Raise your hand if you have not heard about 'Winnie The Pooh', 'Mowgli', or 'The Houseboat Girl'. Now raise your hand if you are from Bloomington-Normal area and have not heard about the Illinois State University's Milner Library special collections of these classics.
Like our other pages of this blog, the purpose of this page is to tease you with few samples of the magnificent collection Milner has. We handpicked three of our favorites from Children's Historical Literature: Lois Lenski's 'The Houseboat Girl' (non-fiction), Rudyard Kipling's 'The Jungle Book' (fiction), and A. A. Milne's 'Winnie The Pooh' (fiction).
Lois Lenski - The Houseboat Girl
Lois Lenski is a well-known name in the field of children's literature. Throughout her journey she has written about 98 books on various aspects of American child-life of the past. Her work could be broadly divided into three categories: autobiographical, historical, and regional. From the Florida pine-lands of 'Strawberry Girl' to the colorful streets of Chinatown in 'San Francisco Boy' to the 'Houseboat Girl' of the Mississippi river, Lois Lenski's stories and pictures are a vivid and authentic portrait of how American children lived during her era (1893 - 1974). |
| The Houseboat Girl - Cover Page |
In the 'Houseboat Girl', the author tells the story of nine-year old Patsy Foster and her brother and sisters, who lived in a houseboat on the Mississippi river. In the author's words, "It is a regional story about the colorful and captivating life on the Mississippi". She talked about the great appeal rivers have toward mankind, from the beginning of time, and how the Mississippi is no exception. To explore as a conquest, to find market for products, for cheap and convenient transportation, or for pure love for the river itself, are some of the reasons behind this appeal.
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| Life on the Mississippi |
Miss Lenski stayed close to Henry Story's family for six weeks to get a firsthand feel of their life and then wrote about the experience. She mentioned Henry and his wife Lou, as river people "by birth, ancestry, and inclination" who had brought up their children, Peggy, Irene, Pete, and Debbie, on the river between Paducah and Memphis, having made fifteen or more trips between these two places.
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| The Houseboat's route on the Mississippi - from Paducah to Memphis |
There is vivid narration of how life on a houseboat on Mississippi river looks like in this book. As Miss Lenski mentions, the river children live a dramatic, vivid, if not dangerous life, but unfortunately they have been mostly ignored in literature before 'the Houseboat Girl'.
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| The Houseboat @ the Mississippi |
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| Patsy - The Houseboat Girl |
Let’s do a trivia. Can you tell us what is: 'chute', 'johnboat','revetment','seine','stage plank', or 'towhead’? If you don’t know, that is okay. We didn’t know either before reading this book.
By the way, Milner also has the handwritten manuscript of Houseboat Girl. Here is the proof :-)
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| Houseboat Girl - Handwritten Manuscript - Cover Page |
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| Lois Lenski's Houseboat Girl - Handwritten Manuscript - First Page |
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| The Song of the River Children |
If you want some more preview of Milner's Special Collection on children’s historical literature, please check out this blog created by our friends:
https://childrenbooksillustrations.blogspot.com/
And here is link to the collections on Lois Lenski's work in Milner: Lois Lenski - Special Collection - Milner Library
Rudyard Kipling - The Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936). He was born in India, which inspired much of his work. His classic 'The Jungle Book' was made into multiple movies and the characters of this book are some of the most popular names in children classic literature, i.e. Mowgli, Baloo, Shere Khan, Bagheera, Kaa etc.
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| Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book - First Edition |
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| Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book - First Edition - 1894 |
Milner's Special Collection has the first edition (1894) limited copy of this classic which has mesmerizing pictorial depictions of various turning points of the story.
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| Shere Khan - threat to Mowgli and the wolf pack |
My personal favorite among this is 'the meeting at the council rock', where Shere Khan (the tiger) made his insidious entry to threaten the wolf-pack to hand over Mowgli, the 'man-cub', to him, otherwise pay the ultimate price.
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| The Jungle Book - Meeting at the council rock |
Another favorite page from this classic is 'Mowgli's Song'
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| Mowgli's Song from the Jungle Book |
A. A. Milne - Winnie The Pooh
A. A. Milne's classic 'Winnie The Pooh' is a household name in children's literature. The stories in this classic revolve around 'The silly old bear' Winnie The Pooh, whose love for 'hunny' is something that epitomizes love. The protagonist of this book is Christopher Robin who along with his many friends, Winnie The Pooh, Piglet, Owl, Rabbit, Tigger, Eeyore, Roo and Kanga, builds a fairy-tale in the 'Hundred Acre Wood'.
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| Winnie The Pooh - The Silly Old Bear |
Special Collection has the bragging right for owning No. 17 of 350 copies signed by the author and artist from the publication of the first edition in 1926.
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| Winnie The Pooh - 17th of the 350 signed copy of first edition |
You can see some of the pages of this hand-made paper edition are still joined and not being separated. :-)
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| Joined Pages of Hand-made paper copy |
The Hundred Acre Wood
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| The Hundred Acre Wood |
If you are in the vicinity of Bloomington-Normal, IL and have some time to flow back down the memory lanes, these special collections of children historical literature will for sure give you a kick.
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