Rain Makes Applesauce

Rain Makes Applesauce
Julian Scheer ~ Marvin Bileck ~ Holiday House, 1964

Penned by famed NASA man and sometime children's book author, Julian Scheer, I always avoided this book until I found a first edition hardcover, recently. I'm not sure why I avoided it. Sometimes, if I see a book too often in too many places, I never bother to crack the spine. In this case, I used to see it all the time but never opened it up. Then a few readers mentioned it, and as soon as I started looking, it stop appearing. But I figure, there was a reason why I waited this long to fall in love. There always is.

It helps that I have a thing for old books with author photos on the jacket. Who wouldn't love this man flanked by so many adorable kiddies!?!

AWESOME!

Enter a lyrical little poem about dreams and love and the fantastical nature of life itself, illustrated in a style as whimsical as the theme.

The stars are made of lemon juice
and rain makes applesauce
I wear my shoes inside out
and rain makes applesauce
My house goes walking every day
and rain makes applesauce
Dolls go dancing on the moon
and rain makes applesauce

It's exactly this sort of "silly talk" that helped Rain Makes Applesauce win a Caldecott Honor Award in 1965, and made it a classic that remains in print today. So glad it finally found me.


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Pumpernick and Pimpernell

Pumpernick and Pimpernell
Lilo Fromm ~ Doubleday, 1967

Sorry I was out for a day, but my scanner was down... until tonight! Up late to bring you a sweet and crazy story about two friends who have a lovely little life together. A garden. A wee little house. An adorable doggy. Until one day...

...something strange happened. A noise they had never heard before was coming from the house. It was like the breathing of a horse with a bad cold. They all jumped up to see what it could be. And what did they see but a great huge mouse asleep on the roof, snoring so hard it made the whole house shake!

Just when you think that a giant blue mouse on the roof was weird, Pete the Drifter shows up, laughing and shouting with a rooster under his arm. Next, the Noise Man arrives with his junk cart. And yes, as you might imagine, a fight ensues between the mouse, the drifter and the Noise Man... leaving Pumpernick and Pimpernell to clean up the mess.

Brought to us by the artist Fromm who also illustrated the German classic The Golden Bird, I've read this book again and again, searching for what the moral might be, but alas... who cares! She created a story so rad and strange and colorful that it doesn't need to teach us anything except that weirdos will steer clear of your house if you put up a sign that reads "Keep Out! Biting Dog!"

Ten kinds of AWESOME!


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Great Monday Give: 25 Mystery Books

In anticipation of spring cleaning here in Texas, I am going to be hosting the biggest, baddest Great Monday Give EVER.

I actually need to make room on my son's shelves, so I am offering up a mystery box of 25 books. I'm not yet sure what they'll be, but rest assured, the package will be awesome. The best part is, you'll have three ways to win.

One... Comment on this post as usual.

Two... Follow me on Twitter and then post about the Giveaway using the hash tag #vintagekidsbooksrule.

Three... friend me on Facebook and post a comment saying you want to win on my wall.

I'll pick one name from each of these avenues (could be the same person) and then randomly pick a winner from the three. By entering the give all three ways, it ups your chances of winning.

The give will run for two weeks, so you have plenty of time. Enter between now and Sunday, February 5 at 11:59 PM. A winner will be announced the following day.

I promise the box will be filled with all sorts of vintage goodies! Good luck, gang.

(If you are outside of the US, you can still enter to win, but if you win, I would ask that you cover shipping. Fair?)

(And the winner of last week's give is Patricia! E-mail me at webe@soon.com with your info.)

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Nils

Nils
Ingri & Edgar Parin d'Aulaire ~ Doubleday, 1948

The dynamic duo of the d'Aulaires created countless classics and two children, Ola and Nils, and (I'm assuming) each child, in turn, received a book named as such.

Or was it the other way around? Hmmmmmmm.

No matter. With illustrations lithographed directly on stone and printed in four colors, I can never turn down one of their books so lush in tone and rich in personality. Here, we have a strangely-timely tale of bullying, 1940s-style.

There once was a boy and his name was Nils.
He was longlegged and gay and his schoolmates called him a regular fellow.
He had a pony all his own.
He was going to be a cowboy when he grew up.

From Norwegian blood, the young Nils loved to ride his horse and tell tall tales. But when he's given a pair of woolen stockings from his grandmother in the old country, he's teased mercilessly and throws them away, fearing he'll never be a tough cowboy in long stockings.

That is until he meditates of the story of Peer Gynt, riding his reindeer and generally being manly, and decides he can be a Norwegian cowboy no matter what anyone thinks of his long, knitted stockings.

My copy is an ex-library book from the Fort Wayne and Allen County, Indiana Public Library with possibly the prettiest end papers and card pocket I've ever seen.

Not to mention I've never noticed the delightfully romantic and intertwined signature at the bottom of some of their illustrations. Ola and Nils were lucky kids to have parents so talented and full of color. Love it when couples create together.

Ten thumbs up!

Also by:
D'Aulaire's Book of Animals
D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths
The Terrible Troll-Bird
Benjamin Franklin
Don't Count Your Chicks
Ola

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Update Friday: Learning About Sizes

Taking today to enjoy Update Friday, the day where I pick a post from the archives, back in the day before I showed loads of scans and such, and make it all shiny and new with scans and additional commentary.

Please welcome, Learning About Sizes.

Enjoy!

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Ann Can Fly

Ann Can Fly
Fred Phleger ~ Robert Lopshire ~ Random House, 1959

In keeping with the theme of Robert Lopshire from yesterday, I offer up this snapshot of 1950s stereotyped perfection.

This is a big day for Ann. Her father will take her to camp in his new airplane. Ann has never gone up in an airplane. "Will it be fun?" she asks. "Will I like it?" Her father laughs.

Will she like it? D'uh. Notice the doting look she gives her handsome father throughout the story. As he teaches her to read the air map. As he casually looks the plane over before take off. As he teaches her about gauges and wheels and whatnot. His faint smile in the eye of the storm.

Gee, isn't he proud of her? And isn't it every girl's dream to have a pops who can fly you into summer camp and land you on the lake in front of your girlfriends, all while looking so dashing?

All kinds of awesome.

I love the angles Lopshire took in these drawings, showing the plane from so many different perspectives, giving the reader a feeling of always being above or below the action.

Really, I love this book for so many reason, it's hard to quantify. The colors. The happiness. The sky. If all father/daughter relationships were this genteel and trusting...

Oh, what a wonderful world.

Also by:
Red Tag Comes Back
How to Make Flibbers
A Beginner's Guide to Building and Flying Model Airplanes

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A Beginner's Guide to Building and Flying Model Airplanes

A Beginner's Guide to Building and Flying Model Airplanes
Robert Lopshire ~ Harper & Row, 1967

Now that my son is of a certain age, I'm beginning to dig back in the archives of our collection and pull out books I bought years ago expressly for this era of his childhood. In the digging, I uncovered this little jewel and thought I'd use it as an opportunity to give props to Mr. Lopshire, who passed away in 2002 and was best known for his book Put Me in the Zoo. A while back, I was looking for information on him and 10 Engines was kind enough to send some back story along, including this quote...

Thirteen years after the it's publication, Lopshire explained how the book (Put Me in the Zoo) came about: "I came to write my first book because, at the time, I was employed as creative art director on the 'Beginner Book' project at Random House, the first of the truly planned assaults on young minds."

Later, he explained, "Ted Geisel (Dr. Suess) said that the old 'Dick, Jane and Spot' concept was horrible, and that no one could ever do anything more with the three--he bet me on this. . . . Put Me in the Zoo uses Dick, Jane and Spot and I won the bet."

More recently, I found Robert's obituary from the Herald Tribune.

Lopshire, 75, a resident of Gainesville, died May 4, 2002, of emphysema and congestive heart failure in the North Florida Regional Hospital there.He was born April 14, 1927, in Sarasota and graduated from Sarasota High School in 1944.

"The nurses brought in Bob's books for him to autograph during his last days at the hospital," his wife, Selma, said. "They said they had memorized many of them as young children and were now reading them to their own children."

Lopshire had his pilot's license by the age of 15 and after graduating from Sarasota High School, served aboard assault landing ships in the Pacific Theatre. After the war ended a year later, he worked as an illustrator in studios in Boston and Philadelphia, and was a member of the Illustrators Group in New York.

When Lopshire was creative art director during the earlier stages of the Beginner Books series at Random House, his illustrations for Ann Can Fly, published in 1959, caught the eye of Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss of the famous Dr. Seuss Beginner Books series, also at Random House.

Lopshire created other favorites for young children such as New Tricks I Can Do! and It's Magic! all for prominent publishing houses. Lopshire loved airplanes and amused himself and crowds before baseball games at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia with synchronized take-offs and landings of radio-controlled Snoopy and the Red Baron model planes. In addition to illustrating and drawing blueprints for building models, he also wrote Radio Controlled Miniature Aircraft for Macmillan, and A Beginner's Guide to Building and Flying Model Airplanes for Harper. He also contributed a section on model airplanes for the World Book Encyclopedia.

"He never retired," his wife said. "Bob had a massive imagination. Right up until the end, he had intricate model airplanes on one table and was working on another book at his desk."

Now, this is one man I'd have loved to interview. The dust jacket of this book mentions that Robert was a member of the Academy of Model Aeronautics and a combat photographer during WW II. My son adores the illustrations he did for the Big Max books and thrives on How to Make Flibbers projects, so I'm hoping he takes to the wings so we can get some play out of this comprehensive volume.

The book is so lovingly constructed, diagrammed, researched and explained, that it's hard not to get swept up in the romance of the hobby. I can only imagine how many wee aviators were inspired by Robert's infectious joy of the sky.

Dedicated up front to: Wilbur and Orville Wright for having started something wonderful. One could say the same about good 'ole Bob.

RIP, amazing fly guy.

Also by:
How to Make Flibbers
Ann Can Fly

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