Beginnings of the Collection

John MacKay Shaw started his collection for his children. Shaw read poems and sang to his children regularly while they were young. The children insisted they hear poems about themselves, and not of other children. Shaw agreed to their demands and promised to write them their very own poems. During Christmastime, he organized his poetry into pamphlets and sent them to friends. Two books of his poetry were published by the Friends of FSU Libraries and are currently available for check-out at Strozier Library. These are The Things I Want: Poems for Two Children, and Zumpin: More Poems for Two Children. Shaw’s children eventually outgrew poetry— Shaw never did. He went on a hunt to find other fathers’ poetry from second-hand bookstores. This became a life-long fascination with poems and other books for children, and prompted him to begin a collection of these works. This was the beginning of Shaw's collection of Childhood in Poetry.

Shaw gave his collection of approximately 6,000 volumes to Florida State University Libraries due to his impending retirement in 1959, when he was sixty-two years old. He chose Florida State University to donate to because he was deeply connected to FSU prior to his donation. Florida State University accommodated him by providing secretarial support to Shaw for his collection.