Belated happy summer, everyone! I’ve been so busy working on Rereading Our Childhood, the podcast that my friend Deborah Kalb and I launched back in May, that I’ve been woefully neglecting the world of a hundred years ago. But I’ve missed it. Summer is peak nostalgia season, so this feeling intensified after I left an especially cold and rainy Cape Town winter for summer in California, Colorado, and, now, Washington, D.C. I missed the trips to the beach of years past,
and the boating expeditions,
and even the summer storms.
My last post on magazine covers, back in the winter, turned up much to ponder,
but as far as artistry went I was underwhelmed. I worried, as I occasionally have, that magazine covers had peaked sometime in the 1910s. My fears were unfounded, though—the summer 1923 covers revealed summer, and magazine artistry, in all their colorful glory.
Summer kicked off in June with a “school’s out” celebration
and graduates taking wing.
There were dips in the sea
and fishing at the lake
and flowers galore.
Also, chickens.
July
July started off with a celebration of the Glorious Fourth,
and then we got in the car
and headed off to the beach
and then to the countryside.
In August, we’ve been savoring the last few weeks of the season—spending time with the kids,
enjoying the last peaches of the season,
and wishing that summer would stay with us for just a few more weeks.
Enjoy it while it lasts, everyone!
New on Rereading Our Childhood:
Rereading Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsberg
Rereading Henry Reed, Inc. by Keith Robertson
Rereading Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
Rereading The Children of Green Knowe by L.M. Boston
Rereading Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
Rereading “B” is for Betsy by Carolyn Haywood
Rereading Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol
Thanks for sharing these — they are really fabulous and each one is worth discussing. (I had to look carefully to be sure that St. Nicholas cover wasn’t about alien abductions….) Lots of artists doing things that surprised me. They are to be savored with many re-readings.
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Thanks, Susan! I agree that it was a particularly good crop of photos, with lots of familiar illustrators and some new to me. I also wondered what was going on on that St. Nicholas cover.
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I too was struck by that St. Nicolas one. Striking as a composition and mysterious as to its story. And having grown up in a dark sky rural landscape, evocative of summer for me.
The kid toddle-running from the surf would be someone’s social media clip now-a-days.
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Yes, that enigmatic St. Nicholas cover is quite a departure from their usual kids-having-wholesome fun fare.
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