The beautiful dedication on the front free endpaper is dated November 1927. The interior of the book is in a nice clean condition, apart from the odd foxing here and there, the boards are okay, the spine a little worn BUT the really sad part of the book, apart from it's poor dust jacket, is that ALL the colour plates have been removed.
Mabel Lucie Attwell's gorgeous line drawings throughout still lend that special quality to the text; here retold by May Byron for very young children. However colour plates add so much to the enjoyment of a book, especially when reading to a small child. They help fire the imagination and give the characters life.
Who knows why the plates were removed, perhaps a child loved them too much to be parted from them or an adult wanted to frame them...hopefully for a child's room....whatever the reason, it is a sad loss for such a lovely vintage book.
The moral of the blog is to keep your books intact! Future generations will love you for it, as they can enjoy them as much as you. And if you really want to frame the picture - colour photocopy it and frame that instead!!
No comments:
Post a Comment