Best in Children's Books, Volume 2 by Mary Macnab

Because they are not listed in the table of contents, only on the story itself, for a long time these works were not included in their bibliographies, so they can be attractive to completion-ist collectors. Probably the biggest attraction of this series are the contributing illustrators that were part of Doubleday’s freelance stable during this period.

However, this is not the case, since despite being released via a book club, they are not reprints of previous volumes. Most of the books in this series are priced cheaply, because many people mistakenly think of them as inferior ‘book club editions’. Classics might include adaptations of familiar tales like Robinson Crusoe or Gulliver’s Travels new stories were written about familiar folk and fairy tales, or retellings of mythology such as Pandora or Pegasus biographical stories about famous figures such as Abraham Lincoln or Napoleon were included to inspire an interest in history and each volume contained an informational piece on a different country accompanied by photographs.

Each volume contained a mix of classics, non-fiction, and also new stories. Each volume has a different collection of images on the spine, drawn from from some of the main stories in the volumes, to enable children to quickly select their favourite story from the shelf without having to scan the contents of the book. However, at least one volume appears to have been reprinted (Volume 18, which changed the country visit story) without any obvious indication other than the table of contents.Įach book was issued with a full colour dust jacket, but the volumes are much more commonly found without the dust jacket. Other reprints have the same contents and images, but a different coloured spine which often correlates to the colour of the duotone images inside the volumes.

The number of each volume is not indicated on the external binding, but can be found only via a very small number on the bottom right of the title page or on the back flap of the dust jacket if you have one (you can see in the image to the right that the title page of this volume is marked with a tiny ’15’.) A couple of volumes were reprinted with slightly different contents, and these are typically designated by the addition of a lower case “a” following the volume number (i.e. In total, there were 42 volumes published.

The ‘Best in Children’s Books’ series was released through the Doubleday Book Clubs from 1957 to the late 1960s.

Best in Children's Books, Volume 2 by Mary Macnab