Of Wizards, Dwarfs, Mice, Rabbits, and Little Green Men

A Book of Dwarfs, and A Book of Wizards, Edited by Ruth Manning-Sanders. Illustrations by Robin Jacques.

Collections of stories about wizards and dwarfs, two of my favorite fairy tale folks. The covers are photos of three-dimensional models by Brian Froud. I have these mostly for the illustrations, which are all very good. Manning-Sanders made many other fairy tale collections, many also illustrated by Jacques.

Ranking: Keepers.

File Code: Fairy Tales. Anthology. Softcover.

Matthew Looney and the Space Pirates, by Jerome Beatty, Jr. Illustrations by Gahan Wilson.

I enjoyed some of this series when I was in grade school but had almost completely forgotten about it when I ran across this volume. And I certainly didn’t know (at the time) who the great Gahan Wilson was. I hadn’t read this 1974 entry; maybe it wasn’t even written yet. “The Matthew Looney books chronicle the adventures of a brother and sister, Matthew and Maria Looney, who live in the town of Crater Plato, on the Moon. In Beatty's stories, the inhabitants of the Moon are a fully developed non-human civilization. Beatty's fictional Moon inhabitants are an indigenous species, living on the Moon without the assistance of spacesuits, "breathing" vacuum instead of air. A recurring theme in the books is Matthew's desire to know more about outer space, especially the Earth. At the beginning of the series, he looks up in the sky at the Earth and wonders if anyone is living on it.” – Wikipedia. Other books in the series include Matthew Looney's Voyage to the Earth (1961),  Matthew Looney's Invasion of the Earth (1965),  Matthew Looney in the Outback (1969), Maria Looney on the Red Planet (1977), Maria Looney and the Cosmic Circus (1978), and  Maria Looney and the Remarkable Robot (1978). I only read the first three when I was in school, for obvious reasons.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Science Fiction. Juvenile Series. Softcover.

Rabbit Hill and The Tough Winter, Written and Illustrated by Robert Lawson.

I loved these books when I was in McQueeney, the life of the animals (with some anthropomorphism), and the gentleness of the New Folks who come to live in the Big House on the hill. I love the cantankerous old Uncle Analdas and his suspicious old-fashioned ways, and Georgie’s sense of adventure. Rabbits (along with mice and little people) were the characters I most identified with, as they were as put-upon and looked down at as I felt myself to be, trying to make a life under the radar of the Big Folk. I love Lawson’s artwork; it is mid-century America incarnate.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Beast Fable. Novel. Softcovers.

Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin By His Good Mouse Amos. Discovered, Edited & Illustrated by Robert Lawson. (2 copies, a Hardback and a Softcover)

Sometimes when I get to a book like this I have to pause and ponder a while, because of its significance. I’m not sure if I saw the Disney cartoon on TV or read the book first; what I do know is that there was a version in the Disney “Storyland” book way back at the beginning. I first read the book itself at the Seguin Public Library during the summer reading program. There is so much here that was stuffed into my imagination trove. Mice again. Colonial America. Benjamin Franklin, that eccentric wizard of electricity. I liked that Lawson’s mice and rabbits were lanky, not balls of fur. The picture of Amos in his striped muffler, his little carpet bag and umbrella, the tricorne hats, were added to my trove. I first bought a Dell Yearling softcover, but have since found a good Hardback copy

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Beast Fable. Historical. Hard and soft cover editions.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. Illustrations by Erika Markling.

A Whitman book; we always called these ‘coffee-can’ books because you got them free with a can of coffee (in this case a 2 pound can of Folgers). Mom got us quite a few at the time. This copy is a replacement for our old original one that was read to rags, but it is of the same vintage. The illustrations are all in green, because of the Emerald City, I suppose. The Kalidahs, Winged Monkeys, Fighting Trees, and Hammerheads were all pretty intense monsters in this version. The first version we ever had of a book that had such an enormous impact on my imagination.

Ranking: Essential Nostalgia.

File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Hardback.

The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. Illustrations by Paul Granger.

A copy of the second version of the ‘Wizard’ that we ever had; this is the replacement for the Scholastic book I got in 4^th grade and which was read to rags too. I finally clipped the pictures out of that book to save them. Baum describes the Wicked Witch of the West as having only one eye; the artist interprets this by making her a cyclops. The Dorothy in the pictures is obviously influenced by the MGM movie.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Softcover.

The Marvelous Land of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. Illustrations by John R. Neill. Cover by Dom Lupo.

A Scholastic book. A replacement copy for the first book I ever stole. It was from Mrs. Harris’ 5^th Grade class library. In fact, I embezzled it rather than outright stole it. I checked it out, then hid it under the mattress of our bed and claimed I couldn’t find it. Mom had to eat the replacement cost (if any), as she had done for the honestly lost “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” the year before. A book thief already, and so young. But it was Oz! It was the only copy I’d ever seen, outside the double edition of ‘Wizard’ and ‘Land’ in the public library! It was an older Scholastic that hadn’t been offered in the Weekly Reader! I was, in some respects, a weaselly desperate little boy with no idea of how the book world worked in waves. I think that if Baum had understood that his translation of the stage tradition of having a girl dress up like a boy, then be revealed at the end, he might have been a little more careful about confusing children with Tip’s transformation into Ozma at the conclusion of the book.

Ranking: An Essential reminder of my childhood of crime.

File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Softcover.

Mr. Bass’s Planetoid, by Eleanor Cameron. Illustrations by Louis Darling.

Another in the Mushroom Planet series (for more on see elsewhere in this Inventory), this one an ex-library copy. Possibly from that San Antonio sale that yielded up such good results (in the 90’s, I believe). This was one of those juvenile science fiction series, like ‘Sprockets’ or ‘Matthew Looney’ that were so popular in the 50’s and 60’s. I remember reading them in the Summer Reading Program at the public library. The world is threatened by the experiments of the ambitious Prewytt Brumblydge, and the boys must use their home-built rocket to stop him before he ‘unravels’ the earth. [Not my cover, which is a plain library binding.]

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Science Fiction. Children’s Novel. Hardback.