The Joy of Beautifully Illustrated Books

I collect beautiful illustrations. I often find them in interior decoration magazines and in children’s books. When ever I visit a thrift store I love exploring the book shelves of the children’s literature department. I easily spend hours there.
It’s usually the vintage books that carry illustrations I like. They are colorful and bright.

A common issue with the older children’s books though, say from the 1950s and back in time, is that the written text more often than not aren’t very compassionate. The paramount message to its young readers most often is to be obedient. 

A wonderfully illustrated book I recently found, a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale – The Butterfly – tells of a butterfly seeking a beautiful flower to marry. The butterfly ends up being pinned to a board – in the story depicted as something completely normal, in the story told as a commonplace fate by the butterfly himself. And yes, at the time it was written – in 1861 – collecting butterflies to pin them on boards was considered quite regular procedure.

In the tale of the little monkey Curious George  – a book with its amazing illustrations I absolutely adored as a child and still do today – George gets captured in the jungle and brought to the city to live in a zoo as a fun event. Where I imagine being captured and brought to the city to live in a zoo, not necessarily is on top of an animals bucket list. Dated story line or not, I truly enjoy digesting the illustrations of Curious George. Now and then I bring out these books to sit with them and marvel at the illustrations. Very well done, Hans Augusto and Margret Rey – or Reyersbach – as was their original name. The story on this sunny, life-embracing monkey was first published in 1941. 

A great article in The New Yorker tells the story of the German couple who created Curious George after having had monkeys on their own living in Brazil in the 1930s – as many European intellectuals did during that time: The unexpected profundity of Curious George.

Growing up in the 1970s not many children’s books were aesthetically appealing to me. It was the age of social realism and – as it seems to me – teaching the children the grown-ups own perceived ugliness of life. I often wonder if the books didn’t say more about the author than about the children the stories were meant for.

A book with beautiful illustrations, filled with color and detail, is “Nu ska här bli andra bullar” by Gunilla Hansson, published in 1980. Absorbing the environment in the illustrations bring me right back to the 70s nostalgic times, although this book was not part of my childhood. By the time is was printed, in 1980, I was entering my teenager times and had my eyes set on other reads.

One series of books I did love were the stories on the Barbapapa family. As a young child I had a poster of them in my room. It was the early 70s and it was fun to get acquainted to the seven Barbapapa children, all in different colors, all representing different fields of interest: the red sports fan Barbabravo, the blue scientist Barbabright, the nature and animal enthusiast Barbazoo, the black and furry painter Barbabeau, the green musician Barbalala, the intellectual book reading Barbalib and the purple beauty queen Barbabelle. I was quite taken by the latter, with her long eyelashes and necklace, and a little mirror to hold. I remember back then, as a really young girl, around three, four, five years old, being in awe of the world of beauty, lipstick, purses and perfumes. I imagined as an adult, I could have my very own purse and my very own lipstick. It was this pure and innocent joy, that came from the truest inner core, before labels from grown-ups on what it would mean, were put upon this kind of desire.

This is what Wikipedia writes about Barbapapa:
Barbapapa is a 1970 children’s picture book by the French-American couple Annette Tison and Talus Taylor, who lived in Paris, France. Barbapapa is both the title character and the name of his “species”.

The inspiration for Barbapapa came by chance in the Luxembourg Garden in Paris one day in May 1970. While walking in the park with Annette Tison, Talus Taylor thought he heard a child ask his parents for something called “Baa baa baa baa”. Not speaking French, he asked Tison what the words meant. She explained that the child was asking for a treat called Barbe à papa (cotton candy, literally ‘daddy’s beard’). Later at a restaurant, the couple began to draw on the tablecloth, and came up with a character inspired by the candy: a pink and round character. When it came time to give it a name, Barbapapa came naturally.

I want a children’s book to be in the way I would have wanted a book to be as a little girl.
I love harmony and kindness. I’m into being safe. I’m into living in a kindhearted world, with innocence and lighthearted happiness a natural state of being.

My most beloved stories contain aesthetically appealing illustrations accompanied by a wise and soft spoken story line.
What kind of illustrations and stories do you enjoy? What appeals to you?