" Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares."So begins the story of A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett - and the preferred version for me illustrated (as pictured) by Ethel Franklin Betts. I took this book out of the library as a child so often that the librarian finally refused to let me take it out any longer telling me I had to choose another book. So was the ultimate revenge finding a wonderful copy of this in a used book store for five bucks years ago or becoming a children's librarian myself? (This is where my older children would roll their eyes and just say that is too geeky to be a revenge of any sort!).
Thanks to the listed blog below for the photo - only one that came up googled and my camera is not yet sympathetic to the new computer or I'd take a photo myself.
2 comments:
What a great name, "Library Mermaid"! I am glad you love that picture of Sarah Crewe. I found it loose from its book, for sale as a print, such a sad orphaned state! So photographing it to post it seemed a bit like rescuing Sarah herself.
This was also the the illustrator for the book I read as a child. There's a bunch more about Sarah and Frances Hodgson Burnett elsewhere in my blog if you are interested. There's also an image of a lovely cover by Garth Williams for the big golden book of elves and fairies.
Thanks, Betsy, for the photo and the heads up on more of my beloved Sarah :)
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