Children’s Illustrated Books
Essays
A Brief History of Children's Book Illustration
Web Links
Bud Plant Illustrated Books - Illustrator Biographies
This web site has been developed by a dealer in illustrated books. It contains a large collection of biographical essays on book illustrators. Each essay is lavishly illustrated and includes a short bibliography. In some cases, additional web links are included. The following links will take you directly pages on the illustrators listed.
Arthur Rackham
Kay Nielsen
Howard Pyle
Lynd Ward
Kate Greenaway
Beatrix Potter
Wanda Gag
The Elizabeth Nesbitt Room Illustrators Project
These pages provide an in-depth look at selected children’s book illustrators from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The creators of the web site have used images from the Elizabeth Nesbitt Rooms book collection at the University of Pittsgurgh. A biography, bibliography and list of works is provided for each artist as well as links to other web sites. The following lists will take you directly to pages on the illustrators listed.
Walter Crane
Howard Pyle
E. H. Shepherd
Picturing Childhood
This web site is an online version of the catalogue which accompanied an exhibition of books held in the University of California collections. It contains an illustrated essay and a useful bibliography.
The Art of Illustration: A Celebration of Contemporary Canadian Children’s Book Authors
A web site to accompany an exhibition at the National Library of Canada. Includes reproductions of artwork, bibliographies, and biographies Canadian illustrators.
Key examples
Maurice Sendak - A Brief Biography
Maurice Sendak Speaks
Bookmaking interlude 5
Making a Tunnel Book
This link will download a PDF word document explaining how to make a tunnel book. You will need to have Acrobat Reader installed on your computer in order to read it. Tunnel books occupy a space somewhere between a book and a paper toy and were popular in the Victorian era with both children and adults. The tunnel book structure is quite simple but it requires careful planning and execution to manage the many layers of images.
Exploring Tunnel Books
This article by Ed Hutchins, the creator of the instructions for making a tunnel book, provides more information on the history of tunnel books and the way they are being used today.
Website maintained by Sue Wood - School of Humanities and Social Sciences