The 20th Century Children's Book Treasury, Selected by Janet Schulman

The 20th Century Children's Book Treasury: Celebrated Picture Books and Stories to Read Aloud
Selected by Janet Schulman
Alfred A. Knopf, 1998
$40.00; ISBN: 9780679886471

Review by Amy Brozio-Andrews

If you're happy to read to your kids but your back just sometimes can't take carrying a ton of picture books around, The 20th Century Children's Book Treasury may be a worthwhile investment. Okay, yes, it is ten years old (with an added list of new not-to-be-missed books added by anthology editor Janet Schulman in 2005) but it's got such a nice variety of books that it's worth a look. And if your kids are as voracious about books as mine are, it's nice to hand them one book and know that they've got more than 40 stories at their fingertips.

Within the heavy paper pages and oversized covers, 44 much-loved picture books have been reproduced. For some books, the multi-page reproduction onto a single page works more smoothly than others, but in general, it's a nice treat to be able to sit down and read book after book with a child. There are a number of recent favorites as well as classics and award-winners like A Chair for My Mother (1982), The Snowy Day (1962), Make Way for Ducklings (1941), and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (1939).

Veteran children's book writer and editor Janet Schulman has selected a broad selection of popular 20th century favorites, from Wanda Gag's Millions of Cats (1928) to Stan and Jan Berenstain's The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree (1978) to Jannell Cannon's Stellaluna (1993). Schulman includes a color-coded symbol at the bottom of the pages so that it's easy to find the selections most appropriate for very young readers to preschoolers and early elementary school aged children. The reprints in the book include board books like Helen Oxenbury's I Hear, I See, I Touch (1985) and Peggy Rathman's Good Night, Gorilla (1994) plus books for older readers like Peggy Parish's Amelia Bedelia (1963).

The book is in no way meant to replace all of the stand-alone picture books -- for example, Schulman notes that Stellaluna includes scientific details about bats that kids will probably appreciate before the reprint begins. Amelia Bedelia and Petunia have been lightly edited for length (but the rest of the stories are complete reprints). In a few cases, like Millions of Cats, some illustrations are missing and in others, the art and text are compressed into a fewer number of pages. Rather than substitute for the original books, Schulman's anthology is more like a great appetizer, where parents and kids can sample more than three dozen great children's books (all in one sitting if you really wanted to!).

Schulman rounds out her book with a title/author/illustrator index. She also includes a list of books that correspond to very broad reading ages (young, younger, youngest), plus a section of brief biographical notes about the authors.

While the $40 list price is pretty steep, most online booksellers are offering the title with a pretty significant discount, dropping the price down to around $25 and making it a much more affordable purchase for families with a real passion for reading.