The mention of Monsters (1974) by Leonard Wolf the other day reminded me that I had a little cache of books that I neglected to put in the Archive before, an oversight that I will now rectify. The first are a few of the monster books for kids that were so prolific in the 1970’s. The Seventies were, in a way, an age of the occult, of morbidities and monstrosity and murder, and these books were a way of mediating those trends in a more harmless (albeit still gruesome) manner for the kiddies.
Werewolves and Other Monsters (1971) by Thomas G. Aylesworth.
Vampires and Other Ghosts (1972) by Thomas G. Aylesworth.
The Alchemists: Magic Into Science (1973) by Thomas G. Aylesworth
The Body Snatchers
(1975) by Daniel Cohen
Richard Armour (July 15, 1906 – February 28, 1989) was a writer whose heyday had arguably already passed when I encountered him in my high school library. I don’t think he is anywhere on the radar of most readers nowadays, but I developed a certain fondness for his work. He had written serious scholarly books but was more famous for his humorous poetry and his fractured takes on history and literature. I remember how Mike and I cracked up as I read his take on David Copperfield aloud. It was Armour, and not Ogden Nash, who wrote the famous little verse “Shake and shake/ The ketchup bottle/ None will come/ And then a lot’ll.” I hope to find his American Lit Relit (1964) someday. Many of his books were illustrated by Disney animator and illustrator Campbell Grant, who had worked on Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, among others.
Twisted Tales from Shakespeare (1957)
The Classics Reclassified (1960)
English Lit Relit
(1969)
