Physical description

A children's storybook of 64 pages with a bright hard board cover. It contains short stories, poems and coloured illustrations.

Publication type

fiction

Summary

This popular children's book was one of a series produced by E. W. Cole of Melbourne in the early late 1880s and early 1900s. It featured short stories, poetry and coloured illustrations. The cover of the books featured a bright rainbow which reflected the rainbow in place above Mr Cole's Book Arcade in Bourke Street, Melbourne, Victoria.

The first book – Cole’s Funny Picture Book was released in 1879.
Cole’s Book Arcade stretched from Bourke Street to Collins Street. E W Cole boasted of stocking over a million books. Books always remained at the heart of the Arcade but it also came to include departments such as music, stationery, toys, pictures and frames, perfumery, confectionery, second-hand books, a lending library, a china ‘exhibition’, a photographic studio, a printing department, a fernery, an aviary, a tea salon, and a rather ill-considered monkey house! A live band also frequently played for the customers.