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| "Little Silk-Wing" The Children's Golden Treasure Book, p.47 |
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| "Little Silk-Wing" The Children's Golden Treasure Book, p.49 |
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| "Little Silk-Wing" The Children's Golden Treasure Book, p.51 |
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| "Little Silk-Wing" The Children's Golden Treasure Book, p.53 |
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| "Little Silk-Wing" The Children's Golden Treasure Book, p.54a |
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| "Little Silk-Wing" The Children's Golden Treasure Book, p.54b |
I often get confused between titles of similar names from Odhams Publishing so today I want to feature two books in this one post.
The Children's Golden Treasure Book for 1939
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| The Children's Golden Treasure Book for 1939 - Cover |
The first is Odhams' "The Children's Golden Treasure Book" which has an interesting publication history. All evidence I can find suggest an initial publication date of 1935 with the title being "The Children's Golden Treasure Book" and the British Library have this as a monograph - i.e. non-recurring.
Then we see "The Children's Golden Treasure Book for 1937" - so an annual - and the British Library accessioned the latter as a journal - i.e. a regular publication, not a one-off but as I'll show on my other blog only 1937, 1938 and 1939 had dates on them - despite some reprinting as you'd expect from Odhams. It seems reasonable to say the war stopped the production of the next in the series.
One version of the title that I own has a reprint date in it of 1946 (on the last page) and is titled "The Children's Golden Treasure Book"and the stories match most of those in "The Children's Golden Treasure Book for 1939". Both the reprint and the original start with the story called "The unpleasant visitors" but we are concentrating on the story which Raymond Sheppard illustrated: "Little Silk-wing" written by Charles G.D. Roberts- follow the link for more information on this Canadian writer.
Sheppard's first illustration heads up the story beginning on page 49 showing a bat hanging upside down followed by a drawing of an owl catching a bat "The owl swooped on her". Then we see a wonderful full page captioned "A very hungry mouse was tiptoeing along the beam" where a mouse looks at the bat hanging from a rafter. This is one my favourite Sheppard pieces. The accuracy of proportion, the line work, the light falling onto the beam , all beautifully drawn. We then see a drawing with text wrapping around it "Then came carts and children, with shrill laughter and screams of merriment" showing a fully-laden hay-cart with three children, two men and a dog. The last page has two images, the first a silhouette of a bat over a barn roof against a full moon and the second captioned "He couldn't understand it all" - a dog barking at not one, but two bats on the ground.
The second title I mentioned - with a similar title is
The Children's Own Treasure Book
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| "Round the year 3" in The Children's Own Treasure Book, 1947, p.255 |
Have you heard of the "Fraser Darling Effect"? In 1938, the author F. Fraser Darling proposed a theory - since accepted - of "the simultaneous and shortened breeding season that occurs in large colonies of birds". He was known as a naturalist and writer of not only of academic texts but also books on animals and birds for children. The articles in The Children's Own Treasure Book (1947) are:
- ROUND THE YEAR (I) - IN POND AND MARSH. Illustrated by Eileen Mayo
- ROUND THE YEAR (II) - IN STREAM AND RIVER. Illustrated by Eric Tansley
- ROUND THE YEAR (III) - IN SEA AND ON THE SEASHORE. Illustrated by Raymond Sheppard
- ROUND THE YEAR (IV) - IN FIELD AND HEDGEROW. Illustrated by James Lucas
I'd love to know how the artists were chosen to illustrate these articles by Fraser Darling.
"Round the year: III: In the sea and on the seashore" appears on pages 255-262 and I've chosen to show the complete pages where Sheppard's art appears as they have wonderful positioning on the page. I've also noticed something else, but more on that after you see the pages.
The harmless basking shark feeds on plankton and may be forty feet in length
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| "Round the year 3" in The Children's Own Treasure Book, 1947, p.256 |
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| "Round the year 3" in The Children's Own Treasure Book, 1947, p.257 |
Spiral-shelled mollusca like whelks
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| "Round the year 3" in The Children's Own Treasure Book, 1947, p.258 |
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| "Round the year 3" in The Children's Own Treasure Book, 1947, p.259 |
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| "Round the year 3" in The Children's Own Treasure Book, 1947, p.260 |
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| "Round the year 3" in The Children's Own Treasure Book, 1947, p.261 |
Puffins have orange legs and large parrot-like bills
So that when spring comes again there shall be another bursting forth of new life
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| "Round the year 3" in The Children's Own Treasure Book, 1947, p.262 |
Aren't these superb? We have gulls sitting on rocks as waves lap on the shore around them; a basking shark with its fin above the water; two gulls flying overhead; a baleen whale; seven mackerel in a shoal – some others in shadow in the distance; whelk underwater; lobster in the undergrowth with fish swimming above; a curling conger eel; gulls near rocks; four oystercatchers landing on the sand; five puffins and lastly a half-buried anchor in sand dunes
The amount of detail in the lobster picture and the beautiful "sandscape" with weathered anchor and a storm brewing is so atmospheric.
Interestingly Sheppard who was not afraid to sign his work with his full signature does something else here. Look on page 255 in the surf at the bottom left corner, and on page 258 look under the whelk's front and lastly page 262 at the bottom right of the puffin image. All the other drawings have his full name but on these listed pages, he creates a monogram with the S snaking round the R. he didn't really use this device much at all.
