It’s Bookshelf Travelling in Insane Times again which is hosted by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness. I must say that I’m really enjoying this meme, getting a keek at other readers’ bookshelves and at the same time it’s pushing me to read books that I had forgotten I had, mind you the lack of visits to libraries during this Covid lockdown is helping too. Last week I read Merlin Dreams which featured in my ‘Insane’ post.
So this week I’m sticking to the same bookshelf – Songs with Music from a Child’s Garden of Verses by R.L. Stevenson is illustrated by Margaret W. Tarrant. It’s an old book dating from either 1918 or the 1930s depending on who you believe. I think I bought my copy at a specialist book fair, possibly the Christian Aid one in Edinburgh which of course didn’t take place this year. Anyway the illustrations are charming and you can see some of them here.
The Barefoot Book of Ballet Stories by Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple is illustrated by Rebecca Guay and is obviously aimed at older children – girls I suppose. It features Coppelia, Swan Lake, Cinderella, The Nutcracker, Shim Chung: The Blind Man’s Daughter, The Sleeping Beauty and Daphnis and Chloe. You can see some of the illustrations here.
I love Michael Foreman’s illustrations and his Mother Goose book has a foreword by Iona Opie, the collector of children’s rhymes and folklore. Opie says: ‘The nursery rhyme repertoire stays remarkably constant. What need for new nursery rhymes when there are always new children?’ But this book contains quite a lot of rhymes that I had never heard of. This is quite a thick book with 152 pages jam packed with rhymes and hundreds of illustrations and it even has an index of first lines. You can see some of Foreman’s illustrations here.
Lastly, Fairy Tales from Hans Andersen is a classic illustrated edition and the illustrations are by multiple artists, including Mabel Lucie Attwell, Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, Arthur Rackham, W. Heath Robinson and many more. The back cover features the image below.
The illustrations from both Ballet Stories and the Mother Goose book are very nice. I am going to have to start going through some of our illustrated books.
tracybham,
I’ve sort of collected books that are illustrated by Michael Foreman so I have quite a lot of them. I’ll be very interested in your seeing your books, if you share them online.
I’ve always loved those ballet anthologies – both the retellings of the actual ballet stories and anthologies of short stories of aspiring dancers. Naturally, the year I took ballet I learned I had two left feet, was completely mortified by the transparent pale pink leotard we had to wear, and there was no recital so what was the point, anyway? I guess it just wasn’t Madame Fidolia’s…
Constance,
So many of us have ballet dreams but when you get down to it it’s hard and painful work. I opted to do Scottish Highland dancing instead, a lot easier.
You might like the illustrations of Jerry Pinkney (https://www.jerrypinkneystudio.com/frameset.html). He’s a contemporary artist but I think he works in the tradition of the classic illustrators I like (Arthur Rackham, N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle).
Joan,
Thanks for that link, I had never heard of Jerry Pinkney before but from what I see on the link I love his work. I must see if I can get any books he has illustrated.