posted on 28 Apr 2020

Storybook Culture: the art of popular children’s books by Joseph & Cheryl Homme

I should say from the outset that this is a book about American children’s books and that might mean it has limited interest to the UK readers looking to indulge in a bit of nostalgia for their lost or forgotten children’s books. However, I don’t think that should deter you if you’re at all interested in, or love the aesthetics of, children’s books and the artwork of their jackets and covers.

This is a big, generous and beautifully produced book (probably about 12”x10”) full of sumptuous glossy pages with top-notch reproductions of the original books that the authors have decided to include. I make this point so strongly because, truthfully, this isn’t a book that is going to tell the collector anything they don’t already know and it’s text seems to swing from the engagingly populist to the plodding. No, this isn’t a book designed or conceived of as something primarily to be read – it’s most definitely a book to look at and to admire.

Having damned with faint praise when it comes to the text, I want to swing back the other way in terms of the presentation because this really is a looker. You might quibble, I guess over the lack of an index but I doubt you’re going to use the book as a reference source because it’s strengths definitely lie in the delights it offers the browsing reader who just wants, or perhaps I should say, craves, book design art.

The authors, both with a background in journalism, have pulled together a panoply of American children's books that were published between 1900 and 1970 and sourced something in excess of four hundred colour reproductions. Each of the books is fully and thoroughly referenced by a text caption and there is also a system of symbols to give you a crude indication of market value – an additional bit of ‘information’ I think that is spectacularly useless because in truth numbers of that kind are out-of-date the minute they are published.

Some thought has been given to how best to present the books and to showcase them sympathetically. The authors have chosen to go for an organisation based primarily on genre - mysteries, westerns and war, adventure, science-fiction, and sports – but there is also an opening section which covers ‘the classics’ which would have been popular at the beginning of the 20th century in the States and most of which were, of course, by British authors, although the covers and internal illustrations were done by American artists like N.C. Wyth or Maxfield Parish.

As I suggested at the beginning of this review, this is a book that will delight any aficionado of children’s literature whatever side of the Atlantic they are on and would be absolutely guaranteed to bring a welcome splash of colour to a grey afternoon. And, if you’re a collector of children’s books – especially someone just starting out to build a collection – you’ll get plenty of ideas about what to keep your eyes open for. Personally, I’m a complete sucker for old science fiction art and I would always argue that this was something no-one did better that the Americans.

Amazingly, this 2003 publication in hardback can still be bought for comfortably under £20. A bargain.

 

Terry Potter

April 2020