Front covers of two battered and worn 1921 children's books

I have a pair of slim children's books from 1921 that are just about too far gone for anything but recycling. The spines are gone and the pages are penciled and crayoned with all sorts of scribbling. These are books for which The End has come.

But beforehand, because it's what I do, I wanted to share the covers for posterity. They are faded and worn and scratched. But they still have a kind of fragile beauty to them, I think.

Both of these children's books were written by Dolores McKenna, illustrated by Ruth H. Bennett and published by Frederick A. Stokes Company of New York in 1921.

The Adventures of the Bunny-Boys

The Adventures of Squirrel Fluffytail

Squirrel Fluffytail¹, which is set on a "beautiful island that stood in the center of a great big lake," still has its frontispiece intact. It pictures a scene of parent-to-child instructions that is quite common to folklore of all nations (and rarely ends with those instructions being followed).

Footnote
1. If you want to know what The Adventures of Squirrel Fluffytail was supposed to look like before it was worn down by the years, check out this link.