LizzieMaine
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My recent reconnection with one of my favorite kids' books, Robert McCloskey's "Homer Price" from 1943, as discussed in the What Are You Reading? thread, has gotten me thinking about other kids' books from the Era that I enjoyed when younger, and which might still be entertaining and useful for kids today.
My all time favorite picture book, then as well as now, was "The Bear That Wasn't," by Frank Tashlin, first published in 1946. Yes, that's the same Frank Tashlin who directed brilliant cartoons for Warner Bros and other studios in the thirties and forties, and went on to become a prominent direction of live-action comedies in the fifties and sixties. But "The Bear That Wasn't" is a wonderful fable about a bear who ends up being inadvertently sucked into the production-line environment of a large factory built on top of his den, and spends most of the book trying to convince a long series of foremen, vice-presidents, and bosses that he's a bear and not a silly man in a fur coat who needs a shave. It's hilarious, touching, inspiring, very well illustrated, and still in print.
In terms of "chapter" books, I read and loved the Radio Girls series by "Margaret Penrose," a house name for a series of anonymous authors working for the Stratemeyer Syndicate in the 1920s. These books were inspiring to me because they showed a group of young girls who could handle just about anything -- they were all hands-on radio enthusiasts who built and maintained their own equipment, and used it to solve mysteries and do good works in their small town. These have been out of print for decades, but they're still affordable on the secondary market, and while the technology might be outmoded for modern kids, today's girls might still find inspiration in the fact that these gals make no apologies for their interest in science and technology, not just as consumers of it, but as technicians themselves. "Penrose" also wrote the "Motor Girls" series, which was the same type of stories about a group of girls who were all skilled auto mechanics.
Those are some of my favorites. Who else grew up with Golden Era Children's Books?
My all time favorite picture book, then as well as now, was "The Bear That Wasn't," by Frank Tashlin, first published in 1946. Yes, that's the same Frank Tashlin who directed brilliant cartoons for Warner Bros and other studios in the thirties and forties, and went on to become a prominent direction of live-action comedies in the fifties and sixties. But "The Bear That Wasn't" is a wonderful fable about a bear who ends up being inadvertently sucked into the production-line environment of a large factory built on top of his den, and spends most of the book trying to convince a long series of foremen, vice-presidents, and bosses that he's a bear and not a silly man in a fur coat who needs a shave. It's hilarious, touching, inspiring, very well illustrated, and still in print.
In terms of "chapter" books, I read and loved the Radio Girls series by "Margaret Penrose," a house name for a series of anonymous authors working for the Stratemeyer Syndicate in the 1920s. These books were inspiring to me because they showed a group of young girls who could handle just about anything -- they were all hands-on radio enthusiasts who built and maintained their own equipment, and used it to solve mysteries and do good works in their small town. These have been out of print for decades, but they're still affordable on the secondary market, and while the technology might be outmoded for modern kids, today's girls might still find inspiration in the fact that these gals make no apologies for their interest in science and technology, not just as consumers of it, but as technicians themselves. "Penrose" also wrote the "Motor Girls" series, which was the same type of stories about a group of girls who were all skilled auto mechanics.
Those are some of my favorites. Who else grew up with Golden Era Children's Books?