ahead of her time

Another of our favorite authors is Virginia Lee Burton. Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, Katy and the Big Snow and The Little House. All wonderful stories and full of details only a truck loving toddler would notice. We spend a extended period of time on every page, talking about what all of the people and trucks are doing. I absolutely love that all of the heroes are female. Making them heroines (The House, The Steam Shovel and the Snow Plow).

You can tell from all of her page layouts that Burton was a graphic designer. She taught design and founded a design collective called the Folly Cove Designers. Working off of the belief that art should also be useful, they created beautiful fabrics that sold at various retail shops. Reproductions are still available today.