George Washington

D'AULAIRE, Ingri and Edgar Parin. George Washington. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran and Co, 1936. 4to, [56]pp. Navy cloth spine with color pictorial boards. Color pictorial endpapers; 13 full-page and numerous smaller color illustrations lithographed on stone in five colors, plus 13 full-page and numerous small b&w illustrations, all from stone lithographs. Upper and lower edges of boards a bit worn, a few tiny scratches to covers, else a clean, tight copy in original color pictorial dust jacket (heavily worn with several large closed tears and some chipping).

First edition. The simple and inauspicious tale of the life of George Washington, a backwoods Virginia boy destined to become the Father of His Country. A meticulously researched picture book biography, which was created as the d'Aulaire's hiked and camped all over Virginia to imbue their book with Washington's spirit, the book is notable for eschewing such cliché's as the Cherry Tree myth. The d'Aulaire's gorgeous stone lithographs vibrantly capture the life of the first president of the United States of America. The first children's biography by this award-winning husband-and-wife team who would go on to win the Caldecott Medal for their biography of Abraham Lincoln a few years later.