The International Children's Library

The International Children's Digital Library has quickly become one of my very favourite web sites EVER. It is literally an online library for children's books, is VERY interactive and a lot of fun. You can read books by flipping through them in a web file, not pdf. It's fun even doing the search for books!

The ICDL has a "Book of the Day", which is a kids' book you can read on an active web page, like the others, instead of in pdf form. If you have Google as your home page, in the iGoogle format, you can add the ICDL as a gadget. I have that, and wake up every morning to a new children's book with my coffee! Very happy :)

Today's BotD is the 1903 picture book, Humpty Dumpty, located here:

Denslow's Humpty Dumpty

Old children's books are so curious in how they almost always seem to have the goal of teaching kids lessons, which this picture book, Humpty Dumpty does. From the summary:

" The story of Humpty Dumpty's son and how he avoids making the same mistakes his father made."

I really do not like stories-as-lessons at all, but seen in the perspective of history, it is a very interesting thing to me. It is one reason why I LOVE Mark Twain so much, because he hated that too and made a point of very much not teaching kids lessons, and maybe even encouraging them to go afield. :D

This Humpty Dumpty is very cheerful, and I really like how Humpty Dumpty's son is given life and how he chooses to have a happy life. Maybe it's inescapable in almost any story to have a lesson because our minds are geared to learn from our, or others', mistakes. I guess it is just the "Sunday School" tone that a lot of kids books had in the past that can get tiring, but I do love it from an historical perspective - and from the perspective that people today still try to move kids' lit towards that.

Please go to this site! If you love kids' books, you will love it there. You can also help translate children's books without speaking the other language. They have a mission to help connect people on the planet through children's books. Be sure to register before doing this because that is interactive also, but you can do it without registering and is a very uncomplicated process! Have fun! :) Read at the   ICDL