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By Kathleen Spale

When most people think of summer vacation, they think of time spent on beaches in the sun with sand and water spreading endlessly around them.  So when I heard about an opportunity to sit in a small, fluorescent-lit room surrounded by 22 bins of 1621 dusty, old books for my summer vacation, you can imagine what I said…..

You bet!

As a librarian, illustrator, and longtime lover of children’s books and history, to me, creating an Albert Whitman archive was the summer adventure of a lifetime.  Books since 1919…..never knowing what each one holds…..It was like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark…..crate after crate of new surprises…..

Would I find the ark of the covenant?

Well, not quite, but, as Wendy has highlighted on this blog on many Fridays, I was able to unearth many gems…..some funny, some strange, almost always interesting.

I know that on occasion, out of my room full of bins and books, the staff at Albert Whitman probably heard a gasp or a giggle.  I couldn’t help myself.  On one hand, I found first editions of books illustrated by Randolph Caldecott, Crockett Johnson, James Montgomery Flagg, J. C. Leyendecker, Maj Lindmann, and Kurt Wiese and 1940s editions of The Gingerbread Man, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and Pecos Bill while on the other hand, I found the trio of Mother Goose Etiquette Rhymes, Mother Goose Health Rhymes, and Mother Goose Safety Rhymes, which made certain to illustrate the consequences of a little boy touching a live wire!

Every week, I felt like Marty McFly in the movie Back to the Future, entering a time machine, strapping on a safety belt, and launching into a time long ago and not so long ago.  One week, I was in World War II.  The next week, I was in the Wild West.  Some books even dared to glimpse into the future.  Would the year 2000 bring flying cars and use of a new invention called plastic?  Would libraries of the future have reading rooms and lists of books to facilitate child development?

But as with all good things, as the clock winds down, the books lay still, and the bins remain empty, my great adventure through history is ending.  And as I slowly depart my time machine here at Albert Whitman, I am amazed that while so many aspects of children’s books have changed since 1919, like word count, color replication, and story subtlety, some things haven’t changed at all.

Throughout the Albert Whitman archives, one series that I continually found was called “Just Right Books,” and this name made me think.  Isn’t that concept still so true?  Aren’t we all as children and adults still looking for the just right book?  When we are gloomy, when we are cheerful, when we are bored, we are always looking for the one book out there that is just right for each of us in our particular place and time.  And I, for one, am grateful to report that after some months here at Albert Whitman, it is clear that Albert Whitman still has a dedicated staff who devote so much time and energy trying to find these “just right books” for everyone.

As I leave these archives too, I can’t help but ponder, what will people in the future say about the archives o

Remember when air travel was so glamorous that you had to wear a tie, even if you were a kid?

Well, okay, neither do we. But in 1942, when we published Let’s Fly to Bermuda by Marjorie Barrows, it was the norm, at least for exceedingly lucky twins like Nan and Toby. (Though you have to wonder why a family who can afford to jaunt off to tropical islands is taking a bus to the airport. Couldn’t Mother revise her fancy hat budget to allow for a cab now and then?)

But never mind, because once they board the plane the family has to endure the usual airline hassles—you know, tablecloths, three-course meals, attendants in stylish pillbox hats waiting on your every need.

(Remember this image next time you fly. Try not to weep into your packet of pretzels.)

And look, Nan has her armrest all to herself!

Do you suppose the in-flight movie was Casablanca? Sigh.

All right, that’s enough nostalgia and envy for today. Happy Friday!

Nothing like a week’s worth of posts about grammar and punctuation to make you feel like you’re in school again.  So it seems only appropriate to feature Jene Barr’s Good Morning, Teacher (note the comma!) for this week’s archive. Published in 1957, with illustrations by Lucy and John Hawkinson, Good Morning, Teacher makes us remember a time in our lives when we were just learning to master words and learn the rules of all those tidy little sentences.  Sometimes we all could stand to have an encouraging voice like Miss Bell’s in our heads.

Barr, whose papers are in the De Grummond Children’s Literature Archive, was a teacher herself for many years, and her books for Whitman, with titles like Mr. Zip and the US Mail and Paul the Policeman, are the quintessence of 1950s children’s books. There’s something strangely poignant about the simple text of these stories.  The moment conveyed in the spread below, for instance, feels almost Raymond Carveresque, except that it’s as quietly hopeful as those little plants on the windowsill.

Oh, Miss Bell. Somebody loves you. Somebody loves us all.

Happy Friday!

You pampered kids these days, with your cushy iPods and your Silly Bandz! You know what kind of books nine-year olds of the 1940s liked to curl up with?

A nice book about popular hand tools, that’s what.

Yes, this is a children’s book for ages nine and up, and there’s not a single warning or disclaimer to be found in its pages. But the boys and girls in this book looks like they have all their wits (and fingers) about them, so let’s not worry about them.  Have a great weekend!

Gertrude Chandler Warner, author of The Boxcar Children books, passed away in 1979, when she was nearly 90 years old, but we often still get mail for her from Boxcar fans.  In this occasional blog feature, we’ll answer frequently asked fan questions, such as…

Q: How old are Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny Alden?

It sounds like an easy question, but you’d be surprised at how complicated it gets. See, in The Boxcar Children, the very first book, Henry is fourteen, Jessie is twelve, Violet is ten, and Benny is five.

But well, he’s only five until he has his birthday in Surprise Island, the second book in the series. And when you get to Book #8, Lighthouse Mystery, you’ll noticed that Henry is about to go off to college. By Book #19, Benny Uncovers a Mystery, Benny is working a summer job in a department store. But if you crack open Book #20 and check the children’s ages, it will tell you that Henry is fourteen, Jessie is twelve, Violet is ten, and Benny is… six.

So what gives? Is Henry one of those genius kids who goes off to college early? Is Benny breaking child labor laws? Why are the Aldens older in the early book in the series and younger in the later books? You can see how all this leads to further questions. Are the Aldens shape-shifters? Or maybe vampires? Could the uranium mines at Aunt Jane’s Mystery Ranch have something to do with all this?!

If Gertrude were here, she would tell you to calm down. If there’s one thing the Boxcar Children can teach us, it’s that anything that seems spooky and weird has a perfectly reasonable explanation!  In the first 19 books in the series, the Aldens gradually grow older. After Gertrude Warner passed away in 1979 (just a few years after Benny Uncovers a Mystery was published) there were no new books in the Boxcar Children series for many years. In the 199os, though, the Aldens returned in a big way with new stories. We realized that most people remember the first books the most, so for these new adventures it was decided that the Aldens should stay the same age as they were in that earliest book.  After all, it’s hard to solve mysteries when you have college midterms.

So yes, it’s a little confusing, but when you read the books, it’s clear that the Boxcar Children are really ageless. No matter how old they are, they’re always wise beyond their years.

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