A first edition The Little House is a scarce bird, rarely sighted in public. First edition copies of Virginia Lee Burton’s 1943 Caldecott Medal winning book are one of the scarcest contemporary children’s picturebook to find. One is currently being offered for sale on ABEBooks. It can be yours for $12,500.
[Caveat emptor: I have no affiliation to the bookseller, nor to sale of this particular book. The bookseller, Raptis Rare Books is a reputable member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America.]
Here is the link to the item, The Little House, with the following description, courtesy Raptis Rare Books:
First edition of one of the rarest and most sought after children’s classics. Oblong quarto, original blue cloth. Light rubbing to the spine tips, a near fine copy in an excellent unrestored dust jacket that shows a small chip to the crown of the spine and some light wear. Small ink inscription opposite the title page. This book and dust jacket are usually seen with restoration, this copy is exceptionally clean and bright. “Once upon a time there was a Little House way out in the country. She was a pretty Little House and she was strong and well built.” So begins Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House, winner of the prestigious Caldecott Medal in 1943. Housed in a custom clamshell box.
There is only one, perhaps two, first edition Caldecott books which are harder to find. This is one of the few first edition Caldecott Medal books not in my collection. Sigh. If only.
In 2007 a copy of The Little House sold at PBA Galleries auction for nearly $10,000.
The prices of first edition Caldecott Medal books have escalated in the past five years. Impressive in the face of the nation’s economy, this Great Recession. The escalated prices have not resulted in additional first editions hitting the market. If anything, the opposite is true – there is less supply of first edition Caldecott Medal books on the market today than five years ago. In general, I think this applies to collectible first edition picturebooks.
Ironically it is not just the scarce books which are scarce. Even some of the more common first edition Caldecott Medal books are not available in numbers, making it a seller’s market.
A first edition copy of The Little House, the 1943 Caldecott Medal winning book, is coming up for auction on July 12, 2007 at PBA Galleries.
The first edition The Little House is very difficult to find, and some have estimated the book will sell for close to $10,000. The Children's Picturebook Price Guide estimates The Little House to be valued at $5,000 in Very Good condition. The first edition book being auctioned is in Fine condition, with a Fine dust jacket, so is likely to bring quite a bit more.
Written and illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1942, The Little House first edition books do not surface for sale very often. There are currently none on the market.
The photographs being displayed on this page are from the actual book being auctioned.
The July 12, 2007 PBA Galleries auction includes a rare first edition Curious George, along with a first edition The Gremlins, and a a first edition Pumpkin Moonshine.
The Little House Background
From the University of Oregon's Exhibit on Children's Literature:
The Little House is the story of a house that is swallowed up by a growing city but is rescued in the end by being moved to the country. Like the machine-heroines in her other books, the house has human characteristics and feelings such as curiosity, loneliness, fear, and happiness--feelings with which children can identify.
Upon receiving the [Caldecott Medal], Burton said, "In [my] creative collaboration with children I have learned several things. First, one must never 'write down' to children. They sense adult condescension in an instant, and they turn away from it. Moreover, their perception is clear and sharp ... every detail, no matter how small or unimportant, must possess intrinsic interest and significance and must, at the same time, fit into the big design of the book."
From the School Library Journal:
Accolades for The Little House came early and have continued over the years. Writing in the New York Times in 1942, reviewer Anne Eaton mentioned its "lively imagination and genuine power"; the 1943 Caldecott committee selected it as the "most distinguished book of the year"; librarian Anne Carroll Moore, known for her tough criticism, praised it as a "honest-to-goodness picture book"; and it has subsequently appeared on several "best of the century" lists.
Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Anne Tyler, in a 1986 essay in the New York Times , said that The Little House introduced her to "the realization of the losses that the passage of time can bring." As a child, she liked the book's tone—"quiet but rhythmic"; as an adult, the illustrations "spelled out for me all the successive stages [of time]; the sun rises and sets across one entire page and a whole month of moons wheel across another."
Prior to The Little House, Burton had written and illustrated Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel in 1939, another book that is now considered a children's classic (and also very difficult to come by in a first edition book). She also won a Caldecott Honor award in 1948 for Song of Robin.
In 1952, Maybelle, The Cable Car was published, based upon memories of her childhood in San Francisco, and helped to preserve the cable car in the city. In 1967 Burton donated the original artwork for Maybelle, The Cable Car to the San Francisco Public Library. Virginia Lee Burton died in 1968.
First Edition Identification - Book
The key identifying point is the '1942' on the title page, and no additional printings stated on the copyright page. 
First Edition Identification - DJ
The key identifying point is the '$1.75' price on the front DJ flap.
April is National Autism Awareness Month and the OUPblog would like to raise awareness by sharing excerpts from two different, but equally useful books. Helping Children With Autism Learn: Treatment Approaches for Parents and Professionals, by Bryna Siegel, is a practical guide to treating the learning differences associated with Autism. Siegel, the Director of the Autism Clinic at Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, gives practical guidance for fashioning a unique program for each child’s problem, effectively empowering families. In the excerpt below Siegel explains how to help verbal children use their words. Be sure to check back later today for an excerpt from Stress and Coping in Autism.
If He Understands, Why Won’t He Answer?
Autistic children need a reason to answer. “Just because I asked” is usually not a good enough reason, as that would be a more purely social reason. The probability that a child with autism will answer, or appear to comprehend or comply increases as the “instrumental press” increases. This means if the child can see that there are clearly 
desirable consequences to answering, and he knows how to answer, he will respond. Just as is the case when using visually based communication, it is necessary to create a situation in which the child wants to answer, or wants to ask a question because in his mind, it will get him something he wants or wants to know.
Upping the Communicative “Press.”
When the child really wants something, it is a good opportunity to increase your communication demands just a bit. If the child has just seen you open a bag of Cheetos, and he said, “Cheetos” while approaching your bag with what looks like an intention to grab the bag, this is a good time to tighten your grip on the bag and say, “Kevin, do you want Cheetos?” If Kevin replies, “Cheetos!” prompt him by touching his chest lightly with your forefinger (I’m assuming Kevin is almost on top of you by now) and saying “I want Cheetos.” If he says, “I want Cheetos,” thank him for asking, and give him a few Cheetos. I prefer “Thank you for asking!” to “Good saying ‘I want Cheetos!’” since the latter is not a grammatical sentence and can only serve to confound any emerging sense of grammatical rules. Adult responses that result in the child’s possibly echoing grammatical formulations that are not correct fails to provide available opportunity to rehearse meaning.
Depending on how many Cheetos you have, and how much Kevin likes them, this could be a good time to practice related conversational gambits like “I want more Cheetos,” and “Mom, I want more Cheetos, please.” Take advantage of the tendency to echo by developing a way of prompting an echo like touching his chest, (or cheek or lips, or touching your own lips then pointing to the child’s mouth). The prompt should model appropriate speech with just a bit more elaboration of the statement the child has generated on his own.
A common error in prompting speech revisions, however, is to take the conversation lesson too far. If the adult starts to prompt the child to “say it better,” add “please” and use a proper noun to address the person with the Cheetos, and keeps withholding the Cheetos until all these additional demands are met, it is no longer a conversation or even a conversational lesson, but just too-hard a lesson. The child is likely to give up and just walk away. The chance to prove the idea that spontaneous requesting is useful is lost. The child will have learned nothing about rules of language pragmatics, which is that you clarify an utterance only until the listener understands. It is also a key teaching opportunity in these kinds of situations for the adult to add real, natural conversational responses, like the “Kevin, do you want Cheetos?” response to an initially nonverbal communicative initiative on the child’s part (trying to grab the bag). This exposes the child to natural language models at a time when his receptivity to what is being said will be high—because he wants something.
Share This
