A Valley Grows Up

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A Valley Grows Up
A Valley Grows Up cover.jpg
Cover of first edition
Author Edward Osmond
IllustratorOsmond
Cover artistOsmond
SubjectEngland from 5000 BCE to 1900
GenreChildren's non-fiction, landscape history, cultural history
Publisher Oxford University Press
Publication date
1953
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (hardcover)
Pages81 pp. (first edition)
OCLC 4676338
914.2
LC Class DA110 .O72 [1]

A Valley Grows Up is a history book for children, written and illustrated by Edward Osmond and published by Oxford University Press in 1953. It features an imaginary English valley over the course of seven thousand years, from 5000 BCE to 1900. Osmond won the annual Carnegie Medal, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. [2] In more than seventy years only a handful of nonfiction books have been so honoured.

Contents

Description

Ten full-colour double-page paintings and numerous black-and-white drawings combine with a simple, fluent text to tell the story of the changes in a valley's landscape and its gradual settlement from prehistoric to Victorian times. "[A]n uninhabited stretch of forest ... [becomes] a hillside, a swamp, a village and eventually the bustling Victorian town of Dungate." [2] The same bend in the river, rounding a hill, appears throughout, as on the cover.

Origins

Edward Osmond, a well known illustrator, was asked to help students with learning difficulties: "I illustrated on a blackboard my lectures by means of an imaginary village which, together, we created 'from scratch'." [2] The educational effectiveness of the concept in seizing the imagination led to the idea for a picture book. The text was always secondary. Marcus Crouch describes the resulting book as "an imaginative interpretation of history". [3]

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Edward Osmond was an English artist from the 1920s to 1960s. During this time period, Osmond primarily worked as an illustrator before publishing his first book for children, A Valley Grows Up, in 1953. The following year, Osmond received the 1954 Carnegie Medal for A Valley Grows Up. Osmond continued to write children's works during the 1950s to 1960s, including multiple series on animals. Apart from his children's works, Osmond's artworks were displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts and Royal Society of British Artists during the 1920s. He also was an art teacher at the Hastings College of Arts and Technology and Hornsey College of Art.

References

  1. "A valley grows up" (first edition). Library of Congress Online Catalog. Retrieved 2012-09-06.
  2. 1 2 3 Carnegie Winner 1953 Archived 2009-06-08 at the Wayback Machine . Living Archive: Celebrating the Carnegie and Greenaway Winners. CILIP. Retrieved 2018-02-27.
  3. Marcus Crouch, Treasure Seekers and Borrowers, Library Association, 1962, p. 131.
Awards
Preceded by Carnegie Medal recipient
1953
Succeeded by