Kate Douglas Wiggin, The Birds' Christmas Carol. Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1912.
1st edition 1887.
This book and her first (The Story of Patsy [1883]) were initially written to raise money for Wiggin's San Francisco Silver Street Kindergarten, among the first such schools established in the United States. Wiggin and her sister, Nora A. Smith, were pioneers in the kindergarten movement in this country. The book proved extremely popular, enjoying numerous editions and translation into German, Swedish, and Japanese, although her Rebecca of Sunny Brook Farm is now perhaps better remembered. In the preface to this 1912 edition, the author writes: '... You have been a good friend to me, my book-none better! It was you ... who earned the wherewithal to take a group of children out of the confusion and dangers of squalid streets, and transport them into a place of sunshine ... .'
Wiggin received an honorary degree from Bowdoin College in 1904.
Gift: Kate Douglas Wiggin.