All About: #autoarchives

We've held onto this month's All About Transport blog post to bring you a selection of the Collection and Exhibition Team's favorite modes of transport for #autoarchives.  It is #ExploreArchives week afterall.  Don't forget to let us know your favorite mode of transport in children's books. 

Original artwork by Helen Craig for 'Angelina's Birthday'. HCr/01/04/04 Artwork © Helen Craig. Photography © Seven Stories – The National Centre for Children’s Books

I love the red bike that Angelina gets for her birthday, the excitement of getting a shiny new bike is phenomenal, Helen Craig conveys that so well through her beautiful illustrations.  We gave our daughter a bike basket just like Angelina’s when she was 7 and decorated our garden in much the same way that Angelina did with streamers and balloons.

Sarah McGlynn – Touring Coordinator

Section about materials in the Ladybird Book 'How to Make: Flying Models Photography © Seven Stories – The National Centre for Children’s Books

Spotting the difference between Ladybird books has become a habit of mine. There are just so many editions, so many similar titles and just so many books.  I had started to count editions of Ladybirds about motorcars to make this point.  I counted ten and then got distracted by a huge pile of ‘Tootles the Taxi’, before I finally realised how arbitrary such a count would be because I couldn’t decide when to draw the line.  Then I decided I wanted to write about Hovercrafts in Ladybird books before stumbling on this gem: ‘How to Make: Flying Models’. Ladybird have written about everything.  This book teaches us not only how to make the PERFECT paper aeroplane but how to make planes from wood – really committed crafting.  What this little task has made me realise is that people survived without the internet because they had Ladybird books.  The internet?  Please ask me about the Ladybird title ‘How to Internet Shop’ for #autoarchives

Danielle McAloon – Collections and 

Exhibition Assistant

Original artwork with annotations, by Barabara Jones for Timothy Tramcar, c. 1950. These illustrations show the campaign in favour of the trams, and a bus leaving poor Timothy in his wake. Photography © Seven Stories – The National Centre for Children’s Books

I love the artwork by Barbara Jones for Timothy Tramcar. It was actually one of the first ever artworks I saw when starting work at Seven Stories, and it stuck with me ever since. The artwork in places is quite psychedelic, and I was really excited to get to work in a place that uncovered such intriguing books! Recently I researched it further for a blog post, and the history of it I still find quite fascinating, particularly the illustrator’s involvement in documenting the dramatic changes in post war life around the UK, and how this feeds in to the story.

Alison Fisher – Exhibition Curator

Draft material by Elisabeth Beresford for her series of Wombles Titles. Photography © Seven Stories – The National Centre for Children’s Books. 

The Wombles are the perfect urban citizen. They keep to themselves, clean up rubbish, and have a strong sense of community. I love the fact that they form their lives around recycled material and objects, and are always having creative, if far-fetched, inventive ideas. In a story draft called ‘The Conservation Car’, the author Elisabeth Beresford describes how the Wombles come across a giant magnet and want to put it to use. It happens that fuel prices are too high for them to drive their car (a hotchpotch of castaway human objects) – so they attach the magnet to the front of it and get pulled along by an unwitting lorry. I’m sure they were the furriest hitchers the driver has ever had.

Charlie Shovlar – Career Development 

Module work placement student

Photographs from translated editions of 'The Little Train' illustrated by Edward Ardizzone. Editions include Japanese, Spanish and Afrikaans.  Photography © Seven Stories – The National Centre for Children’s Books.

I’m fascinated by the foreign editions of The Little Train book, illustrated by Edward Ardizzone in the 1973 which we’ve recently acquired.  Excuse the pun but there’s an intriguing story attached to the publication of The Little Train, which was written by Graham Greene and originally illustrated by Dorothy Craigie in 1946.  Seven Stories holds the original illustrations by both Craigie and Ardizzone and it is really interesting to see how they each chose to illustrate the same story, in their own different styles and media.  What I love about the foreign editions of the books is that not only has the text of the main story been translated as one would expect, but Ardizzone’s hand written text which is overlaid within his illustrations has also been translated e.g. in the labels on the map of the Little Train’s journey and in text written within speech bubbles.  Sometimes this has caused a practical problem for the translator / publisher so that in the Japanese, Spanish, Afrikaans, Norwegian, and Swedish editions of the book, you can clearly see where Ardizzone’s original text has been overwritten and hasn’t quite been disguised!  I also love comparing the text in all the different languages to see how the translator has coped with some of the more unusual words.  It’s particularly fun looking at the black ‘Stop – Boomp – Woosh…. Bump – Clang – Whee - Bang’ page and the very last ‘Puff, puff, puff’ page of the book.

Paula Wride – Collection Officer

All About: Tramcars

A brand new year, and a whole new theme of blog posts ahead of us! For the new year of 2016, we will be saying farewell to the All About Animal posts of 2015, instead taking an in depth monthly look at transport in the Seven Stories Collection. We will be covering some of the more conventional methods of transport - walking, cars, boats, etc - but will also be delving in to those very special methods of getting around reserved for children's books. Travel by castle, anyone?

More of castles in February. To kick off the new year, we are going to showcase the more humble mode of transport, the tramcar. A transportation not as frequently seen in many towns and cities in the UK as in the past - the only working trams in the north east of England reside at Beamish Open Air Museum - but the story and illustration of this particular tramcar is entrancing nevertheless. Timothy Tramcar, written by Edith Ray Gregorson and illustrated by Barbara Jones, was first published circa 1950 by Railway World. 

Printed edition of Timothy Tramcar, by Edith Ray Gregorson and Barbarba Jones, published c. 1950 by Railway World

Seven Stories holds the majority of the beautiful original pen and ink line drawings for this book, as well as some colour artwork. There is, however, very little related material to tell us about the book. The collection includes some material created by B.C. Bloomfield (1931-2002), who acquired the artwork as part of his private collection of the work of Barbara Jones. Bloomfield can be seen through his correspondence trying hard to discern the date of publication, but no concrete evidence was found, other than it must have been published before the publishing company was taken over in 1960. 

The story of Timothy Tramcar follows the battle within a small town between the old fashioned tram system and the new and controversial buses. Told with an expectedly heavy bias on behalf of the trams, (the book was put out by the publishers 'Railway World' after all!), it sees a local politician try and force out the trams, until a popular campaign and the politician being saved from ice and snow leads to the eventual victory of the trams! 

Printed sheets of photographs of various trams from around the UK. These appear to have been prints collected by Barbara Jones as part of her research for the illustrations. 

The book's illustrator, Barbara Jones (1912-1978), was active in publishing from the 1940s to the 1970s. Known as an illustrator and landscape painter, she studied at the Royal College of Art before going on to contribute heavily to the 'Pilgrim Trust Recording Britain Project'. This employed artists to record life on the home front during the Second World War, collected by the National Gallery, and inspired by a desire to capture and reflect the rapid changes happening within Britain. There is an interesting correlation here to the subject of Timothy Tramcar, and his fight (and victory) over changes in the town. 

The material held in the archive relates purely to the illustration of the book. How the book was written, or even many details about the author, are difficult to find. If anyone reading this is able to let us know more about Edith Ray Gregorson, or how she came to be writing about these tramcars, it would be wonderful to know!

Original artwork by Barbara Jones for Timothy Tramcar, c. 1950. This illustation captures the mood of the trams returning to the depot, at threat of being wiped out!

Original artwork with annotations, by Barabara Jones for Timothy Tramcar, c. 1950. These illustrations show the campaign in favour of the trams, and a bus leaving poor Timothy in his wake.

If you'd like to find out more about the Seven Stories Collection, then 

email: collections@sevenstories.org.uk or phone: 0191 495 2707 or comment on this blog.