Epaminondas Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman

Today's vintage children's book is a lovely story, Epaminondas, beautifully retold by Eve Merriam and craftfully illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman.

"Epaminondas and his mother lived on one side of the hill. His grandmother and grandfather lived on the other side of the hill."

"Whenever Epaminondas went to visit his grandparents, they gave him something to take home."

"One day his grandmother gave him a big piece of cake that she had just baked. It was rich and yellow and round as the sun in the sky..."

"He held the cake tightly in his fist and walked down the hill carefully. He was careful not to trip on any pebbles along the way. And he headed straight home. He didn't even stop the watch the fish waggling in the brook. Or listen to the birds jabbering in the trees. He didn't whittle himself a stick. He went straight home."

"Epaminondas, sometimes I think you haven't even got the sense you were born with. That's not the way to carry cake. The way to carry cake is to wrap

it all up in leaves and put it in your hat and then put your hat on your head and come along home. Now, will you remember that?"

"Yes, Mama," said Epaminondas.

"The next week Epaminondas went to visit his grandparents again. This time they gave him a pound of fresh butter to take home. It had just been churned and it was cool and pale as moonlight and there were drops of moisture on it that sparkled like dew..."

"Soon the sun began to shine brightly...Epaminondas began to feel warmer and warmer. Pale, shiny drops ran down his forehead, matted his eyebrows, stuck to his eyelashes. He sniffed, and drops of butter sniffled into his nose..."

" After a while, Epaminondas went to visit his grandparents again, and they gave him a frisky little puppy-dog to take home. The puppy-dog yipped and yapped and flipped its stubby tail and flapped its floppy ears."

An excerpt from the jacket flap by Eve Merriam: "I loved Epaminonas; his adventures were funny, of course, but most of all I loved him because he was like me. I, too, had a knack for doing the right thing at the wrong time."

This is the kind of story that children love and parents enjoy reading because it is well written and well illustrated.

Epaminondas

Retold by Eve Merriam

Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman

Follett Publishing Company, 1968

To view previous posts on Trina Schart Hyman, click on the links below:

Little Red Riding Hood

Hershel and Hanukkah Goblins

The Man Who Loved Books

The Quitting Deal

3D Paper Art, Russell Jackson, Bill Rhodes

Back in September 2011, I did a post on Volume 1 of the Childcraft How and Why Library. In that post I showed a papercraft illustration by Russell Jackson. I've had a few inquiries since then about Jackson.

I admire the skill and craftsmanship that went into this illustration and the photography.

I always intended to follow up with a post on Jackson, but a total lack of information about him has made that impossible, at least for me. To make things worse in my quest, there weren't any more color photos in Childcraft

of his illustrations or on the web. 

There are several black/white photos of small chapter illustrations in Childcraft that didn't reproduce well, technology being so different then, but I did select two of the better ones.

And this all that I can find in my 15 volume Childcraft or anywhere of Russell Jackson's work. Sigh.

I did however find other papercraft illustrations done by another equally talented artist, Bill Rhodes. But unfortunately more of the same - I couldn't find any information on Rhodes either except for one clue.

The illustration credits in Childcraft for Bill Rhodes credit him and Stephens, Biondi, De Cicco, Inc., a well known advertising and editorial art studio in Chicago, Illinois.

I came across a link to Stephens, Biondi, De Cicco, Inc. in a post done by Leif Peng on one of his blogs, Female Illustrators of the mid-20th Century, which led me to the below ad for them.

image via leifpeng's photostream

It's likely both of these talented gentlemen did advertising related work, which could account for the lack of information on them given the time period. If you have information on either Jackson or Rhodes, please share. It's always frustrating to arrive at a dead end with this type of thing.

This type of media that Jackson and Rhodes worked in is also called paper model or card model and is related to origami. Introduced in the early 1900's, it became popular during World War II in part because paper was not in short supply as many other items were. 

There are many artists currently working in papercraft and other paper media  making wonderful art. This media lends itself beautifully to children's books. Below are some examples below for you to peruse:

3D Paper Art by Cheong-ah Hwang via WonderHowTo

British Artist Su Blackwell via inhabitat

image via THE META PICTURE

image via DESIGN ILLUSTRATION

Outstanding work by artist Helen Musselwhite

The Santa Claus Book by Aurelius Battaglia

Today's vintage children's book starts off the season here with The Santa Claus Book, written and illustrated by Aurelius Battaglia. This book was formerly titled The Reindeer Book. Aurelius Battaglia, (1910-1984), was among other things, a prolific illustrator of children's books. 

Battaglia worked for Disney in the late 40's, contributing to Dumbo, Fantasia and Pinocchio. After that he joined the United Projections of America, a studio staffed by well known animation artists. It was there doing animation work that Battaglia honed his style, while also helping to start a trend of mid century illustration style that was looser and more abstract. (Info from Wikipedia,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelius_Battaglia)

Battaglia seems to have illustrated this book in a different style than his work from the 50's. (My copy is from 1982 but it looks like this book was originally done in 1965.) Check out the samples of his work below. And his work previous to mid century was also different. Artists are always changing and evolving.

The Santa Clause Book

By Aurelius Battaglia

Golden Press, New York,1982

Here is the original cover and title.

More work by Aurelius Battaglia:

image via BurningSettlersCabin

image via Shelly Davies

image via Turquoise Umbrella

image via Mid-century Modern Graphic Design

This book is great, love the illustrations!

Above illustrations from Cowboy Jack the Sheriff via Golden Gems

image via La Petit Robert