Tag Archives: special collections

Animals in Kodomo no Kuni

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It’s time for the annual #ColorOurCollections, hosted by the New York Academy of Medicine! Each year libraries, archives, and cultural institutions around the world share free coloring sheets based on their collections.We’ve shared birds and alphabets, but this year we just wanted…CUTE ANIMALS. So we delved into our vaults for Kodomo no kuni (The Land of Children), a Japanese children’s magazine that was in circulation from 1922-1944. It did not disappoint!

You can find our awesome coloring pages here, and you can read more about the magazine in this excellent post on Cotsen’s curatorial blog. If you’re still hankering for cute animals, try some of our blog projects, starting with this bouncy bunny cup!

Or fancy up a hamster…

furry and fabulousPerhaps you’d like to expand to entire household with this tiny dog house

itty bitty home

Or craft a very learned canary…

tweet-reading-is-sweetEven alligators can be cute (and this one is a chomping puppet!):

finished alligator puppetOr make up your own animal entirely!

be you

Is There a Library in the House?

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There’s no place like home! Katie found this amazing abode in our special collections vaults, and we just had to share it. It was created by The Book House for Children, a company founded by Olive Beaupré Miller (née Olive Kennon Beaupré). Miller was an American writer, publisher and editor. Her company was industrious, publishing over thirty books in the 1920s and 1930s. It was also notable for its extensive female staff.

As you can see, this particular item houses nine books, and the quality of the illustration and print is remarkable. Just look at the end papers for Tales Told in Holland:

And here’s a lovely page from Little Pictures of Japan:

And just in case you thought the wooden house that shelves these various volumes wasn’t completely adorable, it appears the company released another version as well!

Image courtesy of robinseggbleunest

Collections images from The Bookhouse [realia]. Miller, Olive Beaupré. Chicago ; Toronto. The Bookhouse for Children. 1925-1935. Cotsen Children’s Library, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Cotsen Ghosties

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book cover 3Last Halloween season we took a stroll through our special collections pumpkin patch. Today, we’re looking for ghosts! And we found them in this amazing optical illusion book titled Spectropia; or, Surprising Spectral Illusions. Showing ghosts everywhere, and of any color. Published by J.H. Brown in London in 1864, the book teaches the concept of “the persistency of impressions, and the production of complementary colours on, the retina.”

The illusion is very simple. In the image above, stare at the small black dot by the ghost’s neck for 20-30 seconds. Then look away at a white wall or ceiling. Her ghostly image will appear in your vision, except in different colors (in this case green wreath, blue ghost)!

Scientifically speaking, this is called an afterimage. The color receptors in your eyes work in pairs (red/green, blue/yellow, etc.). When you stare at the drawing and one color fatigues your receptors, the other receptor will step in and dominate for a bit.

The book has a very lengthy description of this concept, as well as viewing instructions that include having the “gaslight turned low.”

Spectropia also has a disclaimer at the beginning: “As an apology for the apparent disregard of taste and fine art in the plates, such figures are selected as best serve the purpose for which they are intended.”

I wish they might have reprinted the disclaimer before THIS image, which honestly is going to haunt me clear through December:

The book concludes with a grand finale image that is not a ghost, but a rainbow! Definitely try this one, because it is so cool to see the colors flip in the afterimage!

Looking more more optical spooky fun? Try making our tabletop Pepper’s Ghost illusion!

Images from Spectropia; or, Surprising Spectral Illusions. Showing ghosts everywhere, and of any color. J.H. Brown, London. Griffith and Farran.1864. Cotsen Children’s Library, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library.