When I Grow Up

When I Grow Up was originally a series of illustrated poems created by W. W. Denslow for St. Nicholas Magazine in 1909. These poems were compiled together with a few additional pieces and published as a book by The Century Company. Century had already published L. Frank Baum's story Queen Zixi of Ix, which was also serialized in St. Nicholas Magazine.



The book had color plates, as well as line drawings and a number of black and white half-tone illustrations. Unfortunately, the half-tones really don't do justice to Denslow's work - I think he's much better in full color.

A number of caricatures are sprinkled through the book, images of Teddy Roosevelt, Sherlock Holmes, William Jennings Bryan. I'm sure there are others I don't recognize off-hand.

There seems to have only been one printing of this book. But, an interesting bibliographic point has popped up on the two copies I own - the publisher used two different spine imprints for this title.