Children's Literature

Beeck, Nathalie op de.
"The First Picture Book for Modern Children": Mary Liddell's Little Machinery and the Fairy Tale of Modernity
Children's Literature - Volume 32, 2004, pp. 41-83

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Nathalie op de Beeck - "The First Picture Book for Modern Children": Mary Liddell's Little Machinery and the Fairy Tale of Modernity - Children's Literature 32 Children's Literature 32 (2004) 41-83 "The First Picture Book for Modern Children": Mary Liddell's Little Machinery and the Fairy Tale of Modernity Nathalie op de Beeck Somewhere there is a Little Machinery a magic creature. He grew up out of some pieces of a steam engine that was in a wreck, an old trolley car that couldn't run any more, and a broken automobile. This Little Machinery would rather work than anything in the world. He does things by steam like the steamengine -- Or by electricity like the electric car whichever he chooses And he rides merrily along on a little automobile wheel that goes by gasoline. // And the Little Machinery lives in a wood that grows beside a railroad track. And in the wood are a lot of animals that he plays with. He makes things for them by machinery. And they love him._ and follow him all about_ watching him work. (2-5)(figure 1) In 1926, Doubleday, Page and Co. published Mary Liddell's Little Machinery, a curious picture book that distills twentieth-century hopes and fears for a child audience. Little Machinery, an impressive four-color text with an industrious robot-boy as its protagonist, did not stay in print for long. Yet to a contemporary eye, it stands as a significant artifact of its decade in the urban United States. This unusual picture book serves...