply stops after the final essay; there is no attempt to synthesize or formally conclude. As such, the volume is accessible to the person who wishes to consult the work of any of the writers/illustrators singly, without reference to the other sections.

Once upon a Time is a rich selection of nineteenth-and very early twentieth-century American children’s book images from the collection of Ellen and Arthur Linman; the vast majority are taken from the publications of McLoughlin Brothers in New York, which was active in juvenile publishing from 1850 to 1905. In a brief preface Ellen Linman notes her and her late husband’s collecting interests, and Amy Weinstein provides a sketchy but accurate introduction to the “rise” of children’s literature in England and the United States. Her remarks are aimed at a general audience who presumably bought the book for the images, since she sketches the changes in printing in the nineteenth century in only the briefest of terms, and one might have hoped for more information on the history of the publishing house and its press processes.

Once upon a Time is like a mini catalogue raisonné of McLoughlin Brothers’ work over its half century. There are only a handful of non-McLoughlin reproductions early on for comparison (and to demonstrate the “looseness” of American interpretations of copyright; evidently, McLoughlin Brothers was not above pirating popular British juvenile work). The images are logically divided into six generic or rhetorical categories: “Learning the ABCs,” “Gems from Mother Goose,” “Fairytales and Fables,” “Novels, History Books, and Anthologies,” “Christmas Books,” and “Cautionary Tales for the Nursery.” Weinstein provides a one-page introduction for each section and descriptive captions for all of the images. The captions give publication data and sometimes technical information or commentary locating a book or image in its genre or tradition.

Once upon a Time is a big book, nine inches by twelve inches, opulently illustrated in colors that are meticulously faithful to the vivid, even garish colors of the original works—reds and yellows whelm the eye in image after image. And it is the richness of the images that “makes” Once upon a Time. The majority of McLoughlin Brothers’ books were essentially inexpensive and ephemeral, designed for short lives in less than careful hands. But these examples have survived in truly pristine condition, which makes their reproduction so remarkable. Here and there one notices a crease or a tear (thankfully not Photoshopped out by the graphic designer), but in the main it is as if we are seeing a new copy, just as bold, bright, and visually seductive as the originals must have been for...