
Book Recommendations for a Friend

Bill Peet was a children’s author and illustrator who was also heavily involved in Disney’s early animated features. I found a copy of his autobiography at a library book sale yesterday and heartily commend it to you. His life story isn’t all that interesting, but I loved his anecdotes (some unpleasant) about working at Disney in its infancy. And the illustrations are delightful.
This is one of the funniest academic books I’ve read.
Books I read a significant part of, but did not finish:
My favorite of Doug Wilson’s books is free on Kindle right now.
That I’ve been reading lately.
Some books are to be treated courteously, others graciously, and some few to be embraced and surrendered to.
A few years ago I was cataloguing the library of an eminent theologian, and I started to take pictures of the most interesting book covers. Here you are.
It wasn’t so much the cover of this one as the note inside.
Messing around with book titles.
One of the earliest and strictest lessons to the children of the house being how to turn the pages of their own literary possessions lightly and deliberately, with no chance of tearing or dog’s ears.
Ruskin, preface to Sesames and Lilies
And my ambition now is (is it a vain one?) to be read by Children aged from Nought to Five. To be read? Nay, not so! Say rather to be thumbed, to be cooed over, to be dogs’-eared, to be rumpled, to be kissed, by the illiterate, ungrammatical, dimpled Darlings, that fill your Nursery with merry uproar, and your inmost heart of hearts with a restful gladness!
Lewis Carroll, preface to The Nursery Alice
Child! do not throw this book about;
Hilaire Belloc, dedication of A Bad Child’s Book of Beasts
Refrain from the unholy pleasure
of cutting all the pictures out!
Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.
The first two quotes are from this article. The last I found in my copy of Barlett’s Familiar Quotations.
Until recently, I’ve sided with Ruskin and Belloc, but I’m starting to see the wisdom of Carroll’s ambition.