John Martin's Book

A well-known children's magazine from the first half of the twentieth century, with some striking and wonderful covers and interior art. They emphasized heavily contrasting colors and silhouetting. A 1990 article by Martin Gardner discusses its history. The University of Pittsburgh has some additional images online, as does Flickr user katinthecupboard.

For a short biography of publisher Morgan von Roorbach Shepard (aka "John Martin") see the Red Cross Knight Blog. Shepard's career ranged from a partnership with San Francisco fine book publisher Paul Elder to director of juvenile programming at NBC (for a very short time). Another, slightly different, view of Shepard on the Paul Elder website, and yet another at Wikipedia. Shepard's extremely rare 1905 postcards shown in the newsletter of the SF Bay Area's PC Collector's Club (page 9 ff; note: PDF).

Here's a discussion of the work of George Carlson, one of the artistic stalwarts of the magazine. Artist Johnny Gruelle became famous for Raggedy Ann, but appeared regularly in this magazine.