Last Saturday, a few friends and I hopped a train to the Newberry Library for a special exhibit on children's books. It was officially called "Artifacts of Childhood: 700 Years of Children's Books." There was everything from a first edition of Alice in Wonderland to a box-book that made 9 kinds of animal sounds to frightening posters that implied parents would hand lazy brats over to the Navy. One book raved about the blissful German "children's gardens" where young'uns would frolic and learn. (I was fond of kindergarten, but I wouldn't call it Paradise....) Another was an early comic book. One that made me laugh was a hunting/fishing guide that fell into the hands of a toddler––it was scribbled on!
But the two I most wanted to take from the cases and read were The Young Visiters (sic) by Daisy Ashford, a child's parody of English high society, and David Goes to Baffinland by David Binney Putnam, about the voyages he took with his father (explorer George Palmer Putnam). Interestingly, David's mom was from the family that started Crayola, and his stepmother was Amelia Earheart. How cool is that?
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