Below are original Horn Book Magazine reviews of Caldecott Medal winners from the inaugural 1938 award to 1939.

1938

DOROTHY LATHROP
Animals of the Bible, A Picture Book (Stokes)

Twenty-seven pictures presenting the Creation, Noah's Ark, Abraham's ram, Daniel's lions, Jonah's great fish, the Good Samaritan's beast, the Prodigal Son's pigs and many others less well known. The book was planned by Helen Dean Fish, who selected the accompanying text from the King James version. A book to place beside Helen Sewell's A First Bible.

reviewed in the November 1937 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1939


THOMAS HANDFORTH, Author-Illustrator
Mei Li (Doubleday)

...Thomas Handforth's large new picture book [is characterized by] strong and sweeping black and white drawings. Do you remember the delicate line of his pictures for Susan Smith's Tranquilina's Paradise?  His work has gained strength in the years since and this new picture book has grown out of his years in China. It tells of Mei Li, a little girls of North China, and her day at the Fair in the town and of her part in all the doings along with her brother San Yu, his kitten Igo and her thrush, until at the end of a long day she goes riding home on a camel just in time to greet the Kitchen God at midnight on New Year's Eve.... The drawings have been specially reproduced on copper plates and the book has been hand set. The cloth cover is a gorgeous Chinese red-orange. The yellow end papers printed in Chinese red give a picture map of the places mentioned in the story.

reviewed in the November 1938 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

These reviews of 1930s Caldecott Medal–winning titles are part of our Caldecott at 75 celebration. Click here for more archival Horn Book material on Thomas Handforth and Mei Li.