(MONEY Magazine) – Values for many works of fine art are slipping, but the picture is pretty for investors dabbling in children's book illustrations. Prices for many original works by contemporary children's book artists have doubled, tripled, even quadrupled in the past few years. Three years ago, Michael Hague's illustrations from the 1983 bestseller The Velveteen Rabbit sold for $1,500. Today those drawings are going for $3,400. At a June Sotheby's auction in London, an E.H. Shepard drawing from his 1908 classic The Wind in the Willows sold for $7,946, about twice what the auction house anticipated. With the baby boom's new boomlet of kids, such illustrations are likely to leap off the pages and onto walls of living rooms and nurseries. ''I think we've barely scratched the surface of this market,'' says Sam Bush, whose Bush Gallery in Dover, Mass. is one of about a dozen popping up around the country that sell kids' book art exclusively. A few others: the Elizabeth Stone Gallery in Birmingham, Mich.; Every Picture Tells a Story in Los Angeles; and in New York City, Books of Wonder and the Henry Feiwel Gallery. Most children's book drawings now sell for between $500 and $2,500, although investors are paying as much as $25,000 for scarce originals from the likes of Ludwig Bemelmans' 1939 classic Madeleine. Fantasy drawings with Arthurian knights and gnomes are especially hot today. ''We can't get the stuff in fast enough,'' says gallery owner Elizabeth Stone. Experts say that prices typically are lowest and potential gains highest from such up-and-coming artists as Mary Jane Begin, David Wiesner and Lynn Munsinger. One way to discover a rising star is to find favorable reviews of new children's books at your local library in such magazines as Book List and Library Journal. Once you find an illustrator you like, write to the children's publicity department of the publisher and ask how to purchase a drawing. You'll probably be given either an address for the artist or that of the gallery with rights to sell the work. Clearly, as Sam Bush says, ''children's book art is no longer just kids' stuff.''