by Caitlin Marineau, Assistant Curator Children’s Literature Research Collections 

One of the lesser-known roles of the Children’s Literature Research Collections (CLRC) is loaning materials to other institutions. While the CLRC loans to a variety of organizations, including other museums and archives to show at exhibits, one of the most significant groups we loan to is publishing companies. Authors have donated many full sets of illustrations to our collection of original children’s book artwork. As part of our role as caretakers of this material, we make it available to publishers who wish to print new editions of the books from the original art.

Most recently, the Aladdin imprint at Simon and Schuster requested the artwork for a new edition of At the Beach (originally published in 1987), written by Anne Rockwell and illustrated by Harlow Rockwell. Based on their new scans of the original art, a beautiful new version of the book was published June 10, 2014.