German-language children’s books | Cotsen Children’s Library

Over the last few months, I’ve been selecting the illustrations for the forthcoming third volume of the Cotsen catalogue, which will describe over 5,000 children’s books published between 1800 and 1899. It’s been enormous fun to get acquainted with the hidden jewels of nineteenth-century graphic design. I’ve been especially delighted by example after example of books bound in boards covered with paper color-printed with magnificent illustrations.

In the following three front covers the artists have transformed the front boards into posters. I also like them as different representations of children learning to see.

Cotsen 5808.

Wilhelm von Breitschwert’s cover design for Pracht-ABC: das schonste Bilderbuch, (ca. 1868) puts a new spin on an old theme in educational illustrations: teaching children with paintings or wall charts. The gigantic picture book is a free-standing gallery whose pages can be explored by any number of children. Dominating the composition is the mother holding a baby on her shoulder to whom she points out (and presumably explains) different images. Another of her toddlers tugs at her skirt, anxious for his turn to begin.

Cotsen 10986

The interplay between the animals and the humans in Alexander Pock’s cover is deliciously complicated. The family is standing with their backs to the viewer as they watch a program of short subjects posted to the right. A natty fox is pointing to one currently on display–a fox chasing a boy caught out in a lie–but it’s unclear if it’s a magic lantern show, a moving panorama or a film. The chimpanzee in the hat tries to catch the eye of the boy next to him, hoping for a hand-out. The bear and eagle in the niches above the standing figures look over their heads, but the viewer has no idea what they are see in the distance to the right.

Cotsen 43278.

The children’s heads are literally bursting through a map of the 1889 Paris Exposition universelle, which they will “tour” via the picture book. The Tour Eiffel (unfinished at the event’s opening) marked the entrance to the spectacle and is likewise the gateway into this illustrated account of the shows that were on display inside. Of course in the plates, the brother and sister are accompanied by their chic maman, but the cover holds out the liberating prospect of wandering around on their own.

There are plenty more where these bindings came from–and some of the best of the best will be illustrated in the Cotsen catalogue when it comes out at the end of this year.

Once upon a time there was a day so cold that no one with any sense would go outside. A wilful boy named Peter slipped out the front door to go skating when his parents were warming their fingers and toes by the stove. Peter walked past the crows that froze stiff and fell out of the trees. He ignored the old sportsman’s warning to turn back. He laughed at the poor rabbit and sat down on a stone to put on his skates. When he launched himself on the ice, his pants stuck to its frigid surface and tore a big hole in the seat.

He fell into a hole in the ice and managed to scramble out quickly, but not before he was drenched with water. It was so cold on the pond that the water dribbling off his extremities immediately froze into icicles, which greatly restricted his range of motion.When the good old sportsman and Peter’s father went looking for him, they found him stuck fast to the ice sheet covering the pond. With an axe, they chopped him free and carried him home to his mother.Peter was put near the stove to warm up, but this sensible remedy reduced the bad boy to a clear liquid that covered the entire floor. Being frugal people, his distraught parents had the presence of mind to swept what was left of their son into a fine earthenware Topf, label it “Peter” and preserve his earthly remains between the pickles and cheese.No one needs to know what a “bomb-cyclone” is to grasp the moral of this story. If you live in Princeton, don’t venture out on Lake Carnegie until the University posts a sign that the ice is safe. Stay indoors and read more edifying illustrated stories by the great Wilhelm Busch about disobedient boys who richly deserved what they got. Give his classic Max and Moritz a try. Or you could try the new Philip Pullman fantasy, La Belle Sauvage, the first installment in The Book of Dust. It’s a page-turner…