The Little Lame Prince and The Adventures of a Brownie

The Little Lame Prince is a story for children written by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (1826-1887) and first published in 1875. In the story, the young Prince Dolor, whose legs are paralyzed due to a childhood trauma, is exiled to a tower in a wasteland. As he grows older, a fairy godmother provides a magical travelling cloak so he can see, but not touch, the world. He uses this cloak to go on various adventures, and develops great wisdom and empathy in the process. Finally he becomes a wise and compassionate ruler of his own land. Grosset & Dunlap published a series of literary classics which they called the Illustrated Junior Library which included this title. Providing children with quality reading material that is also pleasing to the eye is a great way to encourage reading. Kids will naturally bury themselves in this classic with its full-color plate illustrations and clear type that reads smoothly. A different illustrator was chosen for each volume based on their ability to adequately evoke a specific text. The illustrator of Little Lame Prince, Lucille Corcos (1908-1973) was a renowned artist, known as the doyenne of the "modern primitivist" trend on the American art scene. Her paintings, with their composite urban scenes, are often views into various buildings that the observer generally sees only from the outside and in passing; Corcos turns them inside-out before the eye of the viewer. The work is literally "revealing." As such, it is touching, witty, and thoroughly delightful to contemplate. Though Corcos paid little heed to conventions of scale and perspective, her work is far from abstract, and her renderings are painterly and nuanced and add whimsy to The Little Lame Prince's text. This Junior Illustrated title is hard to find.