I'm My Mommy, I'm My Daddy
featuring Jim Henson's Muppets
Daniel Wilcox ~ Mel Crawford ~ Golden Books, 1975

All you long time readers know, I'm a big Jim Henson fan. Since I was a wee girl, I signed everything Mrs. Henson. I followed everything he did from Sesame Street to the Story Hour. For me, it was always about the man and less about the Muppets. He died when I was a senior in high school. My mother came to school and pulled me out of class to tell me the news. I sat in my room for days listening to my Muppet Movie vinyl and crying my eyes out.

Some people cried when Elvis died. Some people mourned when John Lennon was killed. For me, it will always be Jim Henson.

I worked for the company for a short time when it was in transition. When the children sold it to a German conglomeration who at the initial meeting told us our offices would no longer be referred to as "The Muppet Mansion" but would now be called "The International Brand Management Center". I watched closely the sales and passing of torches that followed, always with a sad heart.

I applaud all the artists who have, in the years since his passing, worked to keep the Muppets alive. I have my fingers crossed, hoping the new Muppet movie will be watchable, but seeing as the trailer has a fart joke in it, it's doubtful. Those characters are more than a licensed product. They were the man and the people he brought into his creative circle.

Life Magazine did a cover story after he died written by Stephanie Harrigan,

I'll be busy with library sales today. Hitting the road with coffee, kolaches and my vintage muse to see what we might find along the way. While I'm out sniffing around for new things to share, here's an update that is timed for the upcoming season. For Update Friday, please welcome a post from back in '08, Grandpa's Ghost Stories by James Flora. I've dusted if off and provided new, super spooky scans.

And just in case you were looking for something else to do today, here's a list of some of the all time favorite books I've written about on this blog,

Zarelda's Ogre by Tomi Ungerer

Mr. Meebles by Jack Kent

Bubble Bubble by Mercer Mayer

Switch on the Night by Ray Bradbury

The Man Who Lost His Head by Bishop and McCloskey

The Animal Fair by The Provensens

Who's Got the Apple by Jan Loof

The Zabajaba Jungle by William Steig

The Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl

Man, oh, man, I could go on and on and on so I'd better stop there.

And last but not least, I've got another paperback of The Fat Cat by Jack Kent on the Etsy site. Slightly less perfect than the last one, but still in great condition. Again, I've priced it cheaply for you guys, but get it now before some stranger snaps it up.

Let's all collectively make a point today to not steal anyone's joy. OK?

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Encounter on the High Seas
Edward Azmon ~ based on the characters created by Xenia Azmon ~ A Lion Book, 1971

OK, people. I need help with a mystery. This book has been floating around our shelves for years, and I have no idea what its deal is. I can find no reference to what it is online other than offers to buy on book sale sites. It seems as if it's part of a series (another book online is entitled A Hunt in the Jungle), and the pictures look like they might have been extracted from some sort of film or television animation. No? If anyone knows what the deal is with this book, please comment right away and end the wondering.

That said...

In the far north, where there is nothing but ice and water, lives Wally the Walrus. Wally loves to spend his days fishing and painting his white and blue world. One day Wally runs out of white paint. How can he paint without white? Hopping into his ice car, he hurries to the paint store.

One store after another is closed. The farther he floats away, the hotter it gets and soon his car begins to melt. Lost adrift, he's picked up by an admiral-like crocodile who mistakes him for his friend Bobo the Elephant and soon Wally is painting the reptile's portrait and the next thing they know they are docked and the entire Roundi Doundi Gang is waiting for them and they all fall in love with Wally and climb into Chim Cham's car and head to a party where Wally paints everyone's picture and is gifted with the biggest tube of white paint you ever saw and then he goes home. The end. Whew.

I originally bought this book at Goodwill because of the bright 70s palette, but now the whole thing confounds me to no end. It is only really half a story. It reads like a movie tie-in. They introduce the characters in a tone that makes it sound as if I should know them, and should I know them? If I should know them, why is there no memory of them on the all-knowing Internet? On the cover Wallie's name is spelled Wallie but in the story Wallie's name is spelled Wally. The design a

A Little Schubert
M. B. Goffstein ~ Harper & Row, 1972

Anytime a children's book can blend the story of classical music with a bit of whimsy, I'm all for it. Better yet if that book is written and illustrated by the incomparable M. B. Goffstein. I could spend a lifetime in any of her books and never grow tired of their brilliant simplicity. Though they all seem to be out-of-print at the moment, the artist was prolific in drawing and writing children's books in the 1960s into the 1990s and won a Caldecott Honor in '77 for her book, Fish for Supper. She even wrote a handful of YA books.

Here, we have a short story about the Austrian composer, Franz Schubert; imaging what it must have been like to compose in the dead of winter, in a bare room with no fire.

But when the cold made his fingers ache, and he almost could not write his music, Franz Schubert got up. He clasped his hands and stamped his feet. He made his shabby coattails fly as he danced to keep warm.

Included are six of Schubert's twelve dances called "Noble Waltzes", written right before his death in 1828, and arranged by one-time Metropolitan Opera conductor, Richard Woitach; presented in full to help illustrated what it means to be musically inspired.



Goffstein's Website i

Happy Monday.

This part of Texas finally got a rain. A whole weekend full of it. Rejoice. More importantly with chilly weather on the way, can't you just smell Halloween around the corner? Well, you all remember my little animal loving son, right? You might also recall his awesome Fawkes the Phoenix costume from last year. Yes? No? I have a pledge to myself to always hand-make the boy's costume, and for a while there it looked like he was going Ewok this year, which would have been awesome and easy to pull off. But now, much to my dismay, he wants to be Boba Fett. I can put together the body part of the costume without a problem, but the bounty hunter's helmet.... well, that's another story.

My husband claims that he can a helmet from scratch, but just as a backup plan I'm putting this out there. Anyone have a hand-me-down Boba Fett mask they are willing to trade for books? I am dead serious about this. Email me... webe(at)soon(dot)com.

But, anywho, that's enough about me. How about you guys? Up for grabs this Great Monday Give is a good paperback of the book about the little naked boy censors love to hate, Sendak's In the Night Kitchen. Anyone wanting to take this puppy home should comment on this post between now and September 25 at 11:59 PM. A winner will be selected at random and anounced the following morning.

And with an all-time low comment count, the winner of last week's give is Anne. E-mail me your contact info, and I will get the book to you before the US Postal Service shuts its doors. Promise.

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When you live in a house full of bookavores, it's not uncommon to come across baskets of paperbacks that you haven't seen in a while. Which happened last night, much to my son's delight. He discovered just such a basket in his closet and squealed at finding so many old friends. One by one, he pulled out a big stack of books to read during dinner, sorted in the order in which he would like them read. This one on top.

It's always been one of his favorite Flora stories.

Our old copy is severely browning, so I did the best I could with the scans. Now, for your Update Friday pleasure, please welcome back a post from September 2008, The Great Green Turkey Creek Monster, brand-spanking new and shiny for today's color-loving kids.

On a side note, having a child in a language immersion program is awesome, except they won't allow him to begin reading in English again until the third grade. The bad part is, all the boxes and boxes of chapter books I've collected will have to wait. The good part is, I can stay a read-aloud momma that much longer.

Case in point, we are half-ways through the not-quite vintage Jules Feiffer book, The Man in the Ceiling. It is fast becoming our favorite middle grade book, like, EVER. If you have a child who is an artist or loves comics, man-oh-man is this book for ya'll. I love Feiffer's books (Meanwhile... is a house fave and his Phantom Tollbooth illustrations are fab), and we know some of his old comic strips from The Toon Treasury of Classic Kids' Comics... but with this novel, he is now officially in my book crush club. Love, love, love.

Anyways, as you were...

The Quarreling Book
Charlotte Zolotow ~ Arnold Lobel ~ Harper & Row, 1963

More Charlotte Zolotow? Why the hell not.

Now, if you've never been to Charlotte's website (maintained by her daughter), I highly suggest a visit. The main page opens with this little bit of information

Charlotte turned 92 in June 2007. She has some major disabilities; she lives at home, in the same home she has lived in for 50 years, with a round-the-clock caregiver, a lovely woman from Ghana. She is wheelchair-bound, close to blind, and pretty mad about it (understandably). But she has no illnesses or diseases, and though she is sometimes forgetful these days, her memories about writing, editing, and the children's book world are very clear.

If that's not an invitation into a world of awesomeness, I don't know what is. That would make her 96 this year, bless her heart. Thankfully, even after all these years, this ditty of a book is still in print. A small, black and white gem, it just goes to show you how one bad mood can be contagious...

It was a rainy gray morning, and Mr. James forgot to kiss Mrs. James good-bye when he left for the office. Mrs. James felt quite cross because of this and because the rain made the day so gray. So when Jonathan James came down for breakfast, she was sharp with him.

You see where this is headed as the bad mood passes from one person to another. Fear not good readers, what goes around comes around. As fast as a harsh word can ruin our day, a tussle with a snugly friend can send it reeling back in the right direction.

3 Comments on The Quareling Book, last added: 9/16/2011