A couple weeks back we were over at my parents. I came across The Brownies: Their Book. I had vague memories of enjoying it as a child. I gathered my younger two daughters and read a couple of the poems. My youngest ate them up. We’ve been reading the poems every since.
The author, Palmer Cox, was born in Canada in 1940. He wrote sixteen books about Brownies. The Brownies were very popular. Each book would have a set of poems about these little people. The Brownies had various adventures. Each poem reflects some aspect of life back a hundred years ago. The brownies go to a school, visit the circus, go ice skating and so on. These books were published in the late 1800s to early 1900s.
Palmer Cox is believed to be the first to turn literary characters into a commercial franchise. Long before Walt Disney, Palmer Cox was finding ways to get money from more than just the original medium for his stories. There was a camera Eastman Kodak Brownie camera. There were a couple musicals based on these books. It looks like there was even a set of Brownie dolls.
Each adventure would be a couple pages long. Palmer also drew several parts of the adventure. Each Brownie would be distinctive. Some would be English and others would be Chinese. There were some American Indians.
This has been a good introduction to poetry for my youngest daughter. She thinks these stories are fun.
Three of the books were republished in 1967: The Brownies: Their Book, Another Brownie Book, and Brownies. More recently published is The Brownies’ Merry Adventure. I’ve been able to find some of these at various libraries.
If you are interested, the first three chapters of “The Brownies: Their Book” are available online here.
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