I get so many hits from people who've Googled Gladys Peto, but I'm fast running out of images from my copy of her Bedtime Stories. Here are a few more. (You can see all the others I've posted here.)
Luckily, over at the Last House in America, K S V Woolfoot - who's an expert on the subject, and original author of the artist's Wikipedia entry - has just posted some more GP illustrations from other sources for everyone to enjoy.
I was reading my six-year-old daughter some of these tales over the weekend. After we'd finished the third or fourth one, she remarked: 'These stories are a bit peculiar, because they get quite exciting and then, suddenly, they just stop.' And she's absolutely right.
Whether Peto was sticking to some pre-arranged number of words for each story and thus ran out of space, or whether she simply wasn't terrifically good at developing and ending a tale in a satisfactory way, I'm not sure. I don't have any of her other story-books, so I can't compare.
She did seem to have an unfortunate tendency for introducing some interesting characters and an exciting-looking adventure and then fizzling out and failing to deliver. The illustrations always made up for any disappointment I felt as a child, however (not that I remember feeling disappointed in any way - I always thought of this book as a special treat).
2 comments:
What lovely illustrations. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Juliet. Just back to look at these. Great scans. I loved the photos of your muddy island and its flora as well. Hard to believe that spring is so far advanced... Our latitude is about the same and it is still winter in Vermont.
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