Love Is a Special Way of Feeling was published by Harcourt, Brace & World in 1960. The book was Anglund’s second major title and consolidated her position as the leading creator of illustrated gift books that bridged the children’s and adult markets.
The text defines love through its effects and manifestations: warmth, safety, the feeling of being important to someone, the security of knowing you belong somewhere. Anglund avoids romantic love entirely — her subject is the love between parent and child, between friends, between people and animals, between people and the natural world. This makes the book appropriate for very young children while also allowing adults to read it as a meditation on love stripped of its complications.
The illustrations show Anglund’s small, round children in characteristic poses: holding hands, embracing animals, standing in gardens, receiving comfort from adults. The faces remain nearly featureless — universal rather than particular — and the colors are soft pastels that evoke warmth without intensity.
The book sold enormously well and established Anglund as a one-woman industry. Through the 1960s and 1970s, her illustrations appeared not only in books but on greeting cards, calendars, stationery, figurines, and housewares — becoming as ubiquitous in American domestic spaces as Holly Hobbie or Precious Moments would later become.
Collecting Love Is a Special Way of Feeling
First edition (Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1960): Small hardcover, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $30–$80
- Very good/very good: $10–$30