Childrens Books as Memorable Gifts

New York: Harper & Row, 1963. Hardcover. Near Fine/Very Good. First edition with the publisher's price and the correct first issue code on the front flap. Cloth and papercovered illustrated boards. A bit of foxing to the boards, near fine in a modestly toned, very good dustwrapper with a couple of faint splash marks. Nicely Inscribed by Sendak in 1966 with a small drawing of a dog.

London New York Toronto:: Oxford University Press. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 1938. First Edition. Hardcover. Color Illustrations; 32mo 4" - 5" tall; 4 ¾ x 4 in. [44]pp. Blue cloth with white polka dots, red lettered title and author within scalloped red frame on front cover. First Edition in scarce priced dust jacket [.75]. Color illustrations by Tudor. Spine tips and corners slightly rubbed, faint small spot on front cover, no owner’s name. Dustjacket price of $ .75 and rear flap blank. DJ spine panel moderately soiled, overall lightly toned, edges partly frayed, few small chips to ends of spine panel and lower edges of folds. Author’s first book. Hare P19. Unusually nice copy. First in the Calico series. Illustrated in color by the author; calligraphic text by Hilda . The adventures of Sylvie Ann, who sought out the largest pumpkin she could find for Halloween. Sylvie Ann was Tudor's real-life niece, who came from Scotland to visit her grandmother… Read More

New York: Random House, 1943. First edition of Dahl’s rare first book, with 14 vibrant full-page illustrations by Walt Disney Productions. Quarto, original half cloth, pictorial endpapers. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title page in the year of publication, "To Tim xxx from Roald Dahl 19/6/43 There should be a bowler hat and a tail." Dahl has added a drawing of a hat and a tail on the gremlin. In near fine condition. Rare and desirable signed and inscribed in the year of publication. Dahl was sent to Washington in 1942 as an assistant air attaché for the British Embassy. After having a story published anonymously in the Saturday Evening Post, he was encouraged by C. S. Forester. He produced The Gremlins, a children’s story expanding on a mythical creature enshrined for years in RAF lore (notwithstanding Dahl’s claims to have invented the word) and sent it to Sidney Bernstein, the head of the British Information Service, who sent it on to Walt Disney. Disney decided to… Read More

London New York Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1938. First printing. Near fine in near fine jacket.. Association first edition of Tudor's first book, inscribed to her niece Sylvie Ann, the model and namesake of Sylvie Ann in the book, and accompanied by two letters describing the gift and receipt of the book by Tudor and Sylvie Ann's mother respectively. On the dedication page the printed text reads: "A wee story for a very sweet wee person." This is continued in Tudor's hand: "called Sylvie Ann, with just no end of love from her Aunt Tasha. This book was supposed to be your Christmas present for last year, but I couldn't send it 'till now as it had to be printed. 1938." In the printed "This Book Belongs To" box on the front pastedown, Sylvie Ann has written her name in childish script. The book is accompanied by two amazing letters: the first is a 2-page letter by Tudor to Sylvie Ann, that refers to PUMPKIN MOONSHINE as a gift for her. Dated Dec. 6, 1942, it reads: "Happy Birthday Dearest… Read More

New York: Oxford University Press, 1938. First edition. Near fine in very good plus jacket.. First printing of the first CALICO BOOK, and Tudor's first book. Beautifully illustrated in sharp colors, each page of hand-lettered text faces a full page color illustration by Tudor. Tudor wrote the book for her niece Sylvie Ann. Scarce in the dust jacket, this is a great copy. 4.75'' x 4''. Original blue polka-dot patterned cloth. In original dust jacket. Illustrated in color by Tudor. Book cloth clean and bright with only tiny places of wear, bit of offsetting in gutters of endpapers, to small spots to fore-edge. Jacket a couple tape repair slivers to verso, very light wear on corners, faint toning to spine.

New York: Thomas Nelson, 1936. Fine in very good jacket.. First edition of Pène du Bois's notoriously scarce first book, about the ghost of a cow who is a little too sweet to scare people. Earliest version of this tale of the afterlife of the gentlest cow, sold to the publisher when du Bois was only 19 and a student at the Carnegie School of Technical Architecture; seizing the opportunity of this early success, he left school and never went back. In 1964, du Bois rewrote the text of this first edition and re-drew the illustrations for a new publication of the engagingly tragic tale; the exceedingly hard-to-find original shows starker scenes in black and white, with a haunting, floating Elisabeth the Cow the only subject in color: a fetching buttercup yellow. The Cow's trouble, familiar to many frustrated young children, lies in her inability to terrify a grown man; this is due to her gentle nature and frankly adorable physique, the former of which cannot be camouflaged by any fearful disguise.… Read More

London: Methuen, 1928. First editions. Overall fine in near-fine jackets.. Complete set of first editions of the Pooh Books, all in original dust jackets, with WHEN WE WERE VERY YOUNG signed by Milne and Shepard. In 1933 Compton Mackenzie described the publication of the first Pooh Book, WHEN WE WERE VERY YOUNG as marking "an epoch as positively as any children's book has ever marked one. It is not extravagant to surmise that a distant posterity may find in that volume of children's verse a key with which to unlock the present more easily than with any contemporary novel, poem, or play" (quoted in Thwaite). The series is an evocative reflection of English childhood in the 1920s, yet transcends the time and place of its making for each new generation to discover - and fall for. As the first book in the series, WHEN WE WERE VERY YOUNG is the most difficult to find signed, making this an especially desirable set. 4 volumes, 7.5'' x 5'' each. Original blue, green, red and pink cloths. In original color… Read More

(New York): Harper, 1963. Hardcover. Near Fine/Very Good. First edition in first issue dustwrapper. Near fine with some light wear and toning to the outer edges of the boards in about very good dustwrapper with toning, sticker shadow on the front flap and moderate edgewear including small chips and tears. A relatively nice copy of one of most popular and influential children's book of the 20th Century. Hanrahan. *Works of Maurice Sendak 1947-1994* A58.

[London]: n.p.; [Stead's Publishing Company], 1911. Very good overall.. Original manuscripts and working drafts from a remarkable late-Victorian collaboration between two English women: a nearly-unknown writer of original children's fairy tales and a fanciful illustrator scarcely known outside her small local circle. Collected holograph manuscript notebooks and typescripts by Susan Robinson of Harrogate, Yorkshire: the majority were never published and they span two decades of creative productivity. The collection includes multiple revised drafts of some stories, accompanied by several original ink drawings credited to Sybil G. Petherick, a Suffolk artist and the illustrator of Robinson's one title definitively known to have been published (included here). Also included is a quantity of Robinson's sentimental and narrative verse, balanced by the exceedingly dry and self-aware "Tale of a would-be-Poet": "I never could be a Poet," remarks the narrator in an aside, "for only men can be that, women are… Read More

London: Jonathan Cape, 1982. Softcover. Fine. Uncorrected proof. Red wrappers. Illustrations by Quentin Blake. A crease on the rear wrapper else fine.

PATERSON, Katherine. Bridge to Terabithia. Illustrated by Donna Diamond. NY: Thomas Y Crowell [1977]. 8vo, [x] 131pp. Black cloth with spine stamped in silver, front cover stamped in blind. 8 full-page and 4 half-page half-tone illustrations. Spine ends and lower corners lightly rubbed; faint, tiny discoloration in midst of front free endpaper; else a fine copy in original color pictorial dust jacket (a fw tiny chips at spine ends, spine a tad sunned, medal affixed). With a bookplate signed by two-time Newbery Medalist Katherine Paterson laid in.
First edition. 1978 Newbery Medal Winner! This moving novel of two friends who create a magical kingdom for themselves to deal with the stresses in their lives has been beloved since its publication. The basis for a 1985 PBS TV movie and the 2007 Disney feature film starring Josh Hutcherson and written by the author's son, David Paterson (whose loss of a dear friend as a child inspired the book).

[New York]: Harper & Row, 1963. Near fine in very good plus jacket.. Lovely first edition of the subversive Caldecott-award winner, in the rare original first-issue dust jacket. After illustrating nearly 50 other books, WILD THINGS was Sendak's first full-color picture book with his own text and illustrations. He took full advantage of that control to push the boundaries of the children's picture book genre. The story of a boy who gets in a fight with his mother and lets out his pent up feelings in a fantastical Wild Rumpus, WILD THINGS focused on the complex inner experience of little Max, acknowledging the reality that children deal with anger, frustration, and fear just as adults do. For this reason, the book was initially not well received: before the rise of New Realism in children's literature, many critics felt children's books ought to model ideal behavior rather than accurately reflect children's emotional experiences. The book made a splash from the very beginning, as Sendak expected it… Read More

New York: Random House. Near Fine in Very Good dust jacket. 1957. 1st Edition. First Printing. Hard Cover. 0394800796 . Publisher's printed boards, illustrated endpapers. Illustrated with color drawings by Dr. Seuss. First edition, first printing, with all first issue points present: (1) Cat in the Hat advertisement on rear panel of dust jacket with a price of $2.00; (2) 14 titles (up to now) listed on the rear flap; (3) list of 13 books printed under Other Books by Dr. Seuss on the last page of the book; (4) Dust jacket code is "250/250." [Younger & Hirsch 33].. The volume is in excellent condition, showing only light shelf-wear at heel of spine, else fine; unmarked, tight, square, and clean. The unclipped dust jacket (now in Mylar) is mildly worn at the corners and at the head and heel of the spine, else fine. An extremely nice copy. NEAR FINE/VERY GOOD. . Color Drawings. 4to 11" - 13" tall. Unpaginated pp .

1943. First Edition. Signed. DAHL, Roald. The Gremlins. A Royal Air Force Story by Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl. New York: Random House, (1943). Slim quarto, original half red cloth, pictorial boards, pictorial endpapers, original dust jacket. Housed in custom pictorial clamshell box. $13,500.Presentation first edition of Dahl's rare first book, with 14 vibrant full-page illustrations by Walt Disney Productions, twice inscribed by him: on the half title, ""To Joe and Steve with love from Roald Dahl 10/5/47,"" and opposite the half title, ""One by one a cow came by/ Howling around for the moon/ They asked me where the hell it was/ I said it's gone you dopes—you're much too soon. R."" An exceptionally elusive and desirable Dahl first edition in any condition, particularly in the original dust jacket and inscribed by him.Dahl was sent to Washington in 1942 as an assistant air attaché for the British Embassy. After having a story published anonymously in the Saturday Evening Post, he was encouraged by… Read More

New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co, 1898. First Edition. First Edition. 8vo., 5.25î x 8î. Original publisher's superb full color paper-covered boards featuring a vibrant pictorial front cover design and intricately patterned all-over color design on rear cover by noted designer and illustrator, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue who also contributed four illustrations in two colors. Spine with attractive lettering design motif in color. Endpapers in yellow and red, featuring various Alice characters. A very well-known and avidly collected Turn of the Century illustrated book, printed by D. B. Updike at the The Merrymount Press. Light rubbing to edges and very minor browning and spotting to cream covers and spine, some wear to spine tips and corners bumped. Very good, or better. Erased inscription to verso of frontispiece, some pencil markings to "Characters" page. Smith 30. One of Goodhueís hardest books to find and certainly one of his most collectible titles, beautifully printed by the Merrymount Press.