Poems to Read to the Very Young, Eloise Wilkin

My daughter Colleen left today for a teaching position in Korea. It's not the first time she has gone overseas. She studied abroad in Sevilla, Spain for a year and taught in Extremadura, Spain a couple years later. So I guess I'm broken in and definitely not a nervous wreck like the first time. But I still missed her the minute she walked out the door. How is it possible to be proud and feel sad at the same time?

So I'm comforting myself by eating a bunch of candy and showing a book I read to all my kids, (3 girls, 1 boy) and my grandson. Poems to Read to the Very Young ranks high in sentimentality for me and I love some of the poems in this book. 

Beautifully illustrated by Eloise Wilkin, who had a lovely way of portraying children. Wilkin used her children and in later years, grandchildren as models. 

Eloise Wilkin (1904-1987), an award winning illustrator and author, had a career that spanned over 50 years. Wilkin is best known for her Golden Books, working for them for almost 20 years and illustrating over 50 books for Golden, some of which are still in print. Many of her books have become classics. In her career she illustrated well over 100 books!

To read about Eloise Wilkin, Cassandra of Cassandra Considers All Things Bright and Beautiful did a very comprehensive post on the life of Wilkin in 2010 - to view that click here. 

Eloise's daughter, Deborah Wilkin Springett, wrote a book about her mother's life, called The Golden Years of Eloise Wilkin. 

Poems to Read to the Very Young

Selected by Josette Frank

Illustrated by Eloise Wilkin

Random House, 1982