holds the Parnassus Press records. The publishing house of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
gave its editorial papers from 1946 to 1980 to the New York Public Library, with plans to
donate more as they acquire archival status; among them is correspondence from Isaac
Bashevis Singer, the Nobel Prize winner who wrote stories and re-wrote folk-tales for
children.
At the de Grummond Collection in Mississippi there are more than 250 magazine
titles, including one published in 1788.
George Hess of Saint Paul willed some 60,000 dime novels, story papers and children’s
series books to the the University of Minnesota. Likewise, author Albert Johannsen after
collecting 8,000 dime novels for his book The House of Beadle and Adams and Its Dime
and Nickel Novels: The Story of a Vanished Literature (1950, 1962) donated his collection
to Northern Illinois University in deKalb. In more specialist vein, Indiana University holds
a complete run of the Amazing Spider Man (1963–1972) comic book.
Geographic AreaThe Northeastern Collection at the University of Connecticut Library in Storrs collects
materials by and about area authors and illustrators. Well-represented are Natalie
Babbitt (including her Tuck Everlasting (1975)) manuscripts, Ruth Krauss and husband
Crockett Johnson, and James Marshall. Avi also donated his collection of 1,600
historical children’s books. The Voorhees Rutgers University Art Museum in New
Brunswick, New Jersey holds the art of several artists in the state, including Roger
Duvoisin.
An increasingly common practice today is the designation of some institution in each
state to collect first or early editions of the children’s books by the state’s authors and
those with a setting in the state. The Iowa Collection in the Public Library of Des Moines
in Iowa is one such example. Another is the Phoenix Public Library, which collects work
by Arizona authors. One treasure is the manuscript dummy for Marguerite Henry’s
Brighty of the Grand Canyon (1953), her book about a burro.
Academic/Universities and CollegesThe Lilly rare-book library at the University of Indiana in Bloomington holds a
considerable number of first editions. In the Lilly and many other libraries are the
publications of the leading American publisher of toybooks in the nineteenth century,
McLoughlin Brothers. Among its unique holdings is The Brownies’ Book, a’monthly
magazine for the children of the sun’, a magazine for African-American children edited in
1920–1921 by W.E.B.Du Bois.
The Mugar Memorial Library, one of the Boston University Libraries in Massachusetts,
holds manuscripts by such notables as the science fiction novelist Isaac Asimov and the
boys’ sports writer John R.Tunis. In addition, it has manuscripts of several authors and
poets of African-American heritage, such as Rosa Guy, and Eloise Greenfield.
The Ruth Baldwin Collection at the University of Florida in Gainesville was
inaugurated in 1982, 40,000 of its 70,000 volumes were published before 1900.
544 LIBRARIES AND RESEARCH COLLECTIONS