Pedro by Dorothy Divers

Dorothy Divers wrote and designed this Christian book about a boy named Pedro at a time when Latin American kids in the US rarely saw themselves in books. The design was selected as one of 84 books in the AIGA’s Children’s Books 1953–1954, which judged on “typographic and artistic merit”. While Divers’ cover title is presumably hand lettered, it is so reminiscent of Neuland licht I thought the typeface deserved mention here. The text is set in Vogue, a geometric sans in the Futura tradition, but born in the U.S. While its initial purpose was for the pages of Vogue magazine, it also has a humility and subtle playfulness that works well for young readers.

Divers’ papers are held at the University of Minnesota:

Divers was born May 22, 1919 in Valley City, North Dakota. She worked as an artist at Augsburg Publishing House before graduating from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where she later taught art for 29 years. She died November 22, 2003.