It’s the Olympic Games Season—Flip Your Back…or These Pages!

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To celebrate the 2026 Winter Olympics, Special Collections presented a pop-up exhibition of Olympic-related materials on opening day. Items on display ranged from the discus (Princeton University Archives AC053 Box 58) that Robert Garrett, Class of 1897, threw at the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 [1], along with the laurel branch (AC053 Item 21) he received—to historical photographs, posters, and other ephemera. In this post, I highlight two items from the Cotsen collection.

Flip Your Back…or These Pages!

奥运之星 [Stars of the Olympics, no. 8] / text by Meng Fu; illustrated by Xu Liyuan. Tianjin, China: New Buds Publishing House, 1984. (Cotsen 71748)

This miniature flip book was published in China in October 1984, only a few months after the Summer Olympics concluded that August. Although the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949, its athletes were largely absent from the Olympic Games for more than three decades. (The PRC was invited to participate in the 1952 Summer Olympics, but the Chinese delegation arrived in Helsinki ten days late; the self-sabotaging political reasons behind this curious delay warrant a separate explanation.)

When Chinese athletes, representing the PRC’s first full participation in the Olympics, began winning medals in Los Angeles in 1984, the nation elated with immense pride.

Part of the series Stars of the Olympics, this flip book features the 21-year-old gymnast Li Ning. Having secured six medals (three gold, two silver, and one bronze), he ranked first in total medals won by any individual athlete at the 1984 Summer Olympics and became one of China’s most decorated Olympians.

Stars of the Olympics, no. 8 (Cotsen 71748)

Stars of the Olympics, no. 8 (Cotsen 71748)

The flip book contains two animated sequences. One side, titled “Men’s Pommel Horse,” opens with a brief introduction to Li Ning’s achievement (though it omits that he tied with American gold medalist Peter Vidmar in the pommel horse event). After a photograph of Li wearing half-a-dozen medals around his neck, the animation depicts a gymnast performing a full routine, including double-leg circles, single-leg swings, and scissors, before dismounting with perfect steadiness.

It is worth noting that in 1984 most Chinese families did not own a television—let alone a color set. By 1985, there were 17.2 color television sets per 100 urban households nationwide; in rural areas, ownership was under one percent (National Bureau of Statistics, 2008). For many children, this flip book would have served as a decent visual substitute for televised Olympic coverage.

Stars of the Olympics, no. 8 (Cotsen 71748)

The reverse side of the miniature book reenacts the raising of three national flags during a medal ceremony. China’s flag occupies the highest position, with those of the United States and Japan at equal height below. The scene may reference the men’s vault competition, won by another Chinese gymnast, Lou Yun. That event produced the only four-way tie in Olympic history. Li Ning received one of the silver medals; the remaining three silvers went to two Japanese athletes and Mitchell Gaylord of the United States.

Pick a Winning Team for 2000!

奥运赛场游戏棋 [An Olympic Board Game]. Wenzhou, China: between 1992 and 2000. (Cotsen 92091)

An Olympic Board Game (Cotsen 92091)

In this undated game produced in China, players compete in five sports—long-distance running, diving, soccer, vault, and swimming—at the 2000 Summer Olympics. Participants may represent one of six teams: the United States, Italy, Japan, China, North Korea, or the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

An Olympic Board Game (Cotsen 92091)

Strategically, the CIS would not be an unreasonable choice. Formed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the CIS initially included former Soviet republics such as Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. The CIS competed as a “Unified Team” only in the 1992 Olympics. In Barcelona, it finished first in both the overall medal standings and the gold medal count, while the United States placed second in both categories.

An Olympic Board Game (Cotsen 92091)

The game can be lengthy. Completing the diving competition, for example, triggers a seven-step retreat (Head back to square no. 14, please!).

An Olympic Board Game (Cotsen 92091)

If another player lands on the square you occupy, a “collision” occurs—but only you are injured and must lose one turn in the hospital.

An Olympic Board Game (Cotsen 92091). Uncut medal cards assign 10 points for gold, 8 for silver, and 6 for bronze.

 

An Olympic board game (Cotsen 92091). Uncut referee cards.

After winning a medal, a player draws a referee card. Card no. 3 awards five bonus points for breaking a world record. Some cards impose penalties. If you draw card no. 7, your medal is revoked, because…sorry, you have been caught doping.

Update

Now I don’t know about you who might be fortunate enough to live in warmer regions of the Earth, but here in the Northeastern United States, I have participated in an occasional heavy winter sport: snow shuffling. After the blizzard that started Sunday, I secured fourth place as the earliest person on my corner of the neighborhood to unveil my car from beneath 12.5 inches of snow–just missing the medal podium.

[1] You may want to look up the famous story of how Garrett, in preparation for the Olympics, made a practice discus weighing seven times as heavy as that of the actual ones used for competition and nearly gave up the event.

John Newbery’s Valentine’s Gift

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A Book for Jennifer, (Cotsen 7267)

With this newspaper advertisement the legendary publisher John Newbery launched five new books in 1764, available to only the good children who called at his shop in St. Paul’s Churchyard:

The Philosophers, Politicians, Necromancers, and the Learned in every Faculty are desired to observe, that on the First of January, being New Year’s Day (Oh that we may all lead new Lives!) Mr. Newbery intended to publish the following important Volumes, bound and gilt…

  1. The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread, a little Boy who lived upon Learning
  2. The Easter Gift; or the Way to be very good
  3. The Whitsuntide Gift, or the Way to be very happy
  4. The Valentine’s Gift, or how to behave with Honour, Integrity, and Humanity; Very useful in a trading Nation
  5. The Fairing; or a Golden Toy for Children of all Sizes and Denominations.

These books would sell on their strength as interventions in a social crisis.  Newbery declared in an essay to parents and governesses that “when all Complain of the Depravity of Human Nature, and the Degeneracy of the Present Age, any Design, that is calculated to mend the Heart and inforce a Contrary Conduct, must surely claim the Attention and Encouragement of the Public.”  The Valentine’s Gift, for example, encouraged that the celebration of the holiday be disassociated from the traditional gifting of ribbons, love knots, gloves, and stockings and restored to its original Christian purity.  According to some authorities, St. Valentine urged his followers to choose their partners by lot and devote themselves the next year to advising, not romancing them (today’s specialists point out there is no proof of this practice associated with the saint).

The author of The Valentine Gift laid out the new plan for honoring the day.   On Valentine’s Day morning, partners would be chosen randomly:  the first boy, girl, man, or woman a person saw would be the year’s companion for whom he or she would be responsible.  The couple would keep their running moral accounts in order with copies of Newbery’s Important Pocket-book, which contained a ledge to track expenses and behavior.  One of the stories in the volume, “A Remarkable Cure effected by the Valentine’s Ledger (i.e., the Pocket-book) showed how the inveterate liar Sally Brown, changed her ways after being turned out of her parents’ house, thanks to the gift of the book by the kind Mrs. Jewson.  A more interesting one revolved around a princess who was not especially pleased with her lower-class valentine, the palace mason.  When he uncovered a plot to assassinate her by wicked ministers, she discovered his true worth and that of having valentines for a year.

Of course, the book’s illustrations do not include any hearts or flowers.  The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread was by far more popular than The Valentine’s Day Gift and its companion volumes.  It does have one claim to fame and that is the story of Old Zigzag,a predecessor of Dr. Dolittle. Mrs. Trimmer remembered Zigzag fondly as “the renowned translator of the language of Birds and Beasts, who in former days so successfully moved the hearts of Infancy for the distress of the animal world.”   With the help of a magic horn, Zigzag interviewed birds, insects, and mammals about their treatment at the hands of men.  So moved by what he heard, he may have destroyed the horn so that he would not have to listen to such terrible tales again.  But he might have left it to Mr. Newbery so their stories could be transcribed for little readers.

Newbery’s book does not appear to have pushed back the romantic observance of Valentine’ Day, but it was an early attempt to monetize the holiday by selling products, albeit ones to improve rather than gratify.