Pages From History : Fullerton Library Spotlights Children’s Books Spanning More Than Three Centuries

Outside, freight trains rumble by and laundry dries on the porches of modest apartments. But tucked in a corner of Fullerton’s Hunt Branch Library, there’s a magical watercolored world--a place where daring knights woo doe-eyed ladies, swashbuckling pirates brave the bounding main and a gentrified terrier and tomcat keep shop.

These colorful characters and dozens like them hold court in two small but engaging exhibits of historic children’s literature, “The Big Three--and One More” and “Brandywine School,” on view at the library through Sept. 30. Curated by City Librarian Carolyn Johnson, the books were selected from the Fullerton Public Library’s Mary Campbell collection, which includes more than 500 English-language children’s books spanning three centuries.

Started in 1926 by children’s librarian Mary Laura Campbell, the collection was adopted in 1969 by Fullerton’s Friends of the Library and has since been expanded through their funding and through individual donations. According to Johnson, the earliest book in the collection is a 1659 edition of “Orbis Pictus” (Latin for “Picture World”), an English-Latin “picture encyclopedia” said to be the first European children’s book that combined illustrations with text. It was, in a sense, the great-granddaddy of “Dick and Jane.”

“The author had this revolutionary idea that children would learn better if they were amused, so he started using the illustrations,” Johnson said. “It was in print for at least 200 years.” Other highlights of the collection include an 1860s “McGuffy Reader” and a first edition of Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn,” Johnson added.

Although she can’t put a price on it, Johnson said the value of the collection, and the popularity of historic children’s books, has risen dramatically in recent years. While the Mary Campbell collection may not be the Southland’s largest or most valuable gathering of children’s books (UCLA’s Department of Special Collections, for example, has more than 25,000 volumes), it is among the most accessible. Literature buffs, student groups and even John Q. Book Lover can use the collection just by making an appointment.

“We want people to be able to examine them closely,” said Johnson, who directs access to the collection and organizes an ongoing series of exhibits and lectures on the topic. “As far as I know, in Orange County this is the only collection that has been specifically designed to assist students of children’s literature.”

In “The Big Three--and One More,” viewers meet English writer-illustrators Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, three 19th-Century pioneers of children’s literature who, with printer Edmund Evans, popularized the modern picture book; as well as Beatrix Potter, whose menagerie of woodland charmers are as popular today as they were in the early 1900s. “Brandywine School” features works by Howard Pyle, author-illustrator of “The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood” and “The Book of Pirates” (modestly billed on its flyleaf as “Fact, Fiction and Fancy Concerning the Buccaneers and Marooners of the Spanish Main”). Works by Pyle students Maxfield Parrish, Jessie Wilcox Smith and N.C. Wyeth, best known for his illustrations of 18 “Scribner Illustrated Classics,” also are on display.

Such books take the reader back to a gentler and perhaps imaginary time when men were valorous and ladies were prone to flirtations and the vapors. In Howard Pyle’s “The Story of the Champions of the Round Table” (1905), for example, the bold Sir Tristam--never one to drag his feet--barely meets a fair widow before he’s off “seeking the knight of yonder castle to do battle . . . in behalf of that lady whose lord he slew so treacherously.”

Romance also blooms in “Come Lasses and Lads,” a delightfully illustrated verse in Randolph Caldecott’s “The Panjandrum Picture Book” (1885) in which roguish fellows and dainty maids engage in G-rated dalliances:

“Then, after an hour, they went to a bower,

And played for ale and cakes.

And kisses too--until they were due,

The lasses held the stakes.”

Beatrix Potter’s “Ginger and Pickles” (1909) and a unique fan-folded edition of “The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit” (1906) both feature Potter’s trademark critters, snappy dressers all, who consistently manage to be incredibly endearing but never too sweet.

“Ginger and Pickles” is the tale of a shop-keeping terrier and tomcat who are high on courtesy but low on business sense. After extending credit to all comers, the genteel pair are forced to throw in their aprons and close up shop. Ginger moves to rabbit Warren and becomes “stout and comfortable”; Pickles finds a new career in games-keeping. The villagers, a charming jumble of porcupines, field mice and other woodland folk, are at sixes and sevens until Sally Henny-penny (an enterprising hen who insists on cash but is “otherwise quite harmless”) reopens the shop.

Other books on display include an 1878 edition of Walter Crane’s “The Baby’s Bouquet,” touted on the flyleaf as “a fresh bunch of old rhymes and tunes,” and George MacDonald’s “At the Back of the North Wind” (1919), which features richly colored, soft-focus illustrations by Jessie Wilcox Smith.

“The Big Three--and One More” and “Brandywine School” continue through Sept. 30 at the Hunt Branch Library, 201 S. Basque Ave., Fullerton. Hours: Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Also on exhibit through Oct. 31 are abstract oil paintings by Argentine artist Jose Cosenza. Information: call Carolyn Johnson at (714) 738-6380 or the Hunt Branch library at (714) 871-9451.