I’m so excited to have discovered (at Toy Fair, of all places) the wonderfully named Seattle-based Laughing Elephant Books. If you’re feeling nostalgic for beautifully illustrated, printed and bound books of your youth – or more likely the ones passed down by your grandparents – then skip the local Borders and hit their website for your next literary gifts.
You’ll find all kinds of books and gift items incorporating ye olde time-y artwork including my favorite, the soft-covered, sturdy die-cut children’s books which faithfully reproduce originals from the early 1900s.
Don’t expect dumbed down prose or touchy-feely 21st century morals here; I hardly recognized parts of the Three Little Pigs, and Red Riding Hood ends with a stern warning for "children inclined to be disobedient."
Not yours. Or course. –Liz
