A little while ago I was gifted a divine little book by my aunt. She’d found it while having a clean up and it had originally been at my grandma’s house. The little book is ‘A Pixie Book’ called Happy Days that was published in 1954.

The ‘Pixie Series’ was printed in Great Britain by Collins – “Publishers For The Children”. There is a sweet little bit of text on the inside jacket that reads – “The Pixie Book Series. Ask your bookseller to show them to you, and build up your own Pixie Library”.

Some of the other titles in the series sound interesting, for example Kittie-Poosies?

The illustrator is simply listed as Eulalie and with a bit of searching I have found that it is Eulalie Banks a prolific and beautiful UK artist. She published her first book when she was 18 and worked extensively from the 1920′s through to the 1970′s. She was highly respected in the publishing world it seems, and was highly sought after for pieces of her art including painting a nursery mural for Charlie Chaplin’s house.

And the thing that thrilled me the most is that she did the original illustrations for Helen Bannerman’s Little Black Sambo.

In Happy Days the story is very sweet and simple. The characters are Jack and Jill and their dog Jippy. The story, in rhyme, follows their day from waking up to going to bed.

‘The Bluebirds sing “Wake up and play.

Tweet tweet it is a lovely day.”

“Good morning Bluebirds we are ready,”

Say Jack and Jill and sleepy Teddy.’

Jack and Jill are positively cherubic, their little cheeks glow pink and their hair falls in little waves around their faces. The colours are incredible and it constantly amazes me how these gorgeous old books are seemingly still as vibrant today and they were when first published.

Eulalie Banks died in 1999 but has left behind a legacy of beautiful children’s books. There is a great bio of her here and also some beautiful flickr albums with more examples of  Eulalie’s work here and more examples from the Pixie Book Series here.