|
Home > Arts > Web site provides archival children’s book lists from Ball collectionBy Diane Brown | |
| Book lovers can now read the pages of a collection of rare, old editions of children’s books, thanks to an electronic archive compiled by an IUPUI English professor. The Elizabeth Ball Collection, housed at the Lilly Library at IU Bloomington, includes such volumes as a 1550 silver ABC book; The New England Primer, the most widely circulated schoolbook in America in the 17th and 18th centuries; a 1697 volume of Mother Goose Tales; and Beatrix Potter’s 1904 The Tale of Benjamin Bunny.
The Web site features an illustrated archival listing of the Ball collection, putting the volumes that educated and entertained children of yesteryear at the fingertips of anyone with Internet access. The archive also includes pages from a 1744 book published by John Newbery, and several illustrated by Randolph Caldecott, for whom the present day Newbery Medal and Caldecott Medal awards, respectively, are named. William Touponce, who teaches children’s literature at IUPUI, produced the Web site with the assistance of an IUPUI computer science student. “ “The site is used for my course at IUPUI in children’s literature, but it is becoming known nationally,” Touponce said. “It will soon be cited in the on-line version of The Encyclopedia Americana.” |
IU Home Pages
400 E. 7th Street. Bloomington, IN 47405
Phone: (812) 855-6494
Publication date: April 13, 2001
Comments: homepgs@indiana.edu
Copyright 2000, The
Trustees of Indiana University