Space Alphabet

In honor of Sputnik 1, 50 years later (on Oct. 4th), I present to you all a nice little gem of a book I got off of ebay about a year ago: Space Alphabet (1964) by Irene Zacks. Pictures by Peter P. Plasencia.

I found out about this book by checking out Dreams of Space: Space Art in Children's Books, which I bookmarked ages ago. It wasn't until just last year when I decided to see if there were any available on ebay, and sure enough, I found one! It was a library book, but I didn't care because it was listed has not having any marks inside. (Always a downer.) I normally don't scan an entire book, but here I made an exception because of just how cool the images were by Peter P. Plascencia. Simple, bold and direct. No excess details. Something to be learned from this, people. I'm serious. Pay attention to how he composed each page. I scanned the entire page -- no cropping at all -- so you can see how it looks to the viewer/reader. Nice balance between positive and negative space.

Not much about Plascenica out there in the internets, but the Dreams of Space site does feature his bio from the book.

Ava had a blast reading this book to Ezra the other night. Very fun imagery with simple colors and simple text. Not often do you get the word "dirigible" in a children's book. Ezra was a little upset that E was for "Earth" and not "Ezra." Seemed a little confounded by that one.

View the entire book here: Space Alphabet: Flickr set.

Below you'll see some pages from the book. Click on each image to view its Flickr page, then choose "All sizes" to view larger:














Hey, checkit. LAIKA! By the way, not only is "Laika" the name of the first dog in space, it is the name of a dog breed from the word Layat, which means to bark. (Thanks, Lev!) FYI: Laika was on board the second Sputnik mission: Sputnik 2.







Happy Sputnik Day!

The Retro Kid hits 1000

Image courtesy of Glen Mullaly.

Well, would you look at that! The Flickr group that I started up, The Retro Kid, recently passed the 1000 mark for members! This is amazing. I started this particular group on July 27th, 2006 -- or, I should say re-started The Retro Kid.

Allow me to explain: For those who've been there in the beginning, you would remember that I started the original Retro Kid on August 12, 2005. It was a modest start, starting with a few members whom I had invited from my close circle of Flickr contacts -- those who had the same sensibilities when it came to vintage mid-century artwork. Once we started to get some great examples of children's book illustrations, Robot Johnny at Drawn! posted about it, which, in turn, was then mentioned on the mother of all blogs: Boing Boing. The membership grew exponentially from there. By May of 2006, we were about to hit the 500 membership mark.

Then, I made a big mistake. After getting some rude comments from a troll in our discussions, I decided to make the group a private one, therefore keeping out any unwanted idiots. I figured, hey, when the dust settles, I'll just make the group a public one again. Unfortunately, I didn't read the rules on this sort of thing and it suddenly dawned on me that I couldn't do that. I couldn't turn back The Retro Kid into a public group anymore. Anyone who was not a member, who might've visited the group's link on a site or blog, would get a big ugly page saying that this group is PRIVATE and only intended for invited members only. And this killed me. I never wanted to make it private -- my sole purpose for The Kid was to have an open place for artists, animators, illustrators, etc. to come and be inspired. I never intended it to be some sort of private club.

So, after many weeks of thinking about it and asking Kid members about it, I decided to wipe the slate clean and start over again. But I was extremely worried over this action. My fear was that I was going to loose the interest of all our members, that the group's submissions from here on out would not be as high quality as what we had before. To make sure that this wouldn't happen, I contacted everyone who had submitted something in the first Retro Kid and begged and pleaded with them to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE re-submit their images to the new Retro Kid. I think I was typing all of my begging while on my knees. I so badly wanted to keep The Retro Kid as it was: one of the finest Flickr groups around by being the best resource for children's book illustrations from the 40's, 50's, and 60's that you could find.

So now, here I sit, looking at the membership number: 1,009, and I realize that all my worrying was unnecessary. Reaching this mark only took just over a year! This has been one incredible journey for me. To be able to know that there are so many people out there who have the same love of old things as I have, who are willing to share with us their collections. Incredible. It's so cool to see this pet project of mine turn into something substantial and oh so fun for us artists (and others) to enjoy.

If you're not a member of The Retro Kid, why not? You're missing out! Stop on by and check out the group's pool. Lots of great stuff to see!

PS: for fun, check this out.

Here are some other fine examples that you'll mostly likely find in The Retro Kid:


Image courtesy of MrMack.


Image courtesy of rock-paper-scissors.


Image courtesy of Julia (Ticky Tacky).


Image courtesy of grickily.


Image courtesy of Glen Mullaly.


Image courtesy of David at Klockarp Foundation.


Image courtesy of Eric Sturdevant.


Image courtesy of Leif Peng.

There's more. Many more! Over 3,500 images! Join now!

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....