The first thing that I noticed about Mother Stork’s Baby Book was the illustrations. They are the breathtakingly beautiful work of Albertine Randall Wheelan. I had never heard of her, but I am not up to date on the 19th century illustration scene and what I found out amazed me. She was one of the earliest professional female cartoonists, ever, and produced illustrations for Harper’s Bazaar and many other magazines in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Being a feminist, I thought that was pretty cool. She was born in 1863, so by the time Mother Stork’s Baby Book was published in 1904 she was 41 years old, married and with two school age sons. The family lived in San Francisco where she had studied art at the San Francisco School of Design.
The 50 illustrations in this book are lovely. Each page is a unique work-of-art and I fell in love, hard. The illustrations depict a simpler time but are also filled with mischief and humor. There are many vintage scenes that are as sweet as can be, but not cutesy. I can’t imagine how long it took Albertine Randall Wheelan to illustrate the whole book.
I took the job of redesigning this book very seriously and I think I did it justice. There were many things that needed to be addressed to update Mother Stork’s Baby Book, 100th Anniversary Edition to 21st century standards.
First, the book was lacking in color. My grandmother’s edition of the book had some pale colors in a small portion of the illustrations and I wanted to add color to the whole book. Because the book is 100 years old the colors were faded and the pages were discolored. And, like I said in yesterdays post, everything had to be done pixel by pixel. I chose to use a variety of colors to add to the character of each page.
Also, Wheelan created numerous fonts throughout the book. Each letter had to be lined up and cleaned up. Some of the wording in the book was not appropriate to encompass all types of families so there wer a few changes to fit the definition of a modern family.
As far as formatting, each illustration was strangely set on the pages, some looked too big, some too small, so all of them were adjusted to fit the pages properly. And, in a few places the order of the pages didn’t match up with the order that things happen with a new babe’s development so that was changed to provide a better flow to the book. I also changed the ages for the height and weight record pages so that it coordinates with the typical pediatrician visits.
Babies are a labor of love and so is this book! I poured myself into the beautiful pages, knowing that many would appreciate its unique qualities. The book takes you away from current day parenting to a place and time from long ago.
Next up…..
CHAPTER 3, THE POETRY OF MOTHER STORK’S BABY BOOK