Girls in Service Paint Book by Herric, Pru (illustrator) - 1943

Racine, Wisconsin: Whitman Publishing Company, 1943. Scarce WWII-era coloring book, depicting little girls performing women's roles in the war effort. The title page announces three primary divisions of military labor: the traditional field of nursing, alongside the newly established branches WAVE (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, part of the United States Naval Reserve) and WAC (Women's Army Corps). The nurses assist surgeons, staff wards and hospital ships, and travel around the world to establish new medical facilities. The WAVEs monitor weather instruments, work as radio operators, and deliver messages by boat and seaplane. The WACs conduct drills, work as dispatch riders, and operate cameras and switchboards at the front. A disorienting combination of wide-eyed cuteness and wartime reportage, the images to be colored include the WACs driving a convoy of trucks past the smoking wreckage of a tank, and the nurses setting up a hospital "well hidden in the jungle" of the Pacific theater. A near-fine copy of a scarce book, complete and uncolored. Side-stapled die-cut coloring book, measuring 15 x 11 inches: [48]. Original stiff color pictorial wrappers; title page printed in red and black; illustrations on every page. Light shelfwear, with partial splits to head and foot of wrappers at stapled spine; text block toned, with short closed tear to fore-edge (not touching illustrations).