Wednesday, May 21, 2008

wednesday = books

Today I'm going to show you my favorite book from last week's stack of books photo:


Title: The Girl in the White Hat
Author: W.T. Cummings
Illustrator: W.T. Cummings
Copyright: 1959
Publisher: Whittlesey House

I really love the compositions, illustration style & colors!







9 comments:

* elizabeth * said...

Oh my! I am in LOVE. these illustrations are so sweet and simple and not at the same time. easy to glance at but nice enough to sit and explore details awhile. does that make any sense? you read vintage children's books as much as I do, so maybe it does?

Unknown said...

Love. There arent words to express how cute and great that book is!

I love that there are only a few colors that are used and that is it. I need to do something like that some day.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing the book!!

Wouldn't that roller coaster look neat embroidered in black with little beads as lights??? A big project take on, but neat!!

Claire said...

The illustrations are lovely - I'd love a white hat I could have adventures in! I relised that I hadn't replied about the moomins - they were really popular in the 70's in the UK and were originally adapted by the books by Tove Jansson, and as a cartoon with the characters made from fuzzy felt - they were a bit odd but I loved them x

Victoria said...

Utterly delightful!
The colors, the graphics, the line...
Great find, thanks for sharing!

read me... said...

i SO need this book in my collection... how lovely!!

Azor said...

As you have seen posted in another of my comments, my family and I have a "familial" connection to Bill Cummings.
During one of our visits Bill explained to me why the books are printed in such limited colors. In order to keep print costs down, he was allowed to use only black and two colors (plus the white of the paper itself.) When the two colors were overlaid, a third color was created. In some pictures he was able to use a screen of black to create gray tones, however he never screened gray tones over color, only on white.

"The Girl in the White Hat" was printed in red and green to make brown.

"Miss Esta Maude's Secret" was printed in gold and red to make rust.

"The Kid" was printed in gold and blue to make olive green.

"Wickford of Beacon Hill" was printed in yellow and teal to make green.

I hope this helps add more appreciation to his genius.

Azor said...

It's Azor again. I misspoke. On one page in "The Girl in the White Hat" there is gray screen over color. You can see the image of the dark brown house in the scan above. That detal is a story point... "They all lived in a tall dark house." I've double checked my copies and I can't find another occurence. Sorry for the mislead.

Emilie said...

Dear Azor--

Is "W.T." (aka Bill) the William Thomas Cummings who is described below:

Author Info
William Thomas Cummings
William Thomas Cummings
(1924 - 2006)
Liberal Christian clergyman and long-time peace activist with international stature.