Consumer Critique: The World is Round

Disclosure: I received complimentary products to facilitate this post. All opinions are my own.

The World is Round, originally created by Gertrude Stein and Clement Hurd, is celebrating its 75th anniversary. The new publishing is a gorgeous facsimile edition of Stein’s only children’s book, recreating the exquisite 1939 package to a T—the original proportions, typography, design, signature blue ink on pink paper specified by Stein, and Clement Hurd’s treasured illustrations. It contains a foreword and afterword that help illustrate the significance of the book as well.

This is not a traditional children's book - it's not easy for young children to read. It has a simple plot, and is written in sort of a stream-of-consciousness prose style that can be wordy, but that my girls loved to listen to. My children also loved that the book was pink!

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was born in Pittsburgh of a prosperous German-Jewish family. She was educated in France and the United States, worked under the pioneering psychologist William James and later studied medicine. With her brother Leo she was an important patron of the arts, acquiring pictures by many contemporary artists, most famously Picasso, while her home became a popular meeting place for writers and painters from Matisse to Hemingway. Her books include Three Lives, Tender Buttons, and The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas.

Clement Hurd (1908–1988) is best known for illustrating Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, the classic picture books by Margaret Wise Brown. He studied painting in Paris with Fernand Léger and others in the early 1930s. After his return to the United States in 1935, he began to work in children’s books. He illustrated more than one hundred books, many of them with his wife, Edith Thacher Hurd, including the Johnny Lion books, The Day the Sun Danced, and The Merry Chase. A native of New York City, he lived most of his life in Vermont and California.