The Prentice-Hall Book About Space Travel / The True Book About Space Travel (1954/1955)

I will now indulge in space art examination. This is an expanded version of this post from Feb 5, 2009

http://dreamsofspace.blogspot.com/2009/02/prentice-hall-book-about-space-travel.html

William Temple wrote this popular children's "space" book:
http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/temple_william_f

Basically The True Book About Space Travel was published in 1954 in London and sometime later that year they decided to make an American edition called : The Prentice-Hall Book About Space Travel.  It was published in 1955. What I find fascinating is not only how the text was changed to make it more "American" but many of the illustrations were redrawn by Henry Billings. I thought it would interesting (entertaining?) to compare the original art for The True Book about Space Travel Illustrated by Gerald Quinn with the redrawn art by Henry Billings. For similar subjects they took different approaches.

Henry Billings was an American illustrator and artist. His biography info is here: http://collections.terraamericanart.org/view/people/asitem/items$0040null:71/0

Gerald Quinn was a British science fiction illustrator. His biography information (that I could find) is here: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1161

We will try to keep Prentice-Hall (Henry Billings) on the left and The True Book (Gerald Quinn) on the right.

The text guides what illustrations were used.These were both about early dreams of flight.

Well you get the idea. (The comparison formating in Blogger is a pain). You are in for a few more of these next week.