children’s stuff

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    Illustrations from The Princess and the Goblin (1920 edition)

    The Princess and the Goblin is a children’s fantasy book written by Scottish author George MacDonald in 1872. It’s one of my favorite books, highly recommend picking it up if you haven’t read it already! This edition, published in 1920 by David McKay Company, was illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith, one of my favorite artists from the early 20th century. I’ve used a scan from the Internet Archive to pull her illustrations for the book out into individual images and then uploaded them here for you all to enjoy. As they’re in the public domain, you can use them for…

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    Illustrations from Rose Fyleman’s The Rainbow Cat (1923)

    The Rainbow Cat is a children’s fantasy book written by British author Rose Fyleman, published originally in 1922. This edition was published by the George H. Doran company in New York in 1923. The art in this book was by American artist Thelma Cudlipp (listed as Thelma Cudlipp Grosvenor on the book itself). I like the balance of clear lines and delicate colors, and especially how cute the cats are! These images were collected from a PDF scan provided by the Library of Congress. They aren’t the clearest, unfortunately, but I thought they were very charming and I wanted to…

  • Author Rose Fyleman Book Index

    Rose Amy Fyleman (née Feilmann, 6 March 1877 – 1 August 1957) was an English writer and poet, noted for her works on fairies for children. Her 1917 poem “There are fairies at the bottom of our garden” was set to music by English composer Liza Lehmann. (Source: Wikipedia) I think she’s one of those authors that’re maybe more popular in her own country– which is probably why I hadn’t heard of her before my research in Victorian/Edwardian fairy tale books, as I’m from the US and she was British! Of course, that means she’s a perfect fit for the library…

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    3 Fairy Poems by Rose Fyleman

    These poems come from the book The Fairy Flute by Rose Fyleman, originally published in 1921. It’s a collection of children’s poems about fairies; I picked these three specifically to share because I like the interaction between the real world and the fantasy world the fairies come from. The featured post image is “The Fairy Queen takes an airy drive in a light carriage, a twelve-in-hand, drawn by thoroughbred butterflies,” from the book In fairy-land (1875). 👉 All posts about fairy tales / All children’s stuff posts / More poetry / More literature IN BOND STREET Upon her little velvet…

  • 11 Old-Fashioned Wooden Animal Toy Patterns from 1922

    This is a collection of patterns (or wood-making plans) for making old-fashioned wooden children’s toys, specifically ones that are shaped like animals! They come from Baxter, Leon H. Baxter’s Toy Craft, originally published in 1922. The book is meant to for kids to be able to make the toys themselves, so it should be fairly easy for beginner toy makers. I’ve included images of the toys, plus some tips for enlarging them to be the proper size. All of that came from the book itself, so be sure to head to the source if you want any info I missed…

  • The Wizard of Oz Book Series Index

    The Wizard of Oz book universe is a larger thing than you may know! There’s the original books written by L. Frank Baum, then there’s the spinoffs and sibling books, and THEN there’s the rest of the “official Oz” books written by authors approved by the publisher after Baum’s death in the 1920s. If you’ve only every heard of the original book (and maybe a few others), you may be surprised at how many books are actually out there! This post is an index of all the official Oz books, which include the “Famous Forty” official books, as well as…

  • The Langs’ Colored Fairy Books Index

    The Fairy Books are 25 volumes of collected fairy tale stories from around the world, translated and compiled by Leonora Blanche Lang and edited by her husband, Andrew Lang, in the late 1800s to early 1910s. You can read more about the history of the books and their creation on Wikipedia! This post is specifically an index for the books in the “Colored Fairy Books” collection, which is 12 volumes. I’ve also put together an index of the contents of each of the Colored Fairy Books, so you can CTRL-F to find a specific story and see which volume it’s…

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    26 Wizard of Oz Illustrations by W.W. Denslow (1900) – Full Color Pages

    These were collected from the digitized version of the 1900 edition of The Wizard of Oz on the Library of Congress website. In that edition, all the illustrations were done by W.W. Denslow— you’ll probably recognize them because they’re used heavily in Oz products! As for this post: I downloaded each image individually, lightly edited them (keeping the vintage aged paper look), then re-uploaded them here! All these illustrations are in the public domain, so you can use them for personal or commercial things. If you do use them, it’d be nice to credit the original artist, W.W. Denslow. I…

  • Author L. Frank Baum Book Index

    Lyman Frank Baum (May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919) was an American author best known for his children’s fantasy books, particularly The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, part of a series. In addition to the 14 Oz books, Baum penned 41 other novels (not including four lost, unpublished novels), 83 short stories, over 200 poems, and at least 42 scripts. (Source: Wikipedia) This is an index of the Baum books that are available for download on Project Gutenberg. I personally find PG a little difficult to look through when I’m focused on a specific author or topic, so indexes like…

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    Poem: WINTER-TIME (1895)

    Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;Blinks but an hour or two; and then,A blood-red orange, sets again.Before the stars have left the skies,At morning in the dark I rise;And shivering in my nakedness,By the cold candle, bathe and dress.Close by the jolly fire I sitTo warm my frozen bones a bit;Or with a reindeer-sled, exploreThe colder countries round the door.When to go out, my nurse doth wrapMe in my comforter and cap;The cold wind burns my face, and blowsIts frosty pepper up my nose.Black are my steps on silver sod;Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;And tree and…