Abroad, a delightful travel book for children, is by Thomas Crane and Ellen Houghton, is written entirely in verse, and follows the adventures of a London family traveling in France. Found in the children’s section of the Internet Archive

The pictures in the book are gorgeous, and beautifully composed. Here is a sample.

You can look at the entire book (which I highly recommend), download it, and even order print copies on the Internet Archive display page.

I’ve posted before about the fascinating digital collections at the University of Washington Libraries. Tooling through the early advertising archive today I came across these old Rainier beer ads from turn of the century Seattle and surrounding areas. They seem to be trying to expand their customer base by marketing Rainier as a healthful tonic for women, children, and old people. Gesundheit, Grandpa!

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Here are some of the charming illustrations from Edward Lear’s Nonsense Botany.

Queerifloria Babyöides

Piggiwiggia Pyramidalis

Armchairia Comfortabilis

Manypeeplia Upsidownia

Crabbia Horrida

Smalltoothcombia Domestica

I wonder if these drawings were the inspiration for James Thurber’s New Natural History. The entire Nonsense Botany is available on Project Gutenberg.

Anno’s Journey, by Mitsumasa Anno, is one of the most delightful picture books I’ve ever read. But actually you don’t read it, since it is an entirely wordless book that tells the story of a foreign traveler and the people and places he sees along the way. The book manages to combine information about traditional European economies, visual jokes on great works of art and literature, and numerous little stories and anecdotes tucked into each picture.

It’s also fun to find Anno in the pictures. He’s the little fellow on the horse wearing a hat.

The book begins with the arrival of Anno at the shores of a country, and trading his boat for a horse.

There are several consecutive stories in the book, including this footrace that continues through several pages.

These little jpgs can’t do it justice of course. A highly recommended book.

I’ve just been having a wonderful time looking at the University of Washington Libraries’ online Digital Collections. A person could spend hours and hours looking at the stuff they have there.

Like their collection of old menus from restaurants in Seattle and other parts of Washington State. There are menus from a lot of restaurants that I’ve eaten in, including beloved landmarks that are now closed, like the Cluod Room.

The Cloud Room was never overpriced, but what bargains they used to have in the 50s!

When I was a teeager and first exploring the city on my own, I used to love to sit with the old ladies at the lunch counters in department stores. There was a sort of smug luxuriousness about spending so much time shopping that you needed to take a rest and have a cup of coffee before continuing. Here’s a 1950 menu from the Crystal Tea Room at the Bon Marché.

This menu from the Dog House is from the mid-1950s, but they used the same graphics just before the place closed in the 1990s. Of course the prices had changed – into the 1990s version of dirt cheap.

Some restaurants that are tourist attractions in themselves had menus that were also little tourist brochures, like this guide to viewpoints from the top of the Space Needle, circa 1962.

Or the jokey orientation to pacific seafood on this 1950 menu at Ivar’s.

Alastair Heseltine is a British Columbia basket maker and artist who creates sculptures and installations using traditional natural materials and methods.

Many more interesting sculptures on the artist’s website.

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Here are some illustrations from Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories, a collection of moralistic tales for children published in 1964.

Front flyleaf, by Harry Baerg.

Many of the stories seem to include one or more large illustrations executed with great care, followed by incidental illustrations of lesser quality done by another artist, who is not credited individually. I’ve included both kinds of pictures here.

Peter Pays Up, illustrated by William Dolwick.

Diana’s Donkey Ride, illustrated by Harry Baerg.

Seventeen Cowards, illustrated by Manning de V.Lee.

End flyleaf by John Steel.

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Rick and I went to see the Milk Carton Derby at Greenlake this weekend. It’s part of the Seafair festival in Seattle every summer. We enjoyed watching the parade of boats and a couple of the races. All of the boats use empty milk cartons for flotation.

Most competitors bring their boats to the race already built, but one of the competitions involves building the boat on the shore in one hour or less.

I assume this boat took more than an hour to build.

James Thurber’s New Natural History was first published as a series in the New Yorker in 1945 and 1946. Here are a few of the drawings from the series.

Rick has been bugging me for a while to post some scans from I Am a Bunny, by Ole Risom, with pictures by Richard Scarry, from 1963. It is a very good choice for a spring day. For sheer joi de vivre and unadulterated adorableness, it is unsurpassed. It also has those thick pages that you can chew on.