A Nostalgic Trip Through Kids’ Books

Imaginative regression back to grammar-school days is probably good for the soul, but some people feel guilty about it. After all, grown-ups are supposed to act like adults. A good tactic for having it both ways is offered by a current encyclopedic charmer of an exhibition at UCLA’s Hammer Museum, “Picturing Childhood: Illustrated Children’s Books From the University of California Collections, 1550-1990.”

Consisting of more than 400 volumes, drawings, toys and games, it’s the kind of show that permits you to wallow in puerile nostalgia while pretending to get educated.

Some visitors, for example, may be surprised to learn that before the mid-18th century, there were no children. Among the literate classes, kids were regarded as miniature adults, dressed accordingly and expected to learn from the same kinds of boring tomes. Such works deemed appropriate were sternly confined to matters of education and moral edification. It hadn’t dawned on anybody that kids would learn better if amused in the process.

John Amos Comenius’ 1658 “The Visible World in Pictures” is considered a breakthrough work in reforming education to recognize the special needs of the young. A classic for two centuries, it looks pretty gray today. There is a harbinger of things to come in an anonymous 16th century volume on geometry that has three-dimensional fold-outs.

We see the gradual development of wooden paddles inscribed with alphabets and prayers known as hornbooks. Battledores were folded pieces of paper that acted as forerunners of alphabet blocks and other instructional games.

It’s hard for anybody who grew up in this century to conceive a time when the most ordinary childhood companions weren’t “Cinderella,” “Puss in Boots,” “Little Red Riding Hood” and other fairy tales we regard as classics. Actually, they existed for centuries as oral tradition, but printed versions were rare, handmade and confined to the upper crust.

The dawn of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and innovations in print technology made them into an economically viable and aesthetically vivid product for middle-class families, along with moral tales that continued to housebreak innocent tykes. Now at least the pill was packaged in colored sugar.

This exhibition is engrossing from first to last, but it really takes off in sections devoted to pop-up books, toys and games. We learn that German designer and puppeteer Lothar Meggendorfer (1847-1925) is credited as the inventor of the modern movable book.

Examples on view are marvels of ingenuity like “The Doll’s House,” which unfolds into a quaint little four-room dwelling with a shop-front, living quarters, kitchen and garden. British peep shows depicting such marvels as “The Thames Tunnel” and “The Great Exhibition of 1851” carry the enchantment of a first-remembered Christmas.

Until the 19th century, most illustrators of children’s books were anonymous. When the exhibition arrives at the epoch of books by artists like Gustave Dore and Kate Greenaway, it turns into something as personal as a family album. At this point, every visitor is guaranteed his or her unique rush of individually tailored nostalgia.

Mine came from Palmer Cox’s Brownie books. First published in 1887, they were still around in the children’s section of the downtown library where I more or less grew up. Each of his teeming drawings seemed to include about a zillion figures, each an individualized character. I always looked for the brownie in top hat and tails, my gentlemanly role model.

Some artists became so identified with certain texts, it’s virtually impossible for anybody else to illustrate them. “Alice in Wonderland” without John Tenniel’s pictures is just plain unacceptable. Even an illustrator as gifted as Barry Moser couldn’t dislodge him. “Pinocchio” belongs to the Disney animators, period.

The section on the 20th century is a bit of a shock. The work of Maxfield Parrish, Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac looks like illustrations for very precocious kids. Kay Nielsen’s ornamental images for “1,000 Nights” are sexy, decadent and sophisticated with their intimations of Aubrey Beardsley and Persian miniatures. Come to think of it I don’t know why I’m surprised. I liked them before I regressed to Palmer Cox. Childhood isn’t as innocent as it’s cracked up to be.

The exhibition was organized by Cynthia Burlingham, Karen Mayers and Patricia Waldron for the university’s Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts. Pity there’s no catalog.

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UCLA at the Armand Hammer Museum and Cultural Center, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., through June 29. Closed Mondays, (310) 443-7000.