Children's Illustrated Books Part II

• George Cruickshank's Comic Alphabet is a small accordion-folded book with 24 etchings representing the letters of the alphabet - I don't know what happened to the other two letters. It's interesting that the book doesn't use recognisable symbols for each letter as current alphabet books do. N for nightmare? O for Orpheus? It makes me glad I was educated in the 1970's not the 1870's.

• Why was chromolithography garish and unappealing? What are electrotype and photoengraving?
  

• I wanted to find some examples Edmund Evans' colour wood engraving. It seems the most famous children's illustrators to use this process are Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway.

Walter Crane



Randolph Caldecott



Kate Greenaway


The three styles of the above illustrators are very different from each other, and each of them are delightful in their own way - though I must say Crane's style is not really my cup of tea.

• The photographic process was used to transfer artist's drawings onto a block of wood. How was this transfer done?

• The illustrated children's book emerged as an important component of the publishing industry in the 20th century. What caused this - was it Edmund Evans?

• I wanted to find some samples of Jean de Brunhoff's Barbar and Edward Ardizonne's Little Tim. I'm not familiar with Little Tim but my boys have spent many a happy hour in from of the tv watching Barbar. I'd have gotten hold of some printed material for them, but I didn't know that Barbar had such wonderful beginnings, let alone have a presence outside the box.

Little Tim





Barbar

Interestingly, Jean de Brunhoff died at age 38 and only produced the first seven of these books; his son Laurent took over, producing Barbar books from 1948 till 2003.

• Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr - what a wonderful man to produce such a site as this, featuring myriad children's illustrators covering so many genres that I can't list them all. From comic book characters to fearsome monsters with a few fables in-between this site will show you so much stuff about illustrators between 1880 and 1920; 105 of them to date - you won't remember where you started.