The Retro Kid

Well, the secret's out. I was going to post about my new Flickr group, The Retro Kid some time next week, but John, my cohort in crime over at Drawn! went ahead and posted something about it today. No biggie, though! As I'm more than happy to let everyone know what this group is all about.

The Retro Kid is a Flickr group that I started up that focuses on children's book illustrations from the mid-40's through the the mid-60's, as that is one of my favorite eras for that sort of thing. But I don't want to limit it to just books, as I'm open to seeing anything that was illustrated for kids, such as textbooks, booklets, pamphlets, albums, 45's, ads, games, toys, etc. As long as it has that mid-century modern stylized look with the characters and colors, I'm down with it. Oh, and if it looks cool. Yeah. Cool.

In the description for the group, I mention some illustrators as examples that I dig -- Aurelius Battaglia, JP Miller, Art Seiden, The Provensens, Mary Blair, M. Sasek, and many more with similar styles. They were a prolific bunch, and I feel that there is not enough out there on the web about these incredibly talented artists to really get a sense of how influential they were. Thus, The Retro Kid was born. Hopefully this group will give exposure to these fantastic artists, and give credit where credit is due.

And now, I'm excited (and fascinated) to see what others have in their collection! So, dust off that stack of old books way back in the corner of your closet -- you remember the ones, right? With the ultra-cool drawings? -- and get 'em scanned and uploaded. We'd love to see what you got!

UPDATE: Yikes! I've been mentioned on Boing Boing! I've created a monster....