By Jacqueline Reid-Walsh

For the Cotsen Children’s Library blog of October 24, Andrea Immel posted a suitably child-centered blog post about drawing skeletons around Halloween using different items in the Cotsen Collection. Entitled “Made by a child: Skeletons in The Beginning, Progress and End of Man” she includes photographs of children’s and young person’s drawings in 18th and 19th century manuscripts that are based on the turn-up book “The Beginning, Progress and End of Man” (and links to our Learning as Play site). This turn-up book has appeared more than once on this blog.

Interestingly, she makes reference to how one child includes a belly button for both Adam and Eve. This addition makes the figures more human, and is something I noticed when researching the Sayer publications and assembling the turn-ups from photocopies in the summer: Indeed, the inclusion of a belly button for Eve has been the subject of some controversy (see my post “Sayer Religious Harlequinade, Part 2“)

A nice Halloween themed link to the turn-ups!

Happy Halloween!