If you only ever venture into Firestone because of an awkwardly-scheduled precept, here’s another reason to visit the library. It might not be as compelling as that participation grade, but the Cotsen Children’s Library at Firestone is currently exhibiting a rare collection of French prints for children from the nineteenth century–before the age of TinTin and the Smurfs.

The exhibition, at the library’s Milberg Gallery, offers a glimpse of a relatively unknown period of the popular French art form known as “Images d’Épinal” after the city where the illustrations were first printed. In many ways a precursor to the modern comic strip, many prints feature several images that together tell a story.

One visitor, 11-year-old Corie Borgarhoff, who attended the exhibition with her aunt, said she enjoyed the art and that it reminded her of the modern comic strips she saw in the newspaper. Her favorite: the whimsical cartoon of “the scientist who puts on his lab coat and it becomes puffy, and he flies away.”

To read about the collection, visit Centraljersey.com.