Electra to the Rescue: Saving a Steamboat and the Story of Shelburne Museum - Tapa dura

In Electra Collecting, Valerie Biebuyck brings young readers the captivating story of this trail-blazing visionary and her adventures in America's attic. Illustrated throughout with archival images and full-color photographs of items from the Shelburne collection, the book is a splendid introduction not only to a dynamic, unconventional woman but also to the rich, colorful world of Americana - the visual vernacular of our nation's people. Electra's enthusiasm was in many ways childlike, and she collected things that fire the imagination of children: rag dolls, cast-iron banks, embroidery samplers, miniature circuses - even a working paddle-wheeler. Here is a book that perfectly embodies Electra's lifelong mission: to teach, in a unique and fun way, the American tradition of craftsmanship and the often sublime beauty of simple, everyday objects.

Elliot Bostwick Davis, the great-granddaughter of Electra Havemeyer Webb, is an authority on nineteenth-century American drawings and is the John Moors Cabot Curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.