Free Library Blog - Posts by Adrienne P.

Dolls and Matchbooks and Buttons, Oh My!

Adrienne P. — 2012-04-17T11:09:00-05:00

As archivists at the Children’s Literature Research Collection, it’s not surprising that most of the materials we work with are children’s book materials: drafts of manuscripts, sketches for story ideas, original illustrations in all kinds of media. But sometimes we come across a few more… unusual items. A promotional matchbook, a papier mache doll used as a banquet dinner’s centerpiece, a charm bracelet. We call these objects “realia,” and they're some of the most interesting objects we have.

The first collection we processed here at the Free Library was the Tomi Ungerer papers. Ungerer gave us hundreds of beautiful and whimsical illustrations, plus a promotional matchbox for his book Allumette (1974). Making the matchbox more clever than bizarre, Allumette was a retelling of the classic Hans Christian Andersen fairytale “The Little Match Girl.” Perhaps we’re biased, but it does seem that promotional items used to be a lot more interesting - we’d prefer an artfully designed matchbox to another branded stress ball any day.

Not all of our unusual favorites are strange promotional items. In the Carolyn Haywood papers, there is a large collection of family photographs. One of the most interesting is a gem photograph – sometimes called a jewel tintype – from around 1900. The photograph, most likely of a very young Haywood and her mother, is set into a jewelry pin about 1” in diameter. While it makes us a little sad that no one accessorizes with family photos anymore, the gem photograph made for a great find.

Another remarkable photograph is from the Marguerite de Angeli papers. It’s a panoramic group portrait from the 1937 reception for the Newbery Medal winners. While panoramic photography is quite common for landscapes, it’s more striking when used for a portrait of a few hundred people. The depth of field is flattened, so that the faces of people in the very back of the reception hall are just as focused as those in the very foreground. While examining this unusual photograph, our Special Collections Archivist focused on a woman who she thought she recognized. Maybe another author whose papers we have? With a closer look, however, we established that it was Eleanor Roosevelt, who apparently enjoyed the reception very much.

If you are a fan of the CLRC on Facebook, you might already be familiar with our recent “Weird Doll Wednesdays.” We have a few dozen dolls here at the CLRC, some more “unusual” than others. One particularly terrifying example is from the Scott O’Dell papers. O’Dell was awarded the Regina Medal Award in 1978 by the Catholic Library Association’s Children’s Library Services. In honor of his most famous book, Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960), the Regina Medal Award reception included a papier-mache doll centerpiece made to resemble the main character.

Unsurprisingly, some of the most fascinating realia in the collection comes courtesy of the Walt Disney Company. In 1938, Disney made a short animated film, “Ferdinand the Bull,” based on Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson’s book The Story of Ferdinand (1936). We’re lucky enough to have both Leaf and Lawson’s papers here at the Library, and along with drafts and art from the book we have a nice selection of Disney tie-in merchandise. There’s a candy wrapper (free of 75-year-old candy, thankfully), fabric swatches, quilt squares, greeting cards, stationery, decorative buttons, a pencil sharpener, and acharm bracelet.

As you can see, it’s not all old papers here at the archives. We’re only able to include three images with our post, but hop on over to our Facebook page to see our album of cocktail-chatter-worthy finds, including some we didn’t have room to tell you about here.

- Caitlin Goodman

The Scott O'Dell papers

Adrienne P. — 2012-03-19T08:55:00-05:00

Scott O’Dell once summed up being an author in three simple words: “Writing is hard.” As a writer of children’s historical fiction, he excelled in creating his own story out of real events. He found inspiration in history books and in oral histories. He said, “Research is what I enjoy most. I often write of events, people, and backgrounds that I know little about, just because I want to know more.”

Scott O’Dell was born Odell Gabriel Scott in Los Angeles, California on May 23, 1898. His father, Bennett Mason Scott, worked for the Union Pacific Railroad and the family frequently moved throughout Southern California during his childhood. At that time, California was still the frontier and still held the footprints of Spanish settlers, fortune hunters from the Gold Rush, and native Indian peoples. He would later recall, “This was a small world, but a world in microcosm. It was bounded by the deep water and wharves and mud flats of San Pedro Harbor. By the cliffs and reeds of Point Firmin and Portuguese Bend. By the hills of Palos Verdes, aflame with wild mustard in spring, lion-colored in summer.”

After graduating high school, he enlisted in the Army during World War I. He attended several colleges, but said he never learned to study and could not muster any enthusiasm for memorizing textbooks. Instead, he moved to Hollywood and taught classes in writing screenplays while working for Paramount Pictures. In 1925, he served as a cameraman on the 1925 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production of Ben Hur in Rome, where he also attended classes at the University of Rome. Returning to California, he worked in journalism and released three novels for adults. While at the Los Angeles Daily News, a typesetter transposed his name from “Odell Scott” into “Scott O’Dell” and he liked it so much that he had it legally changed. With the encouragement of his friend, the children’s book author Maud Lovelace, he decided to publish Island of the Blue Dolphins as his first children’s novel.

Island of the Blue Dolphins is based on the legend of “The Lost Woman of San Nicholas Island.” O’Dell adapted the true story of a native woman from the Channel Islands who was left behind in 1835 when the dwindling populations of Indians were removed from the islands. Subsequent rescue parties were unsuccessful in locating her until 1853, when Captain George Nidever arrived on the island to find a 50-year-old woman who smiled and talked in an “unintelligible” language. She was taken to the Mission Santa Barbara and given the name “Juana Maria.”

When Scott O’Dell published Island of the Blue Dolphins in 1960, it became a worldwide success and went on to win the Newbery Medal and was adapted into a motion picture. He continued writing historical fiction for children, winning the Newbery Honor for his next two novels, The King’s Fifth (1966) and The Black Pearl (1967). O’Dell would later write the sequel to Island of the Blue Dolphins, called Zia, in addition to 25 novels over the course of his career. In 1982, O’Dell established an award to honor authors, especially new authors, of historical fiction for children and young adults. The Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction is given annually and seeks to continue O’Dell’s efforts to create interest in the genre.

A manuscript for Island of the Blue Dolphins is part of the Children’s Literature Research Collection here at the Free Library of Philadelphia. The opening page of the manuscript is handwritten by Scott O’Dell. The remainder of the document is a typescript that includes notes between O’Dell and his editor at Houghton Mifflin. Though it only highlights the end of the creative process, this final draft includes supplemental pages and revisions that allow researchers to understand the amount of work that goes into each book. This collection, though small, represents the best of children’s historical fiction. For more in-depth information about the Scott O'Dell papers, please see our online finding aid!

For more about Scott O'Dell and all of our other authors and illustrators, visit our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter for more updates from the Children’s Literature Research Collection.

-Lindsay Friedman

Finding aid conversions at the Free Library of Philadelphia

Adrienne P. — 2012-03-06T14:57:00-05:00

Hi! I’m Garrett Boos, the most recent archivist to join the “Milestones in 20th Century American Children’s Literature” project at the Free Library of Philadelphia. My particular part of the project involves reformatting finding aids for already processed collections. Since the beginning of November I have been reformatting the information in an old Rare Book Department Access database into easy-to-use finding aids produced with Archivists’ Toolkit. The three collections I have been working on are all Free Library collections of British children’s illustrators, chosen as a natural expansion of our project. They are the Free Library collections of Arthur Rackham, Beatrix Potter, and Kate Greenaway.

The first collection I worked on was the Free Library collection of Kate Greenaway, simply because it was the smallest. Since it is a small collection, even if we had to start over from scratch, I still wouldn’t need to redo too much work. Luckily everything went according to plan and the finding aid was completed relatively easily. With this collection, we worked to establish standards for how the information in the database would be repurposed as a finding aid. While the Access database containing information about these collections was available only to librarians working in the department, our online finding aids can be readily accessed by the public. (You can see the Kate Greenaway finding aid on our website here.) We want to make these collections easier to find, search, and use; the converted finding aids are joining the findings aids for newly processed collections on our website. After Greenaway, I was able to finish the The Free Library collection of Arthur Rackham relatively quickly, and now I am finishing up the humungous Beatrix Potter finding aid.

While I was earning my MLIS I did similar work for another Philadelphia area project sponsored by CLIR, the PACSCL/CLIR “Hidden Collections” Projec t, but I rarely had the chance to see the material I was writing about. I am very happy to say that at the Free Library I can actually see the items I am writing about in the finding aid. So far some of my favorite on the job experiences include flipping through a large set of original drawings by Kate Greenaway for Brett Harte’s Queen of the Pirate Isle, and seeing original watercolors by Beatrix Potter, particularly those you wouldn't normally associate with her, such as spiders. By far my favorite collection has been the Free Library collection of Arthur Rackham. I found everything from doodles on a menu to an elaborate painting that was used as an illustration in the book Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens to be equally fascinating. The materials hit home with me when I discovered that the original drawings Rackham did for Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which I saw when working on the finding aid, were the same illustrations in my edition of the book at home. You can check out our Facebook page to view some of his other sketches, including the hilarious “Sketch of a soldier and a dog going around a corner,” as well as other works by Potter and Greenaway.

-Garrett Boos

"Ever Wondrous to Behold": The 50th Anniversary of Virginia Lee Burton's Life Story

Adrienne P. — 2012-01-10T09:19:00-05:00

We are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the classic Life Story by Virginia Lee Burton. First published in 1962, this wonderful book tells the tale of life on Earth from the beginning to the present with intense color and detail. In 1968, Burton gave the drawings for this book to the Children's Literature Research Collection at the Free Library. The collection contains hundreds of illustrations that Burton created over eight years. Every aspect was drawn and redrawn until each was just right and the final product contains striking illustrations that jump off the page. The story of Earth from the Big Bang right up to today is presented as a stage play, starring creatures ranging from giant dinosaurs to tiny plants. Burton herself is the narrator in the last act, telling the story of her own family as it grows over time. Life Story was her final book, and is an amazing piece of art. We were lucky to be given the funds to catalog it as part of a CLIR-funded “Hidden Collections” grant, and we are especially happy to be able to share it with you. An exhibit showcasing Burton's beautiful art is now on display on the ground floor of Parkway Central, outside of the auditorium. Come see it before the curtain closes!

-Lindsay Friedman

Happy Birthday to Ferdinand the Bull!

Adrienne P. — 2011-12-16T08:57:00-05:00

With 2011 coming to an end, we want to recognize the 75^th anniversary of one of our favorite children’s books: Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson’s The Story of Ferdinand. Published by Viking Press in 1936, the book has been translated into more than 60 languages (including Latin!) and the rights have recently been acquired by Fox Animation Studios, who plan to make a full-length animated film. Of course, we’re partial to The Story of Ferdinand here at the Free Library since we are lucky to have the papers of both author Munro Leaf and illustrator Robert Lawson in our Rare Book Department. The Munro Leaf papers were donated by his wife Margaret Leaf in 1977-1983 and the Frederick R. Gardner collection of Robert Lawson was donated by the avid collector Gardner in 1969-1977. Both collections are the largest source of materials for both Lawson and Leaf, and thanks to a CLIR-funded “Hidden Collections” grant, we were able to process these amazing materials and make them available to researchers.

Munro Leaf wrote The Story of Ferdinand for his friend Robert Lawson. Lawson had already received some recognition for his children’s book illustrations, but complained about the lack of artistic freedom inherent in illustrating other authors’ books. Ferdinand was to be a showcase for his incredible talent with pen and ink. One of the most popular items in the Munro Leaf papers is the original handwritten manuscript Leaf claimed to have dashed off in twenty minutes. While the book was an immediate hit in September 1936, it was not without controversy. Coincidentally published in the early days of the Spanish Civil War, the story about the Spanish bull who would rather smell the flowers than fight was interpreted by some as a pacifist fable. More elaborately, letters to Leaf accused him of “the laissez-faire theory of economics seconded by the bourgeois ideology of utility,” “Red propaganda,” and “Fascist propaganda” (New York Times November 20, 1937). Leaf had a simpler motive: “It’s a happy-ending story, about being yourself” (Washington Post June 25, 1967). As time passed and Ferdinand became a permanent part of the culture, the controversy wasn’t the only thing to fade. In 1968, a friend sent Leaf a clipping from the Washington Post which recommended buying The Story of Ferdinand at Brentano’s Book Store, which had “a version by Munro Leaf” (December 17, 1968).

While we are excited to see what Fox Animation Studios produces, it will not be Ferdinand’s first time on film. In 1938, Walt Disney Productions released the short film “Ferdinand the Bull” (you can find it on YouTube) which won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoon) the following year. Unsurprisingly, the film release included a diverse array of merchandising opportunities for Ferdinand. Among the Walt Disney Enterprises ephemera in our collection, there is a Ferdinand pencil sharpener, fabric swatches, a charm bracelet, and some adorable decorative buttons memorializing Ferdinand and the unfortunate bullfighters. We also have two original painted animation cels from the Disney film which really put into perspective the enormous undertaking of a classically-animated film, even one only seven minutes long.

Disney may have been the highest-profile adapter of The Story of Ferdinand, but it was hardly alone. Our favorite unexpected adaptation is the program from “The Ballad of Ferdinan’: A Folk Rock Opera” from 1972. For slightly more historical interest, we also have a number of materials, including photographs and the script, from the 1939 marionette play adaption done by the WPA Federal Theatre Project. Another puppet-related highlight is the Puppet Theatre of Ljubljana’s “Zgodba o Ferdinandu” (produced in 1978), and while Slovene fluency would be helpful to anyone reading the program, the photographs require no translation.

We can’t help but get carried away with all of the exciting Ferdinand materials here at the Free Library, and we hope you’ll check out our Facebook page for updates or make an appointment to come visit the collections at the Rare Book Department. We’d be remiss not to mention one last masterpiece: the dummy of The Story of Ferdinand, made by Robert Lawson in 1935. The dummy, which is a mockup of the future book, includes the full text and elaborate graphite sketches that Leaf and Lawson used when shopping the story to various publishers. In fact, the copyright page credits “So-and-So Press,” waiting for the lucky publisher to recognize a masterpiece. While the dummy includes some corrections to the text, it is no surprise that the end remains unchanged: “He is very happy.”

-Caitlin Goodman

"All smudged with paint and smeared with clay, We wave our greeting this Christmas day": Artists' Christmas Cards in the Free Library of Philadelphia?s Special Collections

Adrienne P. — 2011-11-29T13:04:00-05:00

It’s the most wonderful time of the year . . . the time when we get to show off all of the beautiful artists’ Christmas and New Year’s cards in the children’s literature collections of the Free Library of Philadelphia. When we started processing the papers of children’s authors and illustrators Lloyd Alexander, Carolyn Haywood, and Robert Lawson as part of a CLIR-funded “Hidden Collections” grant, we didn’t expect that some of the most charming pieces of artwork would be mundane, ephemeral greeting cards. But these artists’ creativity spilled over into everything they did, and their handmade Christmas cards are often miniature gems. Robert and Marie Lawson even designed Christmas cards professionally, producing one a day for three years in the 1920s in order to pay for their first house. Other authors like Lloyd Alexander, best known for his Chronicles of Prydain series, only dabbled in drawing. Alexander’s humorous self-caricatures adorn Christmas cards sent to his friends, who would be sure to get the joke. Carolyn Haywood’s papers include not only the cards she designed, but also the hand-made cards sent to her by her artistic mentors, the Red Rose Girls. Don’t miss this seasonal exhibit, now on display on the ground floor of Parkway Central!

"This Is a Watchbird Watching YOU"

Adrienne P. — 2011-10-14T09:15:00-05:00

Recently, I began processing the papers of children’s book author and illustrator Munro Leaf. Having already processed the Frederick R. Gardner collection of Robert Lawson, it was a perfect transition to move to the Munro Leaf papers. Munro Leaf (1905-1976) wrote The Story of Ferdinand (1936) for his friend Lawson to illustrate, and they collaborated on three more children’s books: Wee Gillis (1938), an adaptation of Aesop’s Fables (1941), and The Story of Simpson and Sampson (1941). After Frederick R. Gardner donated his Lawson collection to the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Munro Leaf’s widow, Margaret, decided to do the same with his papers.

Munro Leaf may be best remembered for Ferdinand but it was finding the material for his long-running Watchbirds series that was an early highlight in the collection. The Watchbirds series reminded me of the Goofus and Gallant cartoons in Highlights magazine that I read at my dentist’s office as a child. (Fun fact: Highlights magazine also ran a similarly themed series by Munro Leaf, Checkaway, in the 1950s.) The Watchbirds cartoons started out as a recurring column in Ladies Home Journal in 1938, but remained a fixture in the cultural mindset even after Leaf’s death in 1976: we have a Watchbirds calendar from 1978 and the most recent Watchbirds book, Four and Twenty Watchbirds, was published in 1990.

The Watchbirds flip the concept of bird-watching onto any potential childhood naughtiness. Did you (or might you) complain about going to bed on time? Refuse to brush your teeth? Throw a tantrum? Watch out, for there’s a watchbird watching YOU. After their popularity grew in Ladies Home Journal, the Watchbirds cartoons were compiled into five books and there is even “The Watchbird Song.” The cartoons followed a standard pattern: a naively drawn caricature (see the original art for “a SQUIRMER” at right) would be accompanied by a cute explanatory caption and two watchbirds. One watchbird would be disappointedly watching the Squirmer, the other would be watching YOU. A SQUIRMER is described by Leaf:

“Squirmers never sit still. They wriggle and wriggle and twist and turn until you wonder why they don’t fall apart. This one in the picture squirmed so much we couldn’t tell whether it was a boy or a girl. Squirmers are terrible at the table or in the barber shop.”

The Watchbirds may be a bit Big Brother for 2011 (they are particularly intimidating when found on adult-targeted brochures, like the one Leaf decorated for the Better Citizens Booth of the League of Women Voters), but Leaf’s captions and absurdist drawings soften the nagging. And if you’re interested in other ways Leaf endeavored to humorously indoctrinate children into good behavior, you might enjoy Manners Can Be Fun (1936), the second entry in a long and occasionally absurd series of titles (1976’s Metric Can Be Fun! is a personal favorite). There’s plenty more in the Munro Leaf collection, so check out our Facebook page for updates or make an appointment to come visit the Rare Book Department to see his whimsy in person!

-Caitlin Goodman

Preserving Beatrix Potter's Legacy: Collectors & Collections

Adrienne P. — 2011-09-22T09:53:00-05:00

This past weekend, the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Rosenbach Museum and Library hosted an event for the Beatrix Potter Society. “Preserving Beatrix Potter’s Legacy: Collectors and Collections” focused on both private and institutional collections of Potter’s work. Attendees were able to see many beautiful pieces from the Free Library’s extensive collections in four (yes, four!) exhibits currently on display at Parkway Central. The events kicked off on Friday with “Reading Beatrix Potter” events at various Free Library locations, at which Beatrix Potter Society members read stories and lead children in crafts. Here at Parkway Central we heard The Tale of Peter Rabbit and The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, read by two expert storytellers. That evening attendees were welcomed by Free Library President Siobhan Reardon at a reception in the Rare Book Department, where the crudité platter was arranged in flowerpots to recall Mr. McGregor’s garden. On Saturday, members met at the Free Library to hear Head of the Art Department Karen Lightner speak about the origins of the Free Library’s collections. Other speakers tantalized us with glimpses of an upcoming display of Potter’s illustrated letters, to be held at the Morgan Library and Museum in November 2012, and intrigued us with the pirated editions of Potter held in the Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton.

On both Saturday and Sunday members shared their private collections with the group, allowing us to see treasures by Beatrix Potter that are otherwise out of sight, including two adorable watercolors of a “lady mouse” and a “gentleman mouse” from the Tailor of Gloucester that Potter had done in 1927 as a fundraiser to save a strip of property near Windermere Ferry. On Sunday morning the group convened at the Rosenbach, where President Derick Dreher revealed the connections between Maurice Sendak and Beatrix Potter. Sendak is a huge fan of Potter who collects her works and memorabilia and who has been demonstrably influenced by her art. This might seem strange to people who think of Sendak as the King of the Wild Rumpus, but to him her tales capture an overwhelming sense of life, which is the point of all art.

Throughout the weekend, speakers reflected on collecting not just as a private enthusiasm, but also as a method of shaping ways to see the world. Undergraduates exposed to rare books as objects of commerce and desire may grow up to sit on the boards of libraries and effectively advocate for special collections. Scholars collecting in a particular area can amass collections that will shape how history is written. And institutions that house these collections can introduce delightful, timeless works of art to new generations. In a public library with many special collections, the importance of collecting in order to make available unique and rare materials to the public never seemed clearer than it did this weekend.

New exhibit from the Children's Literature Research Collection

Adrienne P. — 2011-09-12T08:51:00-05:00

Children’s illustrator Carolyn Haywood was a lifelong Philadelphian who generously donated her extensive collection of book manuscripts, illustrations, and personal papers to the Free Library of Philadelphia. We recently completed processing this collection, and some of our most interesting finds are now on display in the exhibit cases on the ground floor outside of the Montgomery Auditorium at Parkway Central. Come and see her early illustrations – influenced by the group of artists known as the Red Rose Girls, who were her friends and mentors – as well as rare unpublished book illustrations, photographs, awards, and typescripts.

Born in Philadelphia on January 3, 1898, Haywood attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and taught briefly at Friends Central School. The editor Elizabeth Hamilton saw some of her illustrations and suggested that Haywood write a story “about little American children, doing the things that little American children like to do.” The resulting book, B is for Betsy, was published in 1939. Betsy and Haywood’s other popular series character, Eddie Wilson, would go on to star in many of Haywood’s books. Haywood based her child characters on children she knew, and they served as models not just for the children’s adventures and preoccupations but also for the illustrations. Several of these model photographs appear in the exhibition, along with the illustrations they inspired. Also on display are scarce photographs of Haywood working on large-scale murals with Violet Oakley, a less well-known aspect of her work that demonstrates her range as an artist.

Still, Haywood was best known for her children’s books, and she wrote or illustrated over fifty before she passed away in 1990. She left an admirable legacy in the collection bequeathed to the Free Library, and we’re very pleased to share it with you. Stop by and take a look!

Visit our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter for more updates from the Children’s Literature Research Collection.

Carolyn Haywood: The Shocking Revelation!

Adrienne P. — 2011-06-28T09:28:00-05:00

For those of you not familiar with Carolyn Haywood’s books (and who didn’t read last week’s blog post), imagine stereotypical 1950s children’s literature: safe plots, simplistic characterizations, and genial outcomes. Little boys and girls who live in the suburbs with their mommies and daddies get into mischief, but everything is resolved in time for the best Christmas ever. Take for example Haywood’s first book, “B” Is for Betsy (1939). Betsy is a little girl who is afraid to start kindergarten, but by the time summer rolls around she loves it so much she doesn’t want to leave. Haywood’s wholesome books about neighborhood antics have been a favorite on Christian homeschoolers’ syllabi for decades.

While processing the Carolyn Haywood papers at the Free Library of Philadelphia, however, I discovered a darker side to Carolyn Haywood. An unpublished manuscript called Junior is making me question everything I thought I knew about her. It is about a fourth-grader named Octavius Smoot Junior, and unlike Haywood’s other characters, Junior has real problems. His father is in jail for selling heroin (!), so he lives with his mother and grandfather—both of whom beat him on a regular basis (!!). As if that isn’t enough, poor Junior also has to contend with pedophiles trying to abduct him (!!!). This, dear reader, is not a Betsy or Eddie book.

In one chapter of the manuscript, Junior gets his report card and takes the long way home in order to forestall the inevitable beating he will receive when his mother sees his poor marks. He is accosted by a gang of teenagers who steal all his things and so, terrified and bereft, Junior wanders even farther from his route home. Outside an Arts Theatre that is showing a French film, a man calling himself Jack offers to buy Junior a ticket and some popcorn. Junior accepts because he is hungry, and tells the man about his troubles. Jack is sympathetic, but during the movie he starts to touch Junior in ways that make him uncomfortable. Luckily, Junior manages to escape Jack’s grasp: while exiting the theatre, he sees his teacher Miss Katie and runs to her for protection. Miss Katie takes Junior to her house for chocolate cake and good advice, and the manuscript cuts off shortly thereafter.

Finding the manuscript for Junior has given me a lot to think about. The dark, heavy themes of domestic violence and sexual abuse are worlds away from lighthearted books like “C” Is for Cupcake, Eddie’s Green Thumb, and Betsy and the Circus. What inspired Haywood to write this story? By the time she started working on it (about 1979), some book reviewers were already criticizing Haywood for writing sugar-coated stories with no relevance to real life problems. Was this an attempt to show her critics that she was capable of writing serious, significant works? Did something happen in Haywood’s life that made her, temporarily at least, more conscious of some of the issues affecting unlucky boys and girls? Did one of the children who frequently posed as Haywood’s models reveal an upsetting incident?

There’s little supporting material in the Free Library’s Haywood collection about the Junior manuscript. We’re not sure why it was never finished and published. But without a doubt, Junior has been the most interesting find so far in the Haywood collection. This is exactly why archival processing is so exciting: The manuscript may have sat untouched in a box forever if we hadn’t started processing the collection with the help of our CLIR grant. But now, the world will know about this intriguing manuscript, and perhaps it will even entice some of you out there to carry out new research on Carolyn Haywood. I’d love to hear what you think.

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--Celia Caust-Ellenbogen