Jim and Judy - 1947

Jim and Judy, by Arthur I. Gates, Miriam Blanton Huber, and Celeste Comegys Peardon, is a typical early reader book from the Work-Play Books of that era. This particular edition is from 1947, but this is a book that had several reprints from when it first came out in 1939 from The Macmillan Company.  There were several artists that contributed to this book, with the design and illustrations being credited to Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge, Charles B. Falls, David Hendrickson, Lucile Patterson Marsh, Herbert Stoops, Katherine Sturges, and Adolph Treidler.

When I bought this book, I picked it up primarily because I liked the silhouetted cover design, which you can see below in the pictures of the front and back. The end papers lining the cover also have a fun one color illustration of a farm play set.  However, the illustrations in the inside are a classic example of the family oriented books of the 1940s.  I've included a few of the nicer examples from the book below.  You can tell how the style changed slightly depending on who had been hired to illustrate that particular story.