(Find me at 50 Watts Books.)

I'm a long-time fan of (and contributor to) Ang Wyman's flickr group Eye Candy, which features "Trippy Hippy kids books from the 60's and 70's ." Ang—a Brooklyn-based artist and instructor—also started a blog recently to document her personal collection of kids' book insanity. She describes the collection perfectly:

These are all kid's books from the early 60's to the late 70's that I began collecting as public libraries were deaccessionizing (having yard sales of well-thumbed books). The trippy hippy psychedelic years, when kids books were saturated with acid colors and contained a graphic punch; bell bottom figures melting into landscapes, Brit Mod Supergraphics made of zipatone and cellotak, art noveau figurative swirliness and visionary hallucinatory scenarios. The books contain an underlying optimism of utopic eco-friendly promises, or offbeat amateur artist published awkward drawings and I like even the goofy celebratory commercial work of 70's faux predigested hippiness.

Nicolas Sidjakov, illus. for A Lodestone and a Toadstone by Irene Elmer, 1969

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

Nicole Claveloux, illus. for Gertrude and The Mermaid by Richard Hughes, 1971

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

Peter Max, Paper Airplane Book, 1971

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

Tim Lewis, illus. for Help! I Am the Mother of a Teen-Age Girl by Lois Wyse, 1966

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

Alan Aldridge, The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast, 1973

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

detail

Tricks or Treats by Bill Martin, Jr., Illustrated by Jim Spanfeller, Handlettering by Ray Barber, 1979

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

Allen Say, Under the Cherry Blossom Tree, 1974

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

Ellen Raskin, Moose, Goose and Little Nobody, 1974

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

Heinz Edelmann, Andromedary SR!, 1970

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

Seymour Chwast, Sleepy Ida and Other Nonsense Poems by Steven Kroll, 1977 (endpapers)

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

John Alcorn, Pocahontas in London, 1967

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

Ed Powers, M for Monster- A monster joke book, 1965

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

Donna Sloan, Fat Cat's Craft and Coloring Book, 1971

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

Alan E. Cober, Winter's Eve, 1969

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

Alain Le Foll, The Very Obliging Flowers, 1968

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

Larry Bowser, Big Mother Goose, The Book of Psychedelic Nursery Rhymes, 1971

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr

Nicolas Sidjakov, illus. for A Lodestone and a Toadstone by Irene Elmer, 1969

via Ang Wyman blog / flickr