Lucky Little People

Here's an odd little item; in 1973 and 1974, Scholastic Publications published a series of sets of finger puppets. These were called Lucky Little People, and consisted of pages of characters that could be punched out together with a simple script for presenting a play.

I became aware of these because the first in the series was a version of Rumplestiltskin, with designs by Edward Gorey. As my partner is an avid Gorey collector, I'd known about that particular item for quite some time. But, since we never ran across any other sets, we wondered if Rumplestiltskin was the only set that had been published; it turns out we were wrong.

I've been unable to track down much information on these fragile pieces, but I now know there were at least five sets. Set #2 is a mystery as I've found no references to it. Set #3 was Famous Americans, set #4 was Hansel and Gretel, and set #5 was The Wizard of Oz. The last two sets were published in 1974.

There is no artist credit on the Oz puppets, which are colorful. A simple script was included with the set, a fairly faithful version of Dorothy's capture and the subsequent defeat of the Wicked Witch of the West.

Baseball with the Scarecrow

In August of 1906, Harper's Weekly published a small piece on a charity baseball game played by a group of prominent New York actors and managers. Among the players was Fred Stone, dressed in full Scarecrow costume, playing catcher with a birdcage over his head serving as a mask!

As can be seen from the photo, the game was a comic affair. The manager Sam Harris is shown at the plate, using the largest bat I've ever seen! Other players included George M. Cohan, Abraham Erlanger, and De Wolf Hopper. The accompanying photo shows quite an array of uniforms.

The game took place at the American League park, and featured the actors taking on the managers - the outcome of the game isn't clear, although the article states "The result of the match was vigorously contested, in spite of the fact that the umpire was attired in a suit of mail." More than $3,000 was raised and donated to a home for destitute and crippled children.

Another interesting point of the magazine is the centerfold photo, which shows Mt Vesuvius after the great eruption that took place in April of that year.

As it happens, L. Frank Baum and his wife Maud spent the first six months of 1906 on a European trip - I believe it was their first and only - and arrived in Naples during the time that Vesuvius was active. Maud writes about the event in her travelogue In Other Lands Than Ours, describing the quantity of ash and destruction everywhere. A photo taken by Baum shows Maud surveying the damage and hot lava, which burnt her shoes.

A Parrish Letter

Last week, Swann Galleries in New York sold an interesting letter written by Maxfield Parrish. It was to Chauncey Williams of the Way & Williams publishing company, and outlined Parrish's thoughts on the design and costs of illustrating Mother Goose in Prose.

Mother Goose in Prose was published in 1897, and was the first children's book published by L. Frank Baum. An earlier title, Adventures in Phunniland, was already written but would not see publication until 1900, when it was re-titled A New Wonderland.

Parrish's letter is a response to previous correspondence from Williams. In it, he strongly discourages the use of small marginal illustrations for the book. His concept was to provide a cover, frontispiece, title page and 23 chapter headings, each pertaining to a particular story. The cost of that would be $650.00, and he apologizes for the cost, which he feels will be too much. But, he points out:

"...do not think that a small thing is one bit easier to do than a big one. Those little marginal illustrations in order to leave this shop, would have to have just as much care put upon them as the gent with the little gun I sent you."

From this it seems he had already drawn the frontispiece of the book - the Little Man with his Little Gun. Another possibility mentioned in the letter was to do cover, frontispiece, title page and 4 illustrations for $250. In the end, the book was illustrated with cover, frontispiece, title page, a small chapter title which was repeated for each story, and 12 full page drawings. Parrish states that to fully illustrate the book would be cost prohibitive - but a compromise seems to have been reached. 

Another interesting point within the letter is Parrish's opinion on two of the stories. He asks that the mention of a Kodak be removed from the Baa Baa Black Sheep story, and objects to the "dime museum episode" in the Jack Sprat tale. There is no mention of a Kodak in the published book, and the Jack Sprat story vanished completely - leaving 22 tales rather than the original 23. It's interesting to note that the things Parrish objected to were the very things that Baum was trying to bring to his stories - a modern American sensibility laid over a traditional tale.

Cursed by a Fortune

I'm afraid my poor blog has been neglected for the past 8 months, but here's a new post starting up right where I left off - another Rand McNally title with a W. W. Denslow cover design.

This time it's Cursed by a Fortune, from 1897, written by G. Manville Fenn. This book has a striking cover image of a woman in a window, overlaid by a sealed will, together with a large English pound sign - all pertaining to the story within. It's a very Victorian tale of a girl who loses her father and inherits a large fortune, surrounded by guardians and relatives intent on obtaining her money through marriage. She is spirited away and kept under lock and key, but of course in the end it all comes right and she marries the poor doctor who loves her. Then she loses the fortune and everyone is happy. Except the bad guys, who are left in broken health to regret their actions.

There is no seahorse emblem on the cover, which makes me suspect this may be a slightly later printing of the book. It still uses gilt stamping and a gilt top to the pages, so it hasn't been drastically changed.