The Sesame Street Book of Fairy Tales

The Sesame Street Book of Fairy Tales
Emily Kingsley, David Korr, Jeffrey Moss ~ Joseph Mathieu
Random House, 1975

Because I don't feel like being artsy-fartsy this morning, I'm opting instead for some pure commercial fun. Now, my son will still listen to his Sesame Street records (How to Be a Grouch and The Sesame Street Pet Show, respectively). And if it falls into the realm of "Muppets", he's cool with it, but for the most part, he's moved on from all things Sesame Street. That doesn't mean I'm about to throw out all of the vintage SS loot I've collected for him over the years. I was reshuffling the shelves to move some of the younger titles out and came across this old favorite from the Random House years.

Illustrated by the awesomely awesome Joe Mathieu, here we have six classic (and not-so-classic) fairy tales told as only the Muppets can tell. The King's Nose is about a king (d'uh) who finds himself in the unenviable predicament of having a bright pink rubber ball stuck on his sniffer.

Smash! went the royal window,
and before the King could duck,
The ball bounced off
King Marvin's throne...
and hit his nose...
and stuck.
"What is this thing?" said Marvin
as he felt the ball and sneered.
But before he could remove it,
his Prime Minister appeared.
"King Marv!" cried the Prime Minister.
"A rubber ball! How cute!
It really is magnificent! I'll get one for my snoot."

A twist on The Emperor's New Clothes, soon all the kingdom is sporting pink rubber balls. The King (as played by Mumford the Magician) is hysterical while Bert and Ernie are perfect players in the story.

The Legend of Linda the Lonely is the tale of Lord Ludwig of Liverwurst, his niece Linda, and the love she finds with Lloyd of London, Lord Ludwig's lowliest lackey. The King of Cauliflower's Castle has the moral that bigger does not always mean better. In between, Big Bird attempts to tell some children the puppet tales of The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Little Kittens Who Lost Their Mittens, but he keeps getting thwarted by The Count's uncontrollable urge to tally.

All the Sesame Street books Random House created during this time are so awesome, and are such a higher quality than a lot of the movie and TV tie-ins that get published today. This one, in particular, was published when I was three years old and is a nostalgia overload, for sure.

Other Old Sesame Street Titles:
Sherlock Hemlock and the Great Twiddlebug Mystery
Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum
The In and Out and All About Sesame Street Coloring Book
The Together Book
The Many Faces of Ernie
The Great Cookie Thief
Sesame Street 1,2,3 Story Book
The Amazing Mumford and His Amazing Subtracting Trick
The Sesame Street Bedtime Storybook
The Pecan Tree
The Sesame Street Decorate a Tree Book
I'm a Mommy, I'm a Daddy

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The Great Cookie Thief

THE GREAT COOKIE THIEF
Emily Perl Kingsley ~ Michael J. Smollin
A Golden Shape Book, 1977

Another silly lowbrow... as you all know I'm a sucker for vintage Muppets. This was first a skit that aired on Sesame Street in 1971, later reprised in book form by the previously mentioned illustrator of There's a Monster at the End of This Book and the author of one of my favorite Sesame Street titles as a kid, The Sesame Street Pet Show. (I had it in book and record form and that's one of the holy grail items I hope to find before the boy gets too old. He continues to dig his book and record How To Be A Grouch, so there's still time!)

The skit takes place in a western bar where a WANTED sign hangs for the infamous, Great Cookie Thief... but when the real Cookie Thief (Cookie Monster, surprise!) shows up, the locals use their skills of deductive reasoning to ascertain his identity. An all-time great Sesame Street ditty, one that my son asks to watch over and over again from his Old School collection.

Already Narnia and Hogwarts are monopolizing my son's free time. As the magical Sesame Street-aged window closes on us--and though I've been able to keep my son from the red fiend known as Elmo--I'll lament the day when my old Bird Bird and Grover videos head to the attic for good. Sad that my son only met Mr. Green Jeans once, in a fleeting YouTube video. But hey, I can't expect the boy to relive my entire childhood, can I?

Other Old Sesame Street Titles:
Sherlock Hemlock and the Great Twiddlebug Mystery
Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum
The In and Out and All About Sesame Street Coloring Book
The Together Book
The Many Faces of Ernie
Sesame Street 1,2,3 Storybook
The Amazing Mumford and His Amazing Subtracting Trick
The Sesame Street Bedtime Storybook

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Sherlock Hemlock and the Great Twiddlebug Mystery or The Mystery of the Terrible Mess in My Friend's Front Yard

Sherlock Hemlock and the Great Twiddlebug Mystery
by Betty Lou as told to Sir Arthur Conan Rubberducque
illustrated by Roger Bradfield
Western Publishing, 1972

Eventually, we'll get through all the old school Sesame Street titles I've amassed for the boy, but not any time soon... so to celebrate, here's another oldie but goody from my Muppet-fueled youth. Starring old fave Sherlock Hemlock as well as the inspired Twiddlebugs, the rad Roosevelt Franklin and the lovable but slightly scary Herry Monster. Ten bucks says there is more than one of you out there having some freaky flashback right now because of that illustration of him throwing birthday candles at the Twiddlebugs. Awesome, no? Ah, ain't memory grand?

OK, so, Betty Lou is flummoxed as to why a terrible mess has appeared in Roosevelt's front yard. Enter Sherlock, who promises to solve the mystery...

"I'm glad you're here, Mr. Hemlock," I said. "Maybe you can tell me what on earth has been happening here."

"Aha!" said the man. "Has something been happening here?"

"Indeed it has," I answered. "There's a terrible mess in my friend's front yard."

"A terrible mess!" said the man. "That sounds like a job for Sherlock Hemlock."

And so, the two go through the yard clue by clue... party hats... crumpled wrapping paper... a half eaten piece of cake with a candle in it. Sherlock creates a wild scenario involving Twiddlebugs and their famous jellybean dance and Herry Monster attacking them with birthday candles. Betty Lou is not amused. When Roosevelt finally arrives and explains the mess is from his birthday party (one that, oddly enough, his "friend" Betty Lou was not invited to), Sherlock is heartbroken. Of course, in pure Sesame Street style, after the downtrodden detective has fled the scene...

"Well," I said to my friend, "let's go inside and look at your presents!"

"I'd love to invite you in," said my friend, "but I can't. You see, we were having the party when all of a sudden all these little bugs came and started doing a dance, and then a monster ran up and threw candles at everyone and chased us into the house. You can't possibly go in there right now."

Egads! Sherlock Hemlock was right after all. This book spooked me something crazy when I was little (that look on Herry's face is positively menacing), as did many things Sesame Street (dark alleys, talking monsters and mistaken situations), but in a good way. I find today's 123 stoop to be a tad bit too bright and cheery for my taste. I'm definitely not in the 'Elmo's World' fan club, so despite the disclaimer at the beginning of the Sesame Street Old School Video Collection...

blah, blah... vintage episodes are meant for grownups and not today's preschool set... blah, blah...

... I still let my son watch them. Hey, every childhood needs at least one scary robot to make it thoroughly memorable, no?

Other old school Sesame Street books:
Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum
The Together Book
The In and Out and All About Sesame Street Coloring Book
The Many Faces of Ernie
The Great Cookie Thief
Sesame Street 1,2,3 Storybook
The Amazing Mumford and His Amazing Subtracting Trick
The Sesame Street Bedtime Storybook

How To Be a Grouch

How to Be a Grouch- Book and Record 
Oscar the Grouch (Caroll E. Spinney) ~ Sesame Street Records, 1981

There are still so many things I want to share with you guys! Like the lovely box that arrived yesterday from Drawn & Quarterly (more later), and the fact that a cold front finally blew into San Antonio--a cold front so awesome and refreshing, it had my dogs wrestling until two in the morning. The fact that I'm in love with my new job and feel so blessed to be there. The fact that I'm going to see the new Tim Burton today! The fact that the boy is going to be Tintin for Halloween (pictures to come).

Not to mention the books piling up in my to-post pile.

Like this one, for example. I've been completely remiss in not posting this as part of my old school Muppet set. A few days ago, my son was in his room playing records on his Fisher Price, when all of a sudden, Carol Spinney's voice came dancing down the hall like an old friend calling me out to play. I don't think I can possible communicate how much I LOVED THIS BOOK AND RECORD when I was little. It is one of the most classic bits of Sesame Street memorabilia anyone can possibly own. A book all about how to be a grouch. Not only was it written by Caroll E. Spinney (aka Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird) but it was illustrated by him, as well, and it's his voice you hear on the audio.

Not to mention the fact that it's bloody hysterical. Case in point...

First of all -

If you want to be a grouch,

You'll have to stop being so

NICE AND CUTE!

Next - learn to frown!

Ah yes, in 24 fun-filled pages, Mr. Spinney gives us the skinny on all the crummy things you can do to get down with the garbage can gang. In addition, you discover all sorts of insights into the life of one, Oscar the Grouch; meet his family (I always liked Smiling George in the smiley face trash can), find out what makes him grouchy (birds that sing), where he likes to go on vacation (Mudville Flats), and what he likes to eat (cold turkey gravy on corn flakes). Every second of this book is awesome.

Originally published in 1976 as a Whitman Tell-a-Tale book, it was also adapted into an onscreen short that will be released as part of the upcoming Old School: Vol 3 DVD set. Every page is full of crummy advice and situations: "Going to a Grouch Movie - First, you wait in a very slow ticket line, then a grouchy usher yells at you to get your feet off the seat. The best part comes when the movie machine breaks down!" It's so great to hear Oscar's voice spitting out all his rotten routines. Possible the most awesome sauce part comes with Oscar's last piece of advice.

Other Old Sesame Street Titles:

Sherlock Hemlock and the Great Twiddlebug Mystery

Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum

The In and Out and All About Sesame Street Coloring Book

The Together Book

The Many Faces of Ernie

The Great Cookie Thief

Sesame Street 1,2,3 Story Book

The Amazing Mumford and His Amazing Subtracting Trick

The Sesame Street Bedtime Storybook

The Pecan Tree

The Sesame Street Decorate a Tree Book

I'm a Mommy, I'm a Daddy

Sesame Street Book of Fairy Tales

Gotta love the Spinney...

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I'm My Mommy ~ I'm My Daddy

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, and the last passage of it still rings true.

Jim Henson changed puppets forever, changed them into Muppets. One look at Henson's creations and few people ever wanted to see a stiff, dangling marionette again. His puppets were designed for the close-in scrutiny of the television camera. Their eyes were uncannily expressive, their wide mouths moved in perfect sync with their words. They did not just represent living beings - they were alive themselves.

Or so we can't help believing. "There is something about putting life in the inanimate doll," Jane Henson said. "There's a bit of divinity in it that all puppeteers understand."

That was the thought that kept coming back to me as, later that day, I went on a tour of the workshop where the Muppets are made. Amid all those half-assembled creatures of flocked foam and slush latex, a puppetmaker named Ed Christie showed me a file cabinet where the characters from "Sesame Street" - the actual working Cookie Monsters and Oscars and Grovers - were kept when not in use.

"Here's the real Bert," he said. "And down there is the real Ernie."

He took them out of their drawers and held them up, Bert with his familiar scowling face and repose, their mouths open, their arms hanging idly at their sides, they were creepy. They seemed not only inert but bewitched, frozen under some dark spell. And it seemed at that moment that only Jim Henson, whose genius had created them, and who was now gone, could ever release them.

"That's all they are," Ed Christie said, "just lumps of fabric." I watched as he put Ernie back into the drawer, next to a Ziploc bag filled with spare rubber duckies, and closed the file.

Jim Henson would have been 75 today. Rest in peace, my friend.

(I'm My Mommy ~ I'm My Daddy is a flip book illustrated by the always awesome Mel Crawford. In both stories, child and parent play a game of pretend where the child acts like the parent and the parent, the child. Adorable, old school Sesame Street.)

Other Old Sesame Street Titles:
Sherlock Hemlock and the Great Twiddlebug Mystery
Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum
The In and Out and All About Sesame Street Coloring Book
The Together Book
The Many Faces of Ernie
The Great Cookie Thief
Sesame Street 1,2,3 Story Book
The Amazing Mumford and His Amazing Subtracting Trick
The Sesame Street Bedtime Storybook
The Pecan Tree
The Sesame Street Decorate a Tree Book

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The Pecan Tree

The Pecan Tree
Matt Robinson ~ Robert Velde
Random House, 1971

Today seems like a good day to pull out some of my old Sesame Street book and records... the most famous of these being the Carroll Spinney penned and illustrated How to be a Grouch... not to mention the one I'm still looking to replace but can't find, The Sesame Street Pet Show... and these, by the late, great Matt Robinson (Sesame's original Gordon and father to actress Holly Robinson), that for some reason scared me in a fun way when I was little. I remember having the whole "Gordon of Sesame Street Tells a Story" series and all of them gave me a delightful sense of the willies: The Six-Button Dragon, Giveaway Gibson and mostly A Lot of Hot Water. Here, it was the knowing that the tree was going to fall and the not knowing exactly when I think that freaked me out... in the best way, mind you.

Soooo, Agricultural Carter plants a pecan tree.

And that tree grew... and grew... and grew... until is grew so large that it spread all over the village. Not only that, but the pecans were so big that when they fell off the tree, they were like big rocks from the sky, and they crashed down on the tops of the little houses, and not a man, not a woman, not a child in the village was safe from the giant pecan tree.

All these books taught a positive morality lesson, and after the entire town takes a whack at cutting the tree down, it ends up that working together is what finally conquers the beast. Ahhh, the memories. If the boy's love of these books is any indication, they still make for a pretty good read.

(Anyone know anything about the artist?)

Other Old Sesame Street Titles:
Sherlock Hemlock and the Great Twiddlebug Mystery
Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum
The In and Out and All About Sesame Street Coloring Book
The Together Book
The Many Faces of Ernie
The Great Cookie Thief
Sesame Street 1,2,3 Story Book
The Amazing Mumford and His Amazing Subtracting Trick
The Sesame Street Bedtime Storybook

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The Amazing Mumford and His Amazing Subtracting Trick and Featuring Lovable, Furry, Old Grover

The Amazing Mumford and His Amazing Subtracting Trick
Norman Stiles (with help from Bob Oksner and Emily Perl Kaplin)
illustrated by Mike Smollin ~ Western Publishing, 1972

Once again, I'm ending the week with an old school Sesame Street book. Sorry for the jam up, I'm just realizing I still have so many to share before the point becomes moot altogether. That said, this is probably the last time I'll ever buy a Sesame Street book online, but when I saw it last week in an Etsy shop, I couldn't resist. The boy is eating it up too as The Amazing Mumford is one of his favorite characters, due to the fact that the dude is totally wacky and weird and hilarious. I'm enjoying it because I do remember having this one from childhood and Grover has always been the personal fave. Once again illustrated fantastically by the incomparable Mike Smollin (creator of the still-in-print The Monster at the End of This Book), and taken from a skit that originally aired on the show in 1971, we see Mumford attempting to make a series of pineapples disappear, one after the other, until Grover takes over the magical reigns and makes "Mumphie" go bye-bye a la peanut butter sandwiches. Classic Sesame Street shtick. Enjoy and happy Friday!

Other Old Sesame Street Titles:
Sherlock Hemlock and the Great Twiddlebug Mystery
Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum
The In and Out and All About Sesame Street Coloring Book
The Together Book
The Many Faces of Ernie
The Great Cookie Thief
Sesame Street 1,2,3 Story Book
The Sesame Street Bedtime Storybook

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