Nine beloved classics--Cover
A blog celebrating the beauty of vintage children's books.
Eloise Wilkin, Golden Press, 1958 Eloise Wilkin (1904-1987) is one of the great illustrators of the Little Golden Books. Her work graces the pages of many of my favorite children's books. You can expect to see more of those books in the posts to come. Other publishers she worked for were Ginn, Scibner, Little Brown, Rand McNally, Random House and MacMillian. Many early illustrations were for school books. An example is 'The First Grade Book' for Ginn. Early in her career Eloise illustrated paper dolls for Samuel Gabriel & Sons, Playtime House and Jaymar. She illustrated for 4 years before marrying Sidney Wilkin, so early works are signed Eloise Burns. Her sister Esther married Sidneys' brother and Esther later wrote books and Eloise illustrated them. She signed a contract with Simon & Schuster in 1944 and went on to illustrate 47 little golden books, calendars, shape books,big goldens and sturdy goldens. Her illustrations show innocence of youth and wide-eyed wonder. She used her neighborhood, her children and their friends as models for her illustrations. --from Goldenbook.com This is my original copy of Baby's Mother Goose. It's part of the Little Golden Book series, published as a "sturdy book." Hmmm.... not so sturdy. Clearly, this book was well loved! !
"Childrcraft: Poems of Early Childhood," edited by J. Morris Jones, illustrated by Eloise Wilkin, Leonard Weisgard, Janice Holland, Milo Winter, Henry C. Pitz, Esther Friend, Urlsula Koering, Tasha Tudor, R.T. Dixon, 1954. Featured in My Retro Reads: A blog celebrating the beauty of vintage children's books.
Wonders of Nature Jane Werner Watson with pictures by Eloise Wilkin Golden Press, 1957 When I was little, two literary things hugely in...
My blog focuses on the art and artists of vintage children's picture books, mainly from 1950's through 1980's.
Eloise Wilkin was an artist and illustrator of many Little Golden Books. Her illustrations are sweet, memorable portraits of very young children.
During her 50 year career spanning the decades of the 1930s through the 1980s, Eloise Wilkin illustrated over 110 books for children. Her illustrations evoke an idyllic rural world not unlike that which she knew while raising her family of four children in upstate New York. Famous for her instantly recognizable style: sweet, cherubic, chubby-faced children; detailed early American and Victorian style architecture and furnishings; and the verdant, daisy-strewn hills of upstate New York, Eloise illustrated children’s early reading books; paper dolls; puzzles; entries in the Childcraft series; 20 books authored by her sister, Esther; as well as her 47 popular “Little Golden Books” titles. Her most beloved titles include We Help Daddy, We Help Mommy, Baby Dear, So Big!, Prayers for Children, Busy Timmy, and My Little Golden Book About God. In addition to free lance drawing and book illustration, in the early 1960s Eloise successfully designed and marketed, via the Vogue Doll Company, a new-born infant doll about which the popular Little Golden Book, Baby Dear, was later written. Eloise's daughter, Deborah and grandson, David served as the models for the mother and baby in the book. The realistic style of the Baby Dear doll revolutionized the doll industry at the time, encouraging more realistic baby dolls. Reportedly, former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev returned home with several of the dolls after a trip to F.A.O. Schwartz in New York City. Born in Rochester, New York in 1904, Eloise Burns, was fortunate to have had a mother who encouraged her imaginative children to enjoy their creative gifts, allowing them to draw all over one wall in their house just before redecorating. Her father was a newspaperman and her mother had studied piano at a conservatory and often played classical music, which Eloise grew to love. Eloise, her sister Esther (only fifteen months older), a brother Robert, and two other siblings grew up in New York City on 109th Street near Central Park. As children, Eloise and Esther shared a bedroom and spent hours creating doll houses from orange crates, dolls out of newspapers, and sewing doll clothes. Eloise and Esther, remained especially close, and eventually married brothers, Sydney and George Wilkin. At age 11, Eloise won a drawing contest for children, sponsored by the Wanamaker department stores, with a picture of a pilgrim returning home. While studying art at Mechanics Institute (now Rochester Institute of Technology), Eloise Burns met Joan Esley, best known as an illustrator of several books for adolescents. They formed a lifelong friendship that included collaboration on a children’s book entitled, The Visit. After graduating from The Rochester Institute of Technology, Eloise and Joan began doing free lance work in Rochester (i.e., Eloise painting stations of the cross for the Sacred Heart Academy Church and illustrations for the Rochester Box Company) and ultimately moved together to New York City, where they hoped to have a better chance at careers in illustration. Eloise’s first book was The Shining Hour for the Century Co. Other publishers for which she illustrated were Ginn, Scribner, Little Brown, Rand McNally, Random House and MacMillian. Many early illustrations were for school books, i.e., The First Grade Book for Ginn. Early in her career Eloise illustrated paper dolls for Samuel Gabriel & Sons, Playtime House and Jaymar. She illustrated for four years before marrying Sidney Wilkin in 1935, thus, her early works are signed Eloise Burns. The Wilkins family settled in a fieldstone farmhouse with eight fireplaces in the country near Canandaigua in upstate New York, and Eloise slowed her career for several years while raising her four children, Ann, Sidney, Jr., Deborah and Jeremy. In 1943, she was offered a contract with Simon & Schuster and worked almost exclusively for Little Golden Books, illustrating the 47 little golden books, calendars, shape books, big golden books, and sturdy golden books until 1961; then, only occasionally illustrating for them up until the mid-eighties. Eloise used her neighborhood, her home, her children, her husband, her grandchildren, and their friends and neighbors as models for her illustrations. Many little golden book pages became puzzles which were produced by Simon & Schuster and later Golden Press. Earlier puzzles illustrated by Wilkin have been found produced by Playtime House and Leo Hart Co. Her illustrations are also found on record sleeves of many little golden records (occasionally on the record label itself) and on china plates, ads, Hallmark cards and in Child's Life, Story Parade and Golden Magazines. Currently, original editions of Eloise Wilkin illustrated books in very good condition can command prices of up to several hundred dollars. It is said that Eloise was very modest about her talents and was a woman who stood up for her beliefs, whether it was refusing to paint pants on a mother in one of her children’s books, marching with Martin Luther King, marching with the Berrigans in Washington early in the Vietnam War, teaching art to inner city children, or assisting a University of Rochester student in the burning of his draft card in Central Park. In October of 1987, Eloise died of cancer, at the age of 84 in Brighton, New York. At the time of her death, she was working on a new doll and was still illustrating. In the recently published, A Little Golden Book Collection Eloise Wilkin Stories (featuring nine of her most treasured stories: "Busy Timmy, "Guess Who Lives Here", "Wonders of Nature", "Selections from A Child’s Garden of Verses", "We Help Mommy", "Baby Listens," "Baby Dear," and "Baby Looks"), an afterword by James Werner Watson aptly describes Eloise Wilkin’s legacy: "A warm and creative homemaker, Eloise shared with the world glimpses of her big, busy, welcoming household, its rooms papered with gentle patterns, its drop-leaf tables and rocking chairs aglow with hand-rubbed sheen, its four-poster beds covered by hand-stitched quilts. A devoutly religious person, she shared ever so gently her values, her sense of the beauty of order and love, of implicit self-discipline, and of regard for others . . . she has left us, only slightly idealized, rich reminders of a lovely time not very long ago." To listen to a three-part interview with one of Eloise Wilkin’s daughters, Deborah Wilkin Springett, (author of the Eloise Wilkin’s Book of Poems, her mother’s last illustrated book, published in 1988) and to order her biography about her mother, The Golden Years of Eloise Wilkin, go to: http://www.triviumpursuit.com/blog/2007/02/21/podcast-2-interview-with-eloise-wilkins-daughter-part-one/
"Childrcraft: Poems of Early Childhood," edited by J. Morris Jones, illustrated by Eloise Wilkin, Leonard Weisgard, Janice Holland, Milo Winter, Henry C. Pitz, Esther Friend, Urlsula Koering, Tasha Tudor, R.T. Dixon, 1954. Featured in My Retro Reads: A blog celebrating the beauty of vintage children's books.
Eloise Wilkin I love the one sock and all the cookies!
Tuesday and Wednesday I am sorry for not posting yesterday. It was a day full of busy life. I will just put both days into one post. In this post I will feature two of my favorite illustrators. …
We Like Kindergarten Clara Cassidy pictures by Eloise Wilkin Western Publishing Company, 1965 As a tribute to one of my son's BFFs who j...
I'm taking a printmaking class at my local technical college, so I've been looking at books with engravings, woodcuts and linocuts. I pulled out this book, Narcissa Whitman, Pioneer of Oregon by Jeanette Eaton that I bought at a book sale a few years ago. The wood engravings were done by Woodi Ishmael, who I am not familiar with, so if you aren't either we can both learn something new! First off, Narcissa Whitman was a real person. She was one of the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains on the trip to Washington State in 1936. She and her husband, Dr. Marcus Whitman, founded a protestant mission there with the goal of converting the Native American Indians. An outbreak of measles in which the Indians had little immunity to caused them to be distrustful, thinking that Marcus was only curing white people while letting Indian children die. Unfortunately this culminated in a massacre, in which both Narcissa and Marcus were killed. Narcissa was only 47 years old. Woodi Ishmael (1914-1995), was born in Lewis County, Kentucky. He served as an official artist for the United States Air Force and did several paintings of Air Force Chiefs of Staff. Of interest, he was the only courtroom artist at the Jack Ruby Trial. (Information via Bulldog Studio) If you are interested in viewing some of Ismael's work, you can go to this site, The Air Force Historical Research Agency. To view other work that he did, such as advertising, here is the google link. Narcissa Whitman By Jeanette Eaton Illustrated by Woodi Ishmael Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1941
"Childrcraft: Poems of Early Childhood," edited by J. Morris Jones, illustrated by Eloise Wilkin, Leonard Weisgard, Janice Holland, Milo Winter, Henry C. Pitz, Esther Friend, Urlsula Koering, Tasha Tudor, R.T. Dixon, 1954. Featured in My Retro Reads: A blog celebrating the beauty of vintage children's books.
Just about all of us grew up with Little Golden Books. Some of the world's greatest illustrators worked for Western Publishing on the series- Feodor Rojankovsky, Mary Blair, Mel Crawford,…
Eloise Wilkin
Wonders of Nature Jane Werner Watson with pictures by Eloise Wilkin Golden Press, 1957 When I was little, two literary things hugely in...
During her 50 year career spanning the decades of the 1930s through the 1980s, Eloise Wilkin illustrated over 110 books for children. Her illustrations evoke an idyllic rural world not unlike that which she knew while raising her family of four children in upstate New York. Famous for her instantly recognizable style: sweet, cherubic, chubby-faced children; detailed early American and Victorian style architecture and furnishings; and the verdant, daisy-strewn hills of upstate New York, Eloise illustrated children’s early reading books; paper dolls; puzzles; entries in the Childcraft series; 20 books authored by her sister, Esther; as well as her 47 popular “Little Golden Books” titles. Her most beloved titles include We Help Daddy, We Help Mommy, Baby Dear, So Big!, Prayers for Children, Busy Timmy, and My Little Golden Book About God. In addition to free lance drawing and book illustration, in the early 1960s Eloise successfully designed and marketed, via the Vogue Doll Company, a new-born infant doll about which the popular Little Golden Book, Baby Dear, was later written. Eloise's daughter, Deborah and grandson, David served as the models for the mother and baby in the book. The realistic style of the Baby Dear doll revolutionized the doll industry at the time, encouraging more realistic baby dolls. Reportedly, former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev returned home with several of the dolls after a trip to F.A.O. Schwartz in New York City. Born in Rochester, New York in 1904, Eloise Burns, was fortunate to have had a mother who encouraged her imaginative children to enjoy their creative gifts, allowing them to draw all over one wall in their house just before redecorating. Her father was a newspaperman and her mother had studied piano at a conservatory and often played classical music, which Eloise grew to love. Eloise, her sister Esther (only fifteen months older), a brother Robert, and two other siblings grew up in New York City on 109th Street near Central Park. As children, Eloise and Esther shared a bedroom and spent hours creating doll houses from orange crates, dolls out of newspapers, and sewing doll clothes. Eloise and Esther, remained especially close, and eventually married brothers, Sydney and George Wilkin. At age 11, Eloise won a drawing contest for children, sponsored by the Wanamaker department stores, with a picture of a pilgrim returning home. While studying art at Mechanics Institute (now Rochester Institute of Technology), Eloise Burns met Joan Esley, best known as an illustrator of several books for adolescents. They formed a lifelong friendship that included collaboration on a children’s book entitled, The Visit. After graduating from The Rochester Institute of Technology, Eloise and Joan began doing free lance work in Rochester (i.e., Eloise painting stations of the cross for the Sacred Heart Academy Church and illustrations for the Rochester Box Company) and ultimately moved together to New York City, where they hoped to have a better chance at careers in illustration. Eloise’s first book was The Shining Hour for the Century Co. Other publishers for which she illustrated were Ginn, Scribner, Little Brown, Rand McNally, Random House and MacMillian. Many early illustrations were for school books, i.e., The First Grade Book for Ginn. Early in her career Eloise illustrated paper dolls for Samuel Gabriel & Sons, Playtime House and Jaymar. She illustrated for four years before marrying Sidney Wilkin in 1935, thus, her early works are signed Eloise Burns. The Wilkins family settled in a fieldstone farmhouse with eight fireplaces in the country near Canandaigua in upstate New York, and Eloise slowed her career for several years while raising her four children, Ann, Sidney, Jr., Deborah and Jeremy. In 1943, she was offered a contract with Simon & Schuster and worked almost exclusively for Little Golden Books, illustrating the 47 little golden books, calendars, shape books, big golden books, and sturdy golden books until 1961; then, only occasionally illustrating for them up until the mid-eighties. Eloise used her neighborhood, her home, her children, her husband, her grandchildren, and their friends and neighbors as models for her illustrations. Many little golden book pages became puzzles which were produced by Simon & Schuster and later Golden Press. Earlier puzzles illustrated by Wilkin have been found produced by Playtime House and Leo Hart Co. Her illustrations are also found on record sleeves of many little golden records (occasionally on the record label itself) and on china plates, ads, Hallmark cards and in Child's Life, Story Parade and Golden Magazines. Currently, original editions of Eloise Wilkin illustrated books in very good condition can command prices of up to several hundred dollars. It is said that Eloise was very modest about her talents and was a woman who stood up for her beliefs, whether it was refusing to paint pants on a mother in one of her children’s books, marching with Martin Luther King, marching with the Berrigans in Washington early in the Vietnam War, teaching art to inner city children, or assisting a University of Rochester student in the burning of his draft card in Central Park. In October of 1987, Eloise died of cancer, at the age of 84 in Brighton, New York. At the time of her death, she was working on a new doll and was still illustrating. In the recently published, A Little Golden Book Collection Eloise Wilkin Stories (featuring nine of her most treasured stories: "Busy Timmy, "Guess Who Lives Here", "Wonders of Nature", "Selections from A Child’s Garden of Verses", "We Help Mommy", "Baby Listens," "Baby Dear," and "Baby Looks"), an afterword by James Werner Watson aptly describes Eloise Wilkin’s legacy: "A warm and creative homemaker, Eloise shared with the world glimpses of her big, busy, welcoming household, its rooms papered with gentle patterns, its drop-leaf tables and rocking chairs aglow with hand-rubbed sheen, its four-poster beds covered by hand-stitched quilts. A devoutly religious person, she shared ever so gently her values, her sense of the beauty of order and love, of implicit self-discipline, and of regard for others . . . she has left us, only slightly idealized, rich reminders of a lovely time not very long ago." To listen to a three-part interview with one of Eloise Wilkin’s daughters, Deborah Wilkin Springett, (author of the Eloise Wilkin’s Book of Poems, her mother’s last illustrated book, published in 1988) and to order her biography about her mother, The Golden Years of Eloise Wilkin, go to: http://www.triviumpursuit.com/blog/2007/02/21/podcast-2-interview-with-eloise-wilkins-daughter-part-one/
"Childrcraft: Poems of Early Childhood," edited by J. Morris Jones, illustrated by Eloise Wilkin, Leonard Weisgard, Janice Holland, Milo Winter, Henry C. Pitz, Esther Friend, Urlsula Koering, Tasha Tudor, R.T. Dixon, 1954. Featured in My Retro Reads: A blog celebrating the beauty of vintage children's books.
Eloise Wilkin Copyright 1984
During her 50 year career spanning the decades of the 1930s through the 1980s, Eloise Wilkin illustrated over 110 books for children. H...
MY GOODNIGHT BOOK by Eloise Wilkin (1981 Board book 9 1/2 x 6 inches, 12 pages. Western Publishing) Eloise Wilkins 1981 I have always loved Eloise Wilkin. I grew up with several of her illustrated books. This one made it into our collection after Charlotte was born and it was the first book she would sit through a reading of. It was also the first book she would ask for specifically. She particularly likes the last page where she points out all the toys in the little girl’s room. There's not much text, just about a little girl getting ready for bed, but the pictures are awfully nice to look at. And then we say goodnight.
"Childrcraft: Poems of Early Childhood," edited by J. Morris Jones, illustrated by Eloise Wilkin, Leonard Weisgard, Janice Holland, Milo Winter, Henry C. Pitz, Esther Friend, Urlsula Koering, Tasha Tudor, R.T. Dixon, 1954. Featured in My Retro Reads: A blog celebrating the beauty of vintage children's books.
