From the 1940s until his death at the age of fifty-one in 1963, Irvin Kerlan collected first editions of American and British children's books, which he began to donate to the University of Minnesota in 1949. He also compiled an important bibliography of Newbery and Caldecott Award books and wrote essays explaining and sharing his enthusiasm. Acquainted with the work of Percy Muir, who collected classic British children's books, and A. S. W. Rosenbach, who collected early American children's books, Kerlan preferred contemporary works.

In "Collecting Contemporary Books for Children" (1957) Kerlan acknowledged, "One sound approach to the collecting of children's books . . . is based on the principle that only works by authors and artists of the nineteenth and earlier centuries that have been acclaimed and stood the test of time are meaningful." Collecting such works, he said, marks no "departure from already established paths of collecting." Contemporary children's literature, however, presented...