Childhood Is a Time of Innocence was published by Harcourt, Brace & World in 1964. The book belongs to Anglund’s core series of small-format gift books that explore fundamental emotional states through brief, aphoristic texts and her distinctive illustrations of round-headed, barely-featured children.
The text celebrates childhood as a protected space — a time of discovery without danger, of trust without betrayal, of imagination without irony. Each spread pairs a short declarative sentence about some quality of childhood (wonder, trust, play, imagination, love) with an illustration showing small figures interacting with flowers, animals, other children, and natural landscapes.
The book appeared at a particular cultural moment: 1964, the last year before the escalation of Vietnam, the assassinations, and the countercultural upheaval that would challenge every American assumption about innocence. Anglund’s vision of childhood as a sacred, protected space resonated with parents who wished to preserve that quality for their children — and with adults who mourned its loss in themselves.
Anglund’s genius was commercial as well as artistic: she understood that the same book could function as a gift from adult to child, from adult to adult (as nostalgia or aspiration), and as a decorative object. Her books were displayed on coffee tables and in nurseries with equal frequency.
Collecting Childhood Is a Time of Innocence
First edition (Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1964): Small hardcover, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $20–$50
- Very good/very good: $8–$20