Tag: vintage children’s books

Designer Desire: Esmé Eve

Montage of Esmé Eve illustrations

Esmé Eve, A.R.C.A (1920-2001) was a British author & illustrator. At the age of 5, she won a toy cash register in a drawing competition; it was just the start of her artistic career! She studied at Croydon College of Art from 1937-41, followed by the Royal College of Art from 1941-44. She taught at the Royal School of Needlework and various at schools. She lived for many years in Seaford, East Sussex.

I’ve seen her referred to as both Frances Olive Esmé Eve and Florence Olive Esmé Eve. I couldn’t find a great deal about the artist, and only came across one (fairly fuzzy) image of her. She has illustrated many, many children’s books of her own and for other authors, including series of Wonder Starters and Big Golden Books.

On the back flap of a 1965 edition of her Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes is the following author information:

Hobby: sunbathing
Other interests: reading, architecture, the theatre, walking, collecting Victorian earrings, talking to little cats and having a look at somebody else’s country.
Objects for happy contemplation: cats, elephants and the Brighton Pavilion.
Future plans: to illustrate more books, to meet more little cats, to sunbathe.

Prints of her illustrations come up at auction occasionally. Books are currently available on Abe Books, eBay, and Etsy. There are also Christmas cards illustrated with her artwork for sale here.

Portrait of Esmé Eve

Image credits:

Arts and Humanities Research Council | Sulis Fine Art

Designer Desire: Barbara Cooney

Montage of of Barbara Cooney book covers and illustrations

Born in New York, Barbara Cooney (1917-2000) was a prolific children’s book author and illustrator. She wrote and illustrated over a dozen of her own titles and almost a hundred for other writers.

She collaborated with a range of other children’s authors, including Margaret Wise Brown, Jane Goodsell, Elinor Lander Horwitz, Phyllis Krasilovsky, Felix Salten, Ruth Crawford Seeger and the poet, Donald Hall.

King of Wreck Island was the first book Cooney both wrote and illustrated in 1941. In 1959, she won the Caldecott Medal for Chanticleer and the Fox (at the top of the montage above) – an adaptation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. She won the award once again in 1980 with Ox-Cart Man.

Of all the books I have done, ‘Miss Rumphius,’ ‘Island Boy,’ and ‘Hattie and the Wild Waves,’ are the closest to my heart. These three are as near as I ever will come to an autobiography.

Many of the books she has written and/or illustrated are available on Etsy and Amazon – both in the UK and USA.

In 1996, the 12th of December was declared Barbara Cooney Day in her adopted state of Maine.

Portrait of Barbara Cooneycredit

Additional image credits:

Books my kid loves | Pinterest

Designer Desire: Fernand Nathan

Montage of vintage children's educational games and books

At first, we thought that Fernand Nathan was an individual… but we could find no information about, or image of, the man. Then we realised that Fernand Nathan is actually the publisher. Perhaps a bit like the Ladybird books, the authors and illustrators were often of secondary consideration.

Lise Marin was one of the few book illustrators that was named; she was responsible for the imagery for the ‘Ploum and Ploumette’, early ‘Daniel and Valérie’ characters and ‘Je joue…’ series.

As well as books, Fernand Nathan produced other educational toys and games such as dominoes, rubber stamp kits, jigsaws, crosswords, card games and posters. We have one of their games, Loto du Marché for sale in our shop at the moment.

Some of the works remind us of another French illustration duo of the era that we love, Lefor Openo.

Image credits:

eBay | Etsy

Designer Desire: Roger Hargreaves

Montage of Roger Hargreaves Mr Men and Little Miss illustrations | H is for Home

Roger Hargreaves (1935-1988) is Britain’s third best-selling author of all time, having sold in excess of 100 million books. He is the man responsible for entertaining generations of children with his Mr Men and Little Misses books.

You can find Roger Hargreaves’ author page on Amazon here. In addition, we have some original vintage books for sale in our shop.

The first 43 of 84 Misters and Misses books were drawn by Roger and the subsequent ones were created by his son, Adam.

Portraits of Adam and Roger Hargreavescredit

Adam (b. 1963) explains:

It was a good 10 years after his death before I wrote one of my own Mr Men books because I always saw it as his thing… (I’m) principally trying to follow what my father did as closely as possible… My dad’s style of drawing changed enormously and I started drawing the characters in the way that he was doing it at the time of his death. But now my own hand has taken charge.

It was actually Adam who was the initial inspiration for Roger’s first ever Mr Men book, ‘Mr Tickle’. In 1971, when he was eight-years old, Adam asked his father what a tickle looked like. Roger spontaneously drew the first version of what would become the renowned cartoon character; a small, round orange man with extraordinarily long arms that could reach out anywhere to tickle people. He soon followed this up with Mr Greedy, Mr Happy, Mr Nosey, Mr Sneeze and Mr Bump.

The books have been reproduced in many other languages, and their titles often make me smile; Mr Bump is Herr Dumpidump in German and Mr Greedy is M. Glouton in French.

If you fancy a trip down memory lane, I found a play-list on YouTube that includes all the episodes in the Mr Men television series.