[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Okay, I just looked at my son's remaining childhood books and see that I we do have a couple of one of the series I was thinking of. Wow, these are old! From 1950 and 1953!

The Series is called "Landmark Books," and the logo features a quaint tiny village or large farmhouse cluster surrounded by a picket fence and trees outside of the fence, but most prominently a huge obelisk arises out of the center of the cluster of houses. They were published by Random House- New York.

Both these books are a muted green cloth cover and the title on the front is surrounded by a wreath that is open at the top. In the open space there is a little picture that relates to the subject of the book.

The blurb on the back dust jacket says, "Each Landmark Book brings to life a great event or famous person.....intended to inspire...understanding and appreciation of the important events and great figures of History." So some of these were biographies and some were focused on events or trends. I bet this is where I read the Florence Nightingale bio. I'm also thinking this series contracted with known history writers and popular authors. I think I recall Neil Sperry was an author in this series; he also wrote for adults. And one of the two books from my sons' library is by Jim Kjelgaard, who wrote popular and also somewhat peculiarly misogynist "boys books" in the 1950's and 60's. He wrote the book "Big Red," from which the Disney movie of the same name was roughly adapted.

These books are just very similar to the other series I'm thinking of, the one that focused on Americans and usually had orange covers with black writing. Same size, same reading level, same length, same font size, same style of illustrations, with just enough illustrations to satisfy the child who is young enough to still recall the happy way picture books draw you in. The illustrations are black or two tone--the second tone matching the cover of the book! Sound familiar?

I love children's books.