New Children’s Literature Exhibition Coming to Harry Ransom Center

The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin will present Words and Wonder: Rediscovering Children’s Literature, examining the history, artistry, and impact of children’s literature next month.

Running February 25 through August 10, it will explore the storytelling process through the perspectives of children as readers, writers, and performers, featuring rare 17th century hornbooks and marginalia that reveal how children interacted with the texts. It also focuses on the contributions of early 20th century illustrators and artists who envisioned fantastical worlds for young audiences.

Highlights will include:

• early examples of juvenilia by Gabriel García Márquez, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jayne Anne Phillips, and J. M. Coetzee
• artifacts from early 20th century children’s theatre, including a costume hat worn by popular child actress Elsie Leslie in the 1890 Broadway production of The Prince and the Pauper
• magic lantern slides illustrating Aesop’s Fables and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland alongside original animation cels from Walt Disney’s 1951 production of Alice in Wonderland
• illustrations from The House on Pooh Corner by Ernest Shepard, Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and Arthur Rackham’s imaginative reinterpretations of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination for younger audiences

“This exhibition aims to turn back the hands of the clock and reawaken childhood wonder in exhibition visitors of all ages,” said Stephen Enniss, Director of the Harry Ransom Center. “It is a reminder of that capacity for wonder that is still within our grasp if we listen for the child within each one of us.”