In 1928, with the publication of Wanda Gág's Millions of Cats, the modern American picture book came of age. It was hardly the first true American picture book, as claimed by Ruth Hill Viguers in A Critical History of Children's Literature (1953); there were earlier distinguished examples of the form ignored by this pioneering study. What the success of Millions of Cats inspired was a revival of the art of the picture book, the Aesthetic standard that every element of a volume's design should add to the pleasure of the whole. Already a critically acclaimed printmaker before she had her first picture book published, Gág always strove "to make the illustration for children's books as much a work of art as anything I would send to an art exhibition." Her colleague Lynd Ward noted that "the field of book illustration is today a far better thing than it was precisely because there were artists like Wanda Gág who were anxious to work in books with the same basic seriousness of approach and concern for what were lamely called 'art values' that are so often presumed to be the exclusive concern of the 'fine' artist who has no goal save self-expression." In her own day, Gág's work was celebrated primarily for bridging the fine and the commercial arts.
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