I’m looking for a collection of children’s short stories that my mom read as a child (either read herself or had them read to her – her memory is fuzzy). She was born in 1944. She remembers illustrations in the book and the book having a story about a fox and a little red hen. Any information or leads you can provide would be awesome!
Based on sheer popularity and the number of people who remember the Red Hen story, I’d guess the Better Homes and Gardens storybook. Ask her if the story was written as a rebus–with small pictures instead of the words for hen, cat, mouse, cake etc.
Hi. Thanks so much for the BHG suggestion. My mom looked over versions of the book online and it doesn’t seem right. She is so excited though because this is the closest we have come in years! So even if this is where we end up, it is better than nothing.
The date on the BHG book seems a bit late. The first publishing was in 1950, which means she would have been 6 and a bit old for this book. It would have been a book available starting around 1947/48.
I asked her if she could remember any other clues and in the little red hen story she remembers the hen standing on the fireplace and the fox in the house trying to get the hen.
She says she does not remember the night before christmas or peter pan being in the book.
Do these additional clues help?
Oh, I know this book! It’s ‘The Golden Book of Nursery Tales’ (A Big Golden Book) by Elsa Jane Werner and illustrated by Tibor Gergely (1948).
The story of The Little Red Hen and the Fox is on page 57 and has two pictures (black-and-white sketches) on the first page. One (at the bottom of the left column) shows the hen walking in through her door, wearing a little white apron and with a basket of goodies over her “arm” (wing) with the fox hiding behind the door. The other picture, at the center of the right hand column, shows the hen perched on top of the fireplace while the fox runs in circles around it. It’s drawn to show the motion – the fox has “movement lines” around him, indicating that he is running in circles, while the hen’s head and neck are drawn nine times (like she’s moving so fast to keep an eye on the fox that she’s just a blur). The next page concludes the story and has pictures of the fox sleeping under a tree while the hen cuts her way out of his sack with a large pair of scissors, the hen sewing up the sack, and the fox sweating and struggling under the weight of his sack, after the hen has filled it with a large stone. This story does not have color illustrations, but many of them do.
Other stories in the book include common stories, like The Three Bears, The Three Little Pigs, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Gingerbread Boy, Little Red Riding Hood, The Little Red Hen, Chicken Little, etc. and less common offerings such as The Fierce Yellow Pumpkin, The Magic Pot, The Little Boy Who Tried To Obey (a version of Epaminodas and his Auntie – but with a little white boy), The Lion-Hearted Kitten, The Cap That Mother Made, The Boasting Bamboo, Silly Will, The Little Scarecrow Boy, Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse, Bobo and the Roast Pig, The Monkey and the Crocodile, The Penny Doll, The Huckabuck Family and How They Raised Popcorn In Nebraska and Quit and Came Back, The Husband Who Was to Mind the House, and Pelle’s New Suit, plus many more.
The front cover is dark blue and shows a little girl asleep in her bed. There is a doll draped over the foot of the bed and a teddy bear on the floor. A puppy sleeps in a basket at the foot of the bed and there’s a kitten looking into the basket. On the floor near the head of the bed are a dollhouse and a couple of mice. Above the girl, there are flowered curtains that sort of fade out into a starry sky that is filled with the characters from the stories in the book, like the girl is dreaming about them.
The original edition with the blue cover is really hard to find, even in shabby condition, but there are later printings with a green cover. One is still called ‘The Golden Book of Nursery Tales’ and has a whole bunch of the story characters walking through an ornate set of gates. The other is simply titled ‘Nursery Tales’ (A Golden Storytime Book) and has the same collection of characters, but without the gates. Both versions are edited/selected by Elsa Jane Werner and illustrated by Tibor Gergely, and are similar to the original. I have not seen inside the green version of ‘The Golden Book of Nursery Tales’ so can’t tell you how similar it is to the blue one. I have seen images of the other green one and can say that it is not identical. The original blue version (and an even older orange version, published by Simon and Schuster) are 146 pages long, but ‘Nursery Tales – A Golden Storytime Book’ is only 96 pages long, so either they cut some of the stories altogether or they condensed them, dropped a few pictures, and packed them in tighter (as they also did with many of the Little Golden Books). I suspect that they’ve dropped stories, because the pictures I’ve seen online for specific stories match up exactly in terms of text and image placement to the ones in my copy. Also, in ‘Nursery Tales’ they’ve colored in most (if not all) of the pictures, including those that were black-and-white sketches in the original. Also, the full-color pictures have changed a bit. It’s the same basic picture, but some things are colored differently and the overall quality of the picture isn’t as good. It’s like someone took Tibor Gergely’s original pictures and tried to redraw them, but didn’t quite get it right. They’re more cartoon-y I guess, like where the originals used depth of shading and complex color to convey details, these just use black lines and outlines against a much simpler color palate.
Another possibility: The Tall Book of Nursery Tales, 1944, illustrated by the unmistakeable Feodor Rojankovsky. According to this – http://www.worldcat.org/title/tall-book-of-nursery-tales/oclc/522836
– there are 24 stories. Seven of them are from Aesop. It includes BOTH “Little Red Hen and the Fox” and “Little Red Hen.”
You can see three pictures from “Little Red Hen and the Fox” here:
http://deepfriar.wordpress.com/2011/11/
More pictures from other stories in the book here:
http://lynnewsnyder.blogspot.com/2008/09/tall-book-of-nursery-tales.html
Could this be Watty Piper’s Nursery Stories for Children (or another of the Platt & Munk collections)? The fox and hen story sounds like one they published as The Rooster, the Mouse, & the Little Red Hen, illustrated by Eulalie. It appeared as a standalone, in two-in-ones, and in at least one collection.
Hi Everyone, thanks so much for all the suggestions. We’ve been looking into all the books and Chanda’s suggestion is the right one! Thanks so much, my mom is beyond excited. She really can’t believe she finally found it!
I still have the Better Homes and Gardens book from my childhood and that wonderful story is indeed in there. It has rebus illustrations!