The First Picture Book: Everyday Things for Babies

Midwestern photographer Alec Soth described photographically illustrated picturebooks as “oddballs in the universe of children’s literature.” In this episode of 25 for 25 we explore, The First Picture Book: Everyday Things for Babies, a photographically illustrated picturebook created by American photographer Edward Steichen and his daughter Mary Steichen Martin found in the Billy M. Levy Collection of Illustrated Children’s Literature.    

 

Featured Collections: 

Calderone, Mary Steichen, and Edward Steichen. First Picture Book : Everyday Things for Babies. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1930. Print. Billie M. Levy Collection of Illustrated Children's Books. 

Calderone, Mary Steichen, Edward Steichen, John Updike, and Whitney Museum of American Art. The First Picture Book : Everyday Things for Babies. New York: Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1991. Print. Artists and Writers Ser. ; 9th. 

Sandburg, Carl. Steichen the Photographer. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929. Print. 

Brecher, Ruth., and Brecher, Edward M. An Analysis of Human Sexual Response. New York: New American Library, 1966. Print. Signet Book ; Y4045. 

Sex Information Education Council of the U.S. SIECUS Newsletter. (1965). Print.