Every year at it's mid-Winter Conference the American Library Association presents the Caldecott Award "to the artist of the most distinguished American picturebook for children." In addition to the Medal award, several Honor awards are presented to the runner-ups in the category. The awards were announced this past Monday, Feb. 2, 2015. The day of […]
Searching For The First Forty Caldecott Medal Books I recently performed a search for first editions of the first forty Caldecott Medal books (covering the award years 1938-thru-1978) to determine the number of books currently being offered for sale. The search was identical to an internet search I completed a couple of years ago, and […]
First Edition Identification Points – Very Hungry Caterpillar The Very Hungry Caterpillar, A Seriously Rare Edition A first edition of Eric Carle’s 1969 The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a very difficult book to find. Prior to 2013, in twenty years of collecting children’s picturebooks, I had never seen a first edition copy for sale. Sadly, […]
Identifying First Edition Beginner Books A couple of years ago I posted a series of blog articles which provided identification points for the first fifty Beginner Books, and later collected them into one permanant webpage (see Identifying First Edition Beginner Books). The articles included identification points for each book, and provided the publication sequence along […]
Searching For The Second Twenty Caldecott Medal Books A couple of months ago we performed an internet search for the first editions of the first twenty Caldecott Medal books to determine the number of books currently being offered for sale, and similar to past searches, calculate the average selling price. This past week we performed […]
While eBay is not the bookselling venue it once was, I continue to regularly purchase collectible children’s books on the site. I’ve been a buyer of collectible children’s books on eBay since 1998 and perform about 50 saved searches weekly. Over the past five years the quality and quantity of collectible children’s books listed on eBay […]
Experienced booksellers and book collectors have come upon the front flaps of dust jackets with the top or bottom corner clipped, yet, strangely the books’ price still evident on the uncut corner. Why is the DJ’s corner cut off and the price still evident? Why cut the book’s corner at all? This mystery is explained […]
A first edition The Little House is a scarce bird, rarely sighted in public. First edition copies of Virginia Lee Burton’s 1943 Caldecott Medal winning book are one of the scarcest contemporary children’s picturebook to find. One is currently being offered for sale on ABEBooks. It can be yours for $12,500. [Caveat emptor: I have […]
A first edition Curious George sold at Heritage Auctions for $26,290. This surpasses the $21,850 paid for the first edition Curious George sold at PBA Galleries in 2007. The Heritage sale took place in the September 2011 Beverly Hills Signature Rare Books Auction. The link to the Curious George lot #37070 at Heritage (you will […]
