Those who are tired of heavy grown-up reading can take a journey back to childhood at the Founders Memorial Library.

The library has acquired a collection of over 325 children’s books, pamphlets and magazines. The literature was donated by Alice Lohrer, a library expert who resides in Mesa, Arizona.

“The collection spans two centuries of children’s literature and includes fiction and non-fiction, early American picture books, books from Burma, Thailand, Japan and Iran, and rare items acquired by Lohrer during trips overseas,” said former library director Theodore F. Welch.

Former NIU librarian Victor Shormann said the collection of literature arrived in the summer of 1988, and can now be checked out by the public. The books are being kept in the children’s section of the library.

However, about a dozen of the new acquistions will be kept in the library’s rare and special collections because of their value, said Laura Schroger, Education Librarian.

Among the books donated: handpainted picture books from Japan, an 1843 miniature edition of the “New England Primer” and early editions of “New Mother Hubbard” and “Mother Goose Melodies”.

Lohrer is a library advocate who has helped set up libraries and library schools all over the world.