Birthday Books: Duck and His Friends and Bone Adventures

 Off of the Wish List and into my library.

Our original copy belonged to our (slightly) older cousin Darlene, and was given to us by the Rauch family, probably for my younger siblings. I don't know precisely how old I was, but a little over the perceived limits for Little Golden Books. However, it was I who latched on to it and I who took it in hand to preserve once the covers came off. I don't know; I liked the idea of the homebuilt raft they made and I always enjoyed Richard Scarry's artwork. The man draws an amazing stack of pancakes. This newer copy has a different style of lettering than I remember from the old cover.

Ship-shape and Bristol fashion.

For a long time I resisted Jeff Smith's work, especially while it was coming out in black-and-white comic book form in the Nineties. From a cursory glance it seemed more of a rip-off of Walt Kelly's artwork from Pogo than as the homage it is. I have always been very jealous and suspicious about my heros' legacies. Then sometime in the early 2000's I started buying toys in the Bone action figure line, starting with Gran'ma Ben. Whatever I thought of Bone, the figures were very well done and came with some fine accessories. Finally when the nine colorized volumes came out I began giving the series a fairer trial, and I found that I really liked it. I found myself getting all the Bone books I could find, and now have most of them, except for the three "Quest for the Spark" books (set in the same world as Bone, illustrated by Smith but written by Tom Sniegoski), which my nephew has but which I have never been able to get into, despite trying. Anyway, this simple book (indeed, it is aimed at beginning readers) is both written and drawn by Smith and concerns the three original Bone brothers.