Brother, can you spare a BeaverDime?

"Once upon a time, the University Press of New Brunswick had a division called Brunswick Books. This was long, long ago in the great age of the automobile, when babies boomed and families took to the open highway with the windows down. This was, in fact, the dawn of what is now known as the road trip vacation. The cunning folks at Brunswick Books soon realized that the youngin's in the back seats needed diversion and what better diverting pursuit for a developing mind than a good book? Thus the BeaverDime Book was born. Sold in gas stations for a dime, these illustrated retellings of children's classics found their way, dog-eared, across the country. ..."

This makes for a great story but the truth is I don't really know for sure why or how BeaverDime books came into being. I do know they were sold at gas stations because a colleague who saw them in the collection once reminisced about buying them there as a child. Despite the prominence of Brunswick Press on the cultural landscape of the province, there is no published history of the organization nor is there any ready way to gain insight into why the University Press would have been interested in publishing children's books in the first place.

Here's what I do know. In 1953, Brunswick Press published Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, illustrated by Milada Horejs. The book, a petite soft cover measuring 4 1/2" x 5 1/4" bore the imprint "A BEAVERDIME BOOK" with "10c" printed above it.


Wynken, Blynken and Nod followed, illustrated by Karel Rohlicek.

(detail from Wynken, Blynken and Nod)

Others followed too for a total of 18 titles in the 1950s. These were:

The Walrus and the Carpenter (no 3) (illus: Rohlicek)
My Shadow (no 4) (illus: Horejs)
The House that Jack Built (no 5) (illus: Rohlicek)
The Duel (The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat) (no 6) (illus: Rohlicek)
How the Bird Chose a King (no 7)
The Pitter Patter Pot (no 8)
The Negro and the Antelope (no 9)
The Man of Stone (no 10)
The Bird Princess (no 11)
The Wonderful Ship (no 12)
The Story of Augustus Who Would Not Have Any Soup (no 13)
The Death and Burial of Poor Cock Robin (no 14)

(detail from The Death and Burial of Poor Cock Robin)

Little Red Riding-Hood (no 16)
The Land of Counterpane (no 15)
The Mock Turtle's Song (no 17)
The Spider and the Fly (no 18)

Only the first six titles acknowledged the illustrator by name, which is a shame, really:

(cover illustration from The Mock Turtle's Song)

Early books in the series had plain back covers, but later ones bore a complete listing of the series' titles:

(back cover of The Mock Turtle's Song)

The books that do acknowledge the illustrator bear a standard copyright verso page, whereas later titles replaced this standard page with an opening, illustrated spread:

(inside cover of The Mock Turtle's Song)

In 1965, the # 1-6 and #13-18 titles were reissued and twelve more titles were added to the series. Nos 7-12 appear to have been issued only in the 1950s, as evidenced by the title list that appears on the back of the 1965 and following editions.

(click on any of these images to increase the size/level of detail)

You will also note in this image that over time the series title altered. Some of the books published in 1965 were still called "BeaverDime" books, but others were called "A BeaverBook for Young Canadians." In 1975, there was another reissue, only now the series imprint was "A Brunswick Book for Young Canadians."

These remaining 12 titles, #18-30, are:
The Spider and the Fly (no 18)
Snow White and Rose Red (no 19)
Cinderella (no 20)

(detail from Cinderella)

The Sleeping Beauty (no 21)
Hansel and Gretel (no 22)
Mother Holle (23)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (no 24)
Thumbelina (no 25)
The Twelve Travellers (no 26)
The Flying Trunk (no 27)
The Swineherd (no 28)
The Nightingale (no 29)
The Wild Swans (no 30)

Despite the ephemeral nature of these books, UNB Libraries and the Eileen Wallace Collection have, over the years, managed to acquire 17 0f the 30 titles including multiple versions of some of them. We still need the following:

How the Bird Chose a King (no 7)
The Pitter Patter Pot (no 8)
The Negro and the Antelope (no 9)
The Man of Stone (no 10)
The Bird Princess (no 11)
The Wonderful Ship (no 12)
Little Red Riding-Hood (no 16)
Snow White and Rose Red (no 19)
Hansel and Gretel (no 22)
The Twelve Travellers (no 26)
The Flying Trunk (no 27)
The Swineherd (no 28)
The Wild Swans (no 30)

If you have a copy of any of these titles, hidden away on a book shelf or in a box in the attic, we'd love to have you pass them along. We'll take good care of them.

And in case you're wondering, The Beaverdime Books were not the only children's titles published by Brunswick Press. From the 1950s through to the early 1980s, Brunswick Press published a wide range of children's books, regional history titles and creative writing by New Brunswickers.

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"Ephemera" is such a fascinating word and concept. Even though these books were published and widely circulated, very few copies still exist. The National Library of Canada has a complete set and The Wallace Collection, The Osborne Collection in Toronto, and McGill University have partial sets. Individual titles are scattered here and there across various world libraries. Despite their scarcity, when I show them to colleagues of a certain age--those who were raised here in New Brunswick--I get in return a warm smile of recognition and often a childhood memory.

Tell me, do you have a memory of these books you'd like to share? If not, what childhood ephemera has made you smile? Are you worried that it too may one day be lost to time?

Books that Inspire

During the month of March, an online showcase of books is being hosted by UNB Libraries. These are all books that have, over the years, inspired faculty here at the University of New Brunswick. The complete list is a fascinating box of chocolates from which I encourage you all to sample.

For me, picking a single book was torturous. In the end, I narrowed it down to three: Maurice Sendak's Higglety Pigglety Pop!, Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy and the title I finally chose in the end.



Alan Garner

The Owl Service
London: Collins 1967

“She wants to be flowers and you make her owls and she is at the hunting.”

I have Huw Halfbacon to thank for it, really: for the realization that children’s books are far more sophisticated than my young mind had ever imagined them to be and for the knowledge that I would pursue children’s literature as a vocation no matter what my paid employment turned out to be. Huw is the half-crazed conduit of mythological lore in Alan Garner’s young-adult classic, The Owl Service (1967). He speaks of the past in the present tense and provides an eerie anchor to this contemporary telling and retelling of the Blodeuwedd myth from the Welsh Mabinogion.

The myth is that of a fatal love triangle between a man, a wife who has been crafted for him out of flowers, and a second man the flower-wife chooses to love instead. The novel recasts the myth with three teenagers who are each broken in some way–dysfunctional families, class barriers, regional prejudices, and the secrets of the past all frame the narrative. Trapped in a Welsh valley where myth repeats itself, generation after generation, and where the main characters’ ancestors have died or gone mad trying to escape their fate, the teens must learn to overcome their prejudices and hatreds in order to survive.

The Owl Service scratches with owl claws at your intellect for a very long time, but it is the unnerving figure of Huw Halfbacon that never really leaves you. If you’re lucky, he’ll make you flowers, not owls.

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Now tell me: if you had to pick one and only one book that inspired you, what would it be and why?