From 1919 to 1948, Louise Payson Latimer was the Director of Work with Children at the Washington (DC) Public Library. Latimer received frequent requests for “hard-to-access visual material” as well as general community members who were interested in the illustrations within children’s books during her tenure with the system. This prompted her to initiate the DC Public Library’s Illustrator Collection. At the time, Latimer recommended that the library purchase upwards of 800 picture books that she deemed worthy of “merit”. The collection now houses upwards of 20,000 primarily British and American books, many of which are first editions. To find out more about this interesting and unique collection, I interviewed Wendy Lukehart. Wendy is the Youth Collections Coordinator at DC Public Library and author of the article Louise Payson Latimer: Pioneer of Library Service to Children in Washington, DC. Wendy has become a fierce advocate for the collection, and one…
Tag: #illustrator
Random Radness @ #alaac15
A funny thing happened at the Metreon food court…some friends and I were admiring a woman’s Rad American Women A-Z (City Lights Publishers) tote bag. We just couldn’t resist going up to her and asking “Where did you get that cool bag?” She said, “I have a family connection.” A few minutes later, Rad American’s illustrator, Miriam Klein Stahl, walked up to us and we were introduced. In a Wayne’s World type moment, we all felt “not worthy!” Ms. Stahl was super gracious and nice, and gave us a stack of Patti Smith stickers. Just goes to show that ALA Annual is always full of surprising and lovely random moments….