The Jolly Jump-Ups I

McLoughlin Brothers, publisher of the nineteenth-century Showman's Series, started the Jolly Jump-Ups books in 1939 with The Jolly Jump-Ups and Their New House. Although published half a century later, the Jolly Jump-Ups drew on the Showman's Series with the use of the tableau format. Geraldine Clyne illustrated the Jolly Jump-Ups books which ranged from nursery rhymes and numbers to the story of the Jump-Ups family, an ever happy brood consisting of Mother, Father, and six blond-haired, blue-eyed children. The themes of family life--buying a new home, going camping, visiting the farm--trace the family from the end of the 1930s through the post-World War II boom. Over time, the Jump-Ups came to encapsulate the American dream.