Merry Mouse and His Trip to the Moon (1953)

 

My next 4 posts are celebrating children's illustrated fiction about going to the Moon.

Even though I have been collecting these children's book for over 30 years it still is very exciting to find one that you never knew existed. Jack Coggins was an amazing space artist in the 1950s. His two early children's books that were especially memorable were Rockets, Jets, Guided Missiles, and Space Ships (1951) and By Spaceship to the Moon (1952). I have multiple copies of these in English, French and German.

So I was very excited to find a 1960 reprint of his 1953 book Merry Mouse and His Trip to the Moon. It was written by his wife Alma Coggins. This is a fictional book with many of the same styles of space painting about a mouse who goes to the Moon to find green cheese. I have chosen to reproduce almost the whole book since your chance of finding a copy are pretty small. I hope you enjoy this lost space art treasure.

Coggins, Alma. Illustrated by Coggins, Jack. Merry Mouse and His Trip to the Moon. (2nd edition) (Jolly Books.) London: L. Miller & Co. (20 p.) 1960. 

(reprint of 1953 1st edition). 

Above is the cover and below an illustration from Rockets,Jets...1951

Here is the cover to By Space Ship to the Moon 1952

Outer Space (1953)

 

An oldie from 15 years ago (The last time I blogged about this one). I found my copy of this and was able to add a lot more scans of this early space treasure.  Outer Space was evidently a give-away comic book at Atlantic Richfield gas stations. For those of you who did not know, often in the 1950s and 1960s when you got a tank of gas there were promotional giveaways. They could be comics, books, dishes, antennae balls...etc.

This is a treasury of early space flight illustrations and I assume few have seen this. So I have tried to scan as much of the comic as I could. A lot of it seems to have been "borrowed" or influenced by the March 22, 1952 Collier's issue.

Atlantic Richfield. Outer Space. New York: Vital Publications. (15 p.) 1953.

Can you imagine? A rocket could cost more than 4 million dollars! And be more than 300 ft high.

World's First Intra-Space Stamp Album (1953)

 

A re-scan of an old favorite. This may be the oddest piece of space ephemera I have ever found. It is a stamp album of imaginary space stamps commemorating the planets and the atomic powered intra-solar rocket service that serves those planets. It was intended for "space education" or maybe just a cool souvenir that you could buy your child to keep busy with.

I have gotten a lot of comments over the years since I posted it 13 years ago about the level of art and effort that someone had to execute to draw so many individual stamps.  Hopefully this is new to you or you are happy to have bigger and better scans of it.

Levitt, I. M. Intra-Space Stamp Album. Philadelphia: Edward Stern and Co. (22 p.) 1953.