{"id":34342,"date":"2025-10-30T00:01:32","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T04:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=34342"},"modified":"2025-10-18T08:18:42","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T12:18:42","slug":"four-exciting-treasures-from-the-baldwin-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2025\/10\/four-exciting-treasures-from-the-baldwin-library\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Exciting Treasures from the Baldwin Library"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As my time at the Baldwin Library<\/a> of Historical Children\u2019s Literature wound down in August, I found myself finalizing my time with my research boxes of choice (the Margaret Sidney papers) and beginning to ask the staff to bring me other little treasures within the archive, some of which I requested just so I could hold them in my own hands. The Baldwin Library is a treasure trove of historic children\u2019s literature materials, and if you are the next Bechtel fellow<\/a>, here are just a few of the exciting little things you can get your hands on too:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

An 1869 Copy of Little Women<\/strong>

As a Little Women obsessive, like many women, when I realized (far too late in my stay) that the Baldwin had an 1869 copy of Little Women, Part the First, I actually started tearing up. I asked for the staff to pull it from me before having to step out to take a work-related call, and by the time I was returning to the reading room, I felt like I was vibrating. And there it was, sitting on my little assigned desk, waiting for me to open it. Little Women was initially published in two parts, the first in 1868, so this is not a first edition, but it\u2019s pretty close. To hold a copy so old, and yet so familiar, was a delight.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cGiles Gingerbread\u201d tiny book, likely by John Newbery<\/strong>

The word \u201cNewbery\u201d means something very different in the library world of today than it did in the 18th century and yet John Newbery\u2019s impact still can be felt in so much of children\u2019s literature today. The Baldwin library has a bunch of VERY old little teensy books, and one of those is Giles Gingerbread<\/a>, a book about 3 inches tall and 31 tiny pages long, published in 1813 by Sidney\u2019s Press in London. Little books are always fascinating and adorable, but to hold something that likely was written by a father of children\u2019s literature was eye-opening. I cannot imagine having to catalog these tiny little things, but if you wanted to learn the alphabet through gingerbread, this book was ready for you!<\/p>\n\n\n

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A Sampler Commemorating Ruth Baldwin\u2019s Life & Legacy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a lovely digitized book that came out a few years ago called B is for Baldwin<\/em> that looks at different items of the Baldwin Library collection, and in those pages, I found a picture of a sampler by Dr. Gillian Avery, a powerhouse of children\u2019s literature herself, commemorating the life of Ruth Baldwin<\/a>, after whom the Baldwin Library is named and through whom its collection flourished. This sampler was completed in 1994 and is either embroidery or needlepoint (and I\u2019m not the one to ask..) but features eight different illustrations from 19th century children\u2019s literature that Baldwin collected, from books such as \u201cThe Paths of Learning Strewed with Flowers\u201d in 1820 and \u201cThe Frog Who Would a Wooing Go\u201d in 1858.<\/p>\n\n\n

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This was a special treat to get to see on my last day at the Baldwin. The sampler is not behind glass and not in the collection, but one of the librarians retrieved it for me from the curator\u2019s office where it was delicately tucked into tissue paper awaiting future preservation efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLady Green Satin and Her Maid Rosette\u201d edited by the 1st ever Newbery Medal Chair<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love the history of award committees, and often go down rabbit holes seeing who was on what committee, what book was NOT a winner each year, et cetera. I was delighted to realize that the Baldwin library had several books edited by Clara Whitehill Hunt<\/a>, the first ever chair of the Newbery Medal. Knowing what we know now about conflicts of interest, it\u2019s fascinating to see how intertwined with publishing the early committees were, but it was a different time. I picked, mostly at random, one of Hunt\u2019s edited books, a translation from the French originally published in 1923. It\u2019s a cute enough story about a boy named Jean and his performing mice, but it was the tone and relevance of the introduction, written by Hunt, that stopped me in my tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIt is the opinion of our most far-seeing leaders that one of the chief causes of war is the
ignorance of the great mass of people regarding those who speak a different language and live
under a different government from our own<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

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This is the 1920s, post World War I, so we can definitely see her inspiration, but even today this stands out as a reminder to us of the power of diverse children\u2019s literature to better prepare the leaders of tomorrow to be more knowledgeable and empathetic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m adding Lady Green Satin to my TBR pile posthaste, and not just for the funny little mice illustrations throughout. Maybe next year you\u2019ll be the ALSC Bechtel Fellow<\/a> and get to explore this fascinating collection too. What treasures of children\u2019s literature will you find?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photos courtesy of Aryssa Damron, ALSC member<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aryssa Damron<\/strong> is the 2025 ALSC Bechtel Fellow, studying the papers of Margaret Sidney. She is a school librarian in Washington, D.C. and the co-chair of the Children and Libraries Editorial Advisory Committee. She previously served on the Caldecott and Alex Award committees and chaired the 2024 Carnegie Medals for Excellence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As my time at the Baldwin Library of Historical Children\u2019s Literature wound down in August, I found myself finalizing my time with my research boxes of choice (the Margaret Sidney papers) and beginning to ask the staff to bring me other little treasures within the archive, some of which I requested just so I could hold them in my own hands. The Baldwin Library is a treasure trove of historic children\u2019s literature materials, and if you are the next Bechtel fellow, here are just a few of the exciting little things you can get your hands on too:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[12,134,16,209],"tags":[314,557],"class_list":["post-34342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards-scholarships","category-guest-blogger","category-professional-reading","category-research","tag-baldwin-library","tag-bechtel-fellowship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}