Animal Land Where There Are No People

Animal Land — first published in Scotland in 1897 — was written by four-year-old Sybil Corbet and illustrated by her mother, Katharine. This 50 Watts edition gives a colorful twist to a delightfully odd and forgotten treasure. As Andrew Lang says in his introduction, “A professional wit would be in labor to create these animals and these words, which Sybil has only to open her eyes and see, to open her lips and utter. In the field of pure Nonsense this is genius.” With art reminiscent of Mervyn Peake and nonsense reminiscent of Edward Lear, this gorgeous, crazy Victorian bestiary is a reminder that the best taxonomies are written by kids. “Animal Land where there are no People is quite near, only you can’t see it. It is a kind of Garden Cage, with the North Pole and the sea always roughling and wavy. In the summer they like to be hotter and hotter, and in the winter colder and colder. They live by the North Pole and in the leafy places near. It is always light there, always day, they climb in the poles and always play. That is Animal Land.”–Sybil Corbet, as told to her mother Paperback. 64 pages. Measures 6″ x 6″