Well, I don’t know about everyone else, but this holiday season has entirely snuck up on me. I barely saw it coming!

To celebrate, here’s a few places where you can read gorgeously illustrated children’s books online, for free. I foresee an afternoon in my future of cuddling up with pumpkin pie, some tea, and these links:

Super Index of Children’s Books Online: the Rosetta Project

This index has been in my arsenal of inspirational sites for a few years - and it just keeps getting better. The image takes you to the book “The Ladder of Rickety Rungs” which is just lavishly illustrated with moody and mysterious watercolors.

The Digital Library Center: EBIND Digital Collections features another amazing collection of children’s books, though some of the books I reviewed are scanned at too low of a resolution to read comfortably. However, that still leaves the illustrations to view, and there’s a wealth of holiday themed books of all varieties.

Nineteenth Century American Children and What They Read provides a humourous background to an index of early American children’s literature. After digging a little further, I discovered that they have a wonderful collection of ephemera created by children - exercise books, scrapbooks, even magazines.

Lastly, to celebrate abundance and youth and imagination, here’s a fun Little Audrey short from Archive.org:

[flv]http://www.archive.org/download/noveltoon_tarts_and_flowers/noveltoon_tarts_and_flowers.flv[/flv]

“Little Audrey makes a gingerbread man, then takes a nap and dreams that the Gingerbread Man goes to cakeland where he tries to marry his sweetheart, Angel Cake. But Devil Food Cake interferes and carries off the bride. Cop Cakes and Animal Crackers come to the rescue.”

Animation by G. Germanetti. Story by Bill Turner and Larry Riley. Scenics by Robert Little. Music by Winston Sharples. Produced in 1950.