Animal Children — Some Girls Wander

Animal Children: The Friends of the Forest and the Plain
By Edith Brown Kirkwood
Illustrated by M.T. Ross
1913

I found this copy of Animal Children at Powell's last week, and very nearly jumped for joy. It was a really, really good price, too - so that made me all the more pleased!This book is the only one in the "Little anthropomorphised Items/Creatures" series (like Bird Children, Flower Children, etc.) that isn't written by Elizabeth Gordon. It is illustrated by the same person, so the images have the same kind of beautiful madcap quality the others do.

In fact, these little creatures might be the strangest of all!

I loved the endpapers, so I had to post them, too.

Here are some of my favorites of the animal children (they're photographed, not scanned - my scanner is being a brat to me right now. If you notice the curve of the page, that's the reason):

(I think Bobcat & Lynx might be one of the weirdest illustrations of all time)

I saved my three favorites: The Bears, The Reindeer (those pinks & greens!) and The Bats for last. That bat in the big black hat is just the best. I wonder if Marcel Dzama has seen it? I think as a noted bat fancier, he might appreciate a bat in a cowboy hat.

You can find it in its entirety here on Gutenberg, and probably more places online, too. The colors are a little funny in the Gutenberg version, but you can read all the little poems without my curvy-page problems!