Scholastic book: "M for Mischief"

I brusquely dismissed this book as "fine" in a 2020 pandemic shelfie post, but it deserves more attention than that, especially given that it's one of the very first books that I distinctly remember having, circa second grade in Clayton, New Jersey (this cover, specifically). I've been invigorated lately by the posts and robust community discussion on the Vintage Scholastic Books and Vintage Paperback Books pages on Facebook, so here's a full look at this one...

• Title: M for Mischief
• Author: Richard Parker (1914-1990). He has an entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and I mentioned one of his other books in this 2014 post.
• Illustrator: Carol Wilde (born 1938). It appears that she was born in Virginia, studied art in Philadelphia and later in life moved to northern Italy, where she became a painter. I could not confirm whether she's still alive.
• Publisher: Scholastic Book Services (TX 1254)
• Cover price: 50 cents
• Year: Fourth printing, March 1972 (first published in 1965)
• Pages: 95
• Format: Paperback
• Provenance: A previous owner, likely long ago, wrote "Ruth" in pencil on the inside front cover.
• Random passage from the middle #1: "It was something more than ancient. None of the children had ever seen a stove quite like it. There were so many curly, twisty bits. The four legs were like eagles' feet, with the sharp talons really biting into the wooden floor. The scale and feathers were so clear they seemed almost real. Up the sides of the stove were sprays of fern made of iron, and clusters of odd flowers, also made of iron."
• Random passage from the middle #2: "Then the cookie dropped to the floor and their mother disappeared! Where she had been standing was a speckled brown hen, which looked at Peg with one eye, then began pecking up crumbs from the broken cookie."
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.89 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt: R. Lee Frankenstein recently wrote: "This is just a great kids story that is partially responsible for a lifetime of reading enjoyment so, the 5 stars may be based slightly on sentiment."
• Rating on Amazon: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2013, R.M. Clinkscales wrote: "I still have my 1971 Scholastic Book service copy that I remember my mom reading with me on the porch of our house. My copy still has my elementary school aged handwriting on the inside cover giving my name and address. As you can tell this book had an impact on me and helped launch my love of reading. I have read the book to many children over the years and it continues to be a well loved early reader story."
• One last memory: In a 2014 post on Gransnet, Upsydaisy writes: "M for Mischief by Richard Parker was my favourite ever children's book. The story of a magic oven. That is as much as I can remember about the book, but I can remember reading it so many times. It was funny so I always read it either when I was poorly or feeling sad and it always cheered me up and made me feel better. Its funny but as an adult I always tend to go for books that are lighthearted and are a good laugh out loud kind of a book."

Yinzer blepping.

Swooning over "The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet"

I posted the 1966 Scholastic cover of The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, pulled from my 2014 blog post, over on the Facebook group Vintage Paperback Books this morning. It got a tremendous response, with 120 likes as of this writing.

Here are some of the comments and memories people shared:

• "I'm amazed how many people also loved this book in school. I read and re-read it many, many times."
• "I have two in the series and loved these as a kid."
• "This is the first book I remember reading."
• "I think mushrooms were involved in the writing of this book somehow."
• "I've taken that flight."

The book is still extremely popular and in print and on Amazon for less than $8. People are still discovering it or rediscovering it and still writing reviews. Here are some excerpts just from this year on Goodreads:

• "An absolute delight of a children's science fantasy — this was the first science fantasy I read, when I was a 10 years old."
• "Thanks for my sci-fi loving Uncle Charlie who recommended this book to me. I can’t wait to pass along to my grandson. He is 9 and I know will love it too."
• "I found this book while shopping on Ebay for mushroom identification books for my mycologist-in-training twelve year old. A middle-grade fiction book where we visit a mushroom planet? Yes, please! I had hoped she would be inspired to read this herself, but alas, this book-loving mama has produced an accelerated reader that doesn't enjoy reading for pleasure! We do have a tradition of reading out loud at bedtime, which I will hold tightly to until she protests, so this went on the TBR-at-bedtime list."
• "I first read this in 1975, I think. And by then it was already an older book, gathering dust on the library bookshelf. But I was an 8 year old boy and this was a book about boys, rocket ships, and an alien planet. SO I checked it out and read it. It turns out to be a fantastic adventure story for young boys and girls to read. If you can find it, get it. Even if you're 80 not 8."

If you want to know more about author Eleanor Cameron (1912-1996), Paul V. Allen has written a well-received biography titled Eleanor Cameron: Dimensions of Amazement. It's great to see such scholarship on women authors of the 20th century, especially those whose are less well-remembered with the passing of the decades.

From the readers: Late summer edition

Time for another roundup of your feedback and insights! 

Great links: "A Wrinkle in Time" mystery is solved: Commenting on Facebook, Sarah Elizabeth writes: "Hi! I am the Sarah Elizabeth that blog post mentions! AND you may be interested in knowing that I have a new art book out, and because we finally got to the bottom of the cover artist mystery for this book, I was able to include it in the book! ... If you are interested, look up The Art of the Unknown: A Visual Treasury of the Esoteric, Uncanny and Unexplained!"

Thanks for commenting. And I always love hearing news about new books!

The Perry Pictures: Robert E. Lee: Leigh Perry shares this great story: "Funny story about Perry Pictures. My grandparents, long gone, had a print on their wall in Virginia, but we'd never looked at it closely until years after their death. (We thought it was a photograph of a family member.) It ended up in my father's house in Charlotte, NC, and we finally examined it in 2014. We were confused by the Perry Pictures caption because our last name is Perry. Further research showed it was a different branch of Perrys. Then we found out the company was in Malden, Mass., which made us all laugh. Though I'm from NC, I'd been living in Malden for years at that point. With my father's permission, I brought it back home to Malden."

Postcard mailed from Addison, Pennsylvania, in 1912: Beverly writes: "I just got postcard of Swallow Falls in Garrett County, Maryland, addressed to this same Almeda. It came from her brother, Charles. He mentioned then about the food there, too. He was a well-known lawyer."

"Steal not this book my honest lad": John Duel shares this: "From a 1938 Technical Mathematics book inside front cover: 'Steal not this book my honest friend. For fear the gallows will be your end. On that day the Devil will say, where is that book you carried away. And if you say you do not know, the Devil will say just step below.'"

I love that we can help to preserve more of these inscriptions!

Take a ride with Edwards Motor Transit Co.: Bob Taylor left a series of comments showing his amazing memory and providing some great historical detail:

"Bob Taylor here. I worked in the Dubois garage on Hoover Avenue from approximately 1970 till garage closing in mid 70s. Since I was only 19 at the time, I believe I am only one of 2 guys still standing. I will try to name each one starting in the shop: Lloyd Burkett Sr., Lloyd Burkett Jr., Joe Atkinson, Everett McFall, 'Linc' Lingenfelter, Bernard Harriger, William Carlson, Earl Kalgren, Earl Snedden, Allen Bell. ... I forgot one shop employee, Lloyd Getch, and 2 part-time, Ed Swanson and Adam Tschopps.

"As far as the terminal crew, it consisted of Bill Schindley, Floyd Brown, Irene Malaskey, Chuck Smith, Linda McNutt and Gary Patton.

"As far as the drivers as I remember them, some were still wearing the tan uniform including a hat: Albert 'Swede' Carlson, Lamont 'Monte' Marshall, George Lindberg, Dale Hynds, Bob Wilson, John McNutt, Bob Peck, Tom Fairman and Bill McMahon. These were the Buffalo and Pittsburgh drivers. The Cleveland/NewYork City drivers were based out of the Williamsport shop. I only remember a few: 'Woody' Yeich, Walt Muzzy, Bill Taylor ... I hope that I didn't forget someone. It's been 56 years."

Alan Ormsby's 1970s: Summoning zombies and a Scholastic book: John Michlig writes: "Excellent article about a pretty life-changing book! I was lucky enough to correspond with Mr. Ormsby and assure him that my 4th grade Frankenstein mask (based on his paper bag recipe) worked like a charm!"

And Wampa Girl shouts: "I MADE MY MONSTER CAFE SALTILLO FROM HAVING THIS BOOK AS A KID."

Book cover & school days memory: "Arthur's Christmas Cookies": Anonymous writes: "I remember my pediatrician had a copy of this in one of his rooms, I was thinking about it today but I couldn't remember the title."

Obscure nostalgia: 1970s plastic mugs from Whirley Industries: Jose Alb writes: "I had the My Mug version since before I could walk, growing up in the Dominican Republic. We moved around, I kept it through my teens, all the way until right before I left for the US with my wife around 2012, where my mom admitted she might have thrown it away by accident. Fast forward to July 2026. Returned to the Dominican Republic on a sad note (father passed away suddently, cancer). After they got divorced, my mom came to the U.S. and Dad stayed in the old apartment. Picking up and organizing what felt like hundreds of science books and curiosities left behind, there in a cabinet with family heirlooms was my mug! I brought it to the States and gave it to my son, with a story. Thanks for keeping The Mug alive. Forgot to add: I'm 45. Had it since early 80s."

And thank you for sharing this story, which is also helping to keep My Mug memories alive!

Memory from the Gettysburg Times: Kate Shoemaker Mayer writes: "I stumbled upon this post while visiting Gettysburg College with my son. Don was my father. This anecdote warmed my heart and accurately represents my dad. I wonder what he would think about technology today? Thank you for sharing!"

I'm so glad you found this post and journalism anecdote about your dad! He was such a terrific person and colleague, and, yes, this accurately reflects how he felt about unreliable technology. Glad I could help in a small way for the memory to live on. 

Nifty packaging in today's mail

I received a package in the mail today and it came with some nifty bonuses. First, taped to the front of the envelope was an old banner for the Arizona Odd Fellow, dated March 15, 1924 — more than 102 years ago! The monthly newsletter cost $1 annually and was "devoted to the welfare of Odd Fellowship in all its branches." The two mottos across the top, bookending the eyeball and the three interlocking links, state "We Seek to Improve and Elevate the Character of Man" and "We Can Be Odd Fellows Only While We Act Like Honest Men."

Then, when I opened the package, it immediately appeared that I had been sent the wrong book. I was not seeking 1973's Pablo, Boy of Mexico / Eskimo Family / Yasin of Arabia (part of the My-Fun-to-Read Books series by The Southwestern Company). Though I'm sure that would be an interesting book to research.

Turns out that gutted pink book's covers were just being used to protect the actual book I was hoping for: Meet the Werewolf by Georgess McHargue. That book is part of a post for another day. So stay tuned. In the meantime, I'll make good use of of those pink covers to protect something I send out in the mails. I wonder how long we might be able to keep it circulating that way?

1978 book on "misappreciated" American films

(Please pardon Snugs' disinterested yawn.)

I found this book a couple of years ago in Bookman's. It's a 1978 hardcover put out by the Royal Film Archive of Belgium with the unwieldy title The Most Important and Misappreciated American Films Since the Beginning of Cinema.

Basically, it's a book of lists of important films, but also of lesser-discussed movies. Right up my alley.

The preface by Jacques Ledoux of the Royal Film Archive of Belgium lays out the book's mission:

"Most written histories of cinema are full of cliches and the attentive reader is easily able to single out those films which the historian has not recently seen or of which he writes second hand. And how could it be otherwise, since so many films remain inaccessible to researchers, often for geographical reasons?

"On the other hand, it could be imagined that the results of an enquiry such as that offered in this volume, with more than two hundred specialists participating from twenty-two countries, would lead to a statistical judgment of greater reliability than an individual historical appreciation. ...

"Still ... we were wary of ending up with a banal list of obvious classics. In order to avoid this, we decided to ask each participant to compile two lists: one, limited quite arbitrarily to thirty titles, and films considered the most important; the other, not limited in number, of films considered misappreciated. It was also specified that the films were to be cited without any order of preference and that no account need be taken of date of production, genre, or length."

The final list of Most Important Films is indeed fairly banal, with the best inclusion, in my opinion, being F.W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) and the most unsurprising and frustrating inclusion being D.W. Griffith's racist Lost Cause of the Confederacy epic The Birth of a Nation (1915).

The Top 10 vote-getters looked like this: 

1. Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
2. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, F.W. Murnau)
3. Greed (1924, Erich von Stroheim)
4. Intolerance (1916, D.W. Griffith)
5. The Birth of a Nation (1915, D.W. Griffith)
6. Singin' in the Rain (1952, Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly)
7. Nanook of the North (1922, Robert J. Flaherty)
8. The General (1926, Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman)
9. The Gold Rush (1925, Charlie Chaplin)
10. The Crowd (1928, King Vidor)

This is a good place to add that I scanned the list of the book's 203 respondents and only 15 stood out to me as obviously being women. The actual number is probably a bit higher, because there are a lot of non-American names, but I doubt it's more than about 20 — so, 10%. Bah, humbug!

The true value and fascination of this book is in the respondents' lists of "misappreciated" films along with, in some instances, their commentaries on those lists. It's a wealth of movie titles to scan for little-known gems — little-known even in this day and age of physical media and online streaming, when more movies from throughout history than ever before are available to the casual viewer.

I don't know what "Misappreciated" means (more on that from Jonathan Rosenbaum in a moment), but here are some films I was happy to see listed:

• The Night of the Hunter (1955, perhaps the most frequently cited film)
• Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
• Titicut Follies (1967)
• Easy Street (1917)
• The Pawnbroker (1965)
• Trash (1970)
• The Son of Frankenstein (1939)
• Johnny Guitar (1954)
• Night Nurse (1931)
• The Seventh Victim (1943)
• The Haunting (1963)
• Nashville (1975)
• Ace in the Hole (1951)
• Salt of the Earth (1953)
• Lonesome (1928)

A surprising number of horror films make these lists, only some of which are listed above. It's better, I guess, to be respected as "misappreciated" than to not be mentioned at all. Film noirs also tended to do very well on the "misappreciated" lists, including Kiss Me Deadly and Gun Crazy.

More importantly, the "misappreciated" lists include many films that are new to me and browsing this book takes me down many happy rabbit holes.

American critic Jonathan Rosenbaum was one of those who submitted a list for the book. Reflecting on the process in a 2024 post on his blog, he wrote:

"By 'misappreciated,' I’m sure that what was meant was 'underrated'. I find that I still agree to a surprising degree with many of my judgments in the mid-70s – including even my belief that Hollywood at the time was going through one of its more meager periods (even though Pauline Kael and many of her disciples seemed to think, and some of them apparently still think, that this was the richest period Hollywood has ever had in its entire history)."

I disagree with Rosenbaum's thought on 1970s American film, especially given the mostly tepid decades that preceded it, but that's the fun of discussing movies and movie history! (I also have a great love for watching 1970s movies, documentaries and TV, so I'm biased.) 

You can read Rosenbaum's list of most important films on his blog post, but I'm sharing his "misappreciated" list here:

• Me and My Gal (1932)
• Her Man (1930)
• Judge Priest (1934)
• Rope (1948)
• The Trouble with Harry (1955)
• Park Row (1952)
• The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1952)
• The Old Dark House (1932)
• The Woman on the Beach (1947)
• The Seventh Victim (1943)
• Sylvia Scarlett (1936)
• Black and Tan (1929)
• Such Good Friends (1972)
• Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)
• The Young One (1960)
• Family Plot (1976)
• Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son (1969)

Several of these I haven't seen. I strongly agree with The Old Dark House and The Seventh Victim. And with Make Way for Tomorrow, the film that inspired Tokyo Story. The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T is a one-of-a-kind fantasy that is way too hokey for me at times but deserves credit for translating the imagination of Dr. Seuss into a live-action picture. Rosenbaum writes more about his love for it, much of which is nostalgia-based, in a separate post.

Happy 140th birthday, Ruth Manning-Sanders!

Time flies! On this date 140 years ago — August 21, 1886 — Ruth Vernon Manning was born to John Edmondson Manning and Emma Manning (nee Brock) in Swansea, Wales. She later married and became author Ruth Manning-Sanders, of the beloved fairy tale compilations.

I also did posts for her 130th and 125th birthdays. (That's how long this blog has been around!) Overall, there are nearly 90 Ruth Manning-Sanders posts on Papergreat, if you want to dive in and learn more about her life and books. The birthday posts are good places to start, as is this 2011 post about Peter and the Piskies.

If you're seeking affordable and quality reprints of Manning-Sanders' books, Mab's Media is the place to go.

And if you want to hear some Manning-Sanders tales read aloud by some awesome humans, check out the Fairy Tale Fix podcast.

Here are some photos of a 1910s [?] edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales that I acquired a while ago in a sale of items from the Manning-Sanders family estate. The Ward, Lock & Co. publication is well worn and stained, and one can just imagine Ruth thumbing through it over and over. There are even some margin notes. Were those notes in the final photo written by Ruth Manning-Sanders herself? I also like that there's a mention of crab-apples on the page.

Giving schoolchildren a proper monster education in 1976

Fifty years ago, in our bicentennial year of 1976, Scholastic published an amazeballs guide to monsters. School was just cooler then, wasn't it? Movie monsters, mythical creatures and cryptids could be mixed into the lesson plans alongside multiplication tables, the metric system and spelling quizzes. I'm guessing Pennywise, Slender Man and the backrooms don't get that same treatment today, but what do I know? 

Well, what I do know is that this 32-page staplebound booklet rocks. I mean, it has Blacula (William Marshall) right there in the center of the cover, alongside such icons as Lon Chaney Jr., Medusa, Frankenstein's monster and King Kong. Fredric March's Hyde gets a very prominent spot, as does one of the Village of the Damned kiddos. 

What a cover! According to the credits, it was designed by Bonnie Bishop, who also served as the booklet's overall designer and art director. Some of Bishop's papers ended up at the University of New England Library, which notes that she had loved drawing, writing and making books ever since childhood and later became a full-time book artist. That love shows on this cover.

Let's hear it for the rest of the booklet's production crew, too. Lewis Gardner (1943-2020) was the editor and contributed a poem and a short story. Katherine Robinson was the supervising editor and Eve Sennett was the production editor. Ira Peck and Margaret Ronan handled some of the writing, which included retellings of classic horror stories. As a teenager, Ronan corresponded with H.P. Lovecraft (!!) according to the website Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein, and those letters informed some of her work at Scholastic.

In addition to those already mentioned, this book pictures and/or mentions the big-headed alien from 1957's Invasion of the Saucermen, Paul Wegener's 1920 performance as the Golem, the Loch Ness Monster, The Thing from Another World, Cat People, Bigfoot, zombies (but only the kind who obey masters — Romero's flesh-munching zombies might have been a bit much), The Incredible Shrinking Man and Michael Landon's teenage werewolf. 

There are photos of both Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee as Dracula. The book doesn't sugarcoat Lugosi's life for the young audience. Ronan notes: "When Lugosi was 70, he admitted to being a drug addict. He kicked the habit in a hospital. A year later, he died. He had no money left from his days as a monster star. About all he had left was his Dracula cape. So he was buried in it."

The last page of the book is titled "People and Monsters" and has this introductory paragraph: "Why do some people believe in monsters? And why are monster stories popular? Here are some possible answers. Which ones do you think are true?" There are then 11 short paragraphs, all of which seem plausible but some of which are very bizarre for a school activity book:

• Some people fear others who are strange looking or deformed. They may have trouble seeing such people as fully human. They may believe such people have special powers and are evil.
• Drugs have been used in magic and religious ceremonies. After taking drugs, people have seen monsters. They have also imagined themselves as having supernatural powers.
• Monsters usually do horrible things. Deep within us, we may wish to do horrible things. Normal people keep these wishes under control. They may not even be aware of having such wishes. But they may enjoy hearing about monsters that break human laws.

If you're hankering to get your hands on one of these absolute-gem booklets, there's an eBay seller who apparently has a whole stash and is selling them for $12.99. It's well worth the trip down monster memory lane.

 

Radio Shack's "Getting Started with Color Basic"

When I was an eighth-grader at Madeira Beach Middle School during the 1984-85 school year, I took an introduction to computers class taught by Joseph Ventimiglia. I think this was the textbook we used to learn about and program the TRS-80s that were stationed around the sides and back of the classroom with Color BASIC. We had to supply our own cassette tape to save and load our programs. I remember that someone in the class made a biorhythms program, a concept that made no sense to me then or now. Between this and the Commodore Plus/4 we had at home, it was definitely the jumping-off point for me in terms of home computers and programming. At one point I was even considering majoring in computer science in college, before shifting gears to journalism. Anyway, this book brings back a lot of memories and is instructive of a time when computer users had to put in some effort to make their computers actually accomplish anything.

• Title: Getting Started with Color Basic
• Author: None credited. It was produced in-house by Radio Shack's technical writing department. Though I have not done any original research or intensive internet-sleuthing, I would say there's a reasonable chance that David A. Lien was a primary author. But that's solely speculation.
• Cover illustrator: None credited.
• Publisher: Radio Shack, a division of Tandy Corporation (1919-2000).
• Copyright date: 1980 (most sites list 1981 as the official first year of publication)
• Pages: 151 (with several blank pages at the back for notes)
• Format: Paperback
• Dimensions: 11 inches by 8¾ inches
• Cover price: Not listed. Contemporary accounts indicate it cost $5.95.
• Excerpt from the Introduction: "This book is for those of you who don't know anything about Computers, and would like to be spared the long, technical explanations! Using this as your guide, you'll be able to interact and enjoy your Computer right away! Later, you'll probably want to read some of our thorough and detailed books. ... There's an infinite number of things it can do for you."
• Excerpt from To Get Started: "Connect your Computer by referring to the Chapters on 'Installation' and 'Operation', and to Figure 1 in your TRS-80 Color Computer Operation Manual. Then power up your Computer:

— Turn ON your television set

— Select channel 3 or 4

— Set the antennae switch to "COMPUTER"

— Turn ON the Computer. The POWER button is on the left rear of your keyboard (when you're facing the front)."

• Excerpt #1: "One of the things that makes your Computer so powerful is its ability to remember anything you ask it to."
• Excerpt #2: "Your Computer has all the attributes of a natural born teacher. After all, it's patient, tireless, and detail conscious ( ...perhaps a bit nit-picky...)."
• Excerpt #3: "One of your Computer's greatest skills is its gift with words. It can tirelessly twist, combine, or separate words to anything you want. Because of this gift, you can teach it to read, write, and even carry on a halfway decent conversation."
• Excerpt #4: "You'll find the Computer much more adept by getting it to constantly watch and react to everything you do. By 'watching you,' we mean watching the keyboard to see if you ware pressing something. The word INKEY$ makes this possible."
• Online memories #1: In a 2024 post on his blog, Jake Levirne writes: "This still stands out as one of the best written computer manuals I’ve ever seen. It gave clear, helpful explanations that even a kid could understand. And it let you know that it was ok to get things wrong, experiment, and try again. This is a lesson that’s served me well for decades in my career."
• Online memories #2: In 2014 blog post that's all about this book, Glen C. Ford raves about how it changed his life: "This hefty tutorial involved no heavy lifting. It was incredibly gentle yet thorough, and never scary. So many times as an adult I've found it daunting to return to a how-to book every day, yet when I was a kid all I wanted to do was plow through this amazing paperback. Anyone responsible for technical documentation (and product managers should be) would benefit from studying Getting Started With Color BASIC to discover and try to reproduce its pedagogical magic."

Book cover: "The Ghost Hunter's Road Book"

• Title: The Ghost Hunter's Road Book
• Author: John Harries. According to the blurb on the back cover: "John Harries has been a full-time writer since the war, in which he served with the R.A.F. A specialist in travel, he has visited every corner of the British Isles in search of the unusual and tourist-appeal material and currently lives in the Chiltern Hills, within audible distance of one of the most bizarre of the animal hauntings described in his new book." Interestingly, the book is copyrighted by Rupert Crew Ltd.
• Cover illustrator: None credited, which is a bummer.
• Publisher: Charles Letts & Co.
• Publication date: This is the revised edition, published in 1974. The book was first published in 1968.
• Pages: 176
• Format: Paperback
• Back cover price: 75p (accounting for inflation and converting from British to U.S. currently, that's about $13 today)
• Excerpt #1: Mystifying balls of light or flickering shapes apparently on fire are seen in many parts of Britain, and the majority of them have been excluded from this book. Those which are mentioned — as in the case of the West Witton light — have been reported in clear, cold weather or from areas free from peat, bog, or decaying material. The reason is that in my opinion lights seen during rain or on days or nights or great humidity , on in marshy districts, are of natural origin.
• Excerpt #2: Black Shuck has been haunting Norfolk for more than a thousand years. His very name proves his ancient origin because it is a dialect version of the Saxon word for Devil. He can alter his appearance, but all of them are terrifying. 
• Excerpt #3: The best-known and most ubiquitous of the Cornish supernatural beings are the pixies, a source of profit for many a souvenir shop in the tourist resorts where pixies are sold by the thousands as good luck tokens. Few native-born Cornish people would  wear the replica of the little man as a talisman. 
• Excerpt #4: Any subsequent attempt to dispose of the skull resulted in screams reverberating around the house, and heard far and wide by villages and farm workers of Bettiscombe. Something very evil indeed was presumably involved in the screaming skull affair, one of a number of such cases in different parts of the country. The usual inference is some connection with vampirism.
• Excerpt #5: Essex, moving willy-nilly into the brave new world of airports, marinas, new towns, nuclear power stations and industrial complexes, is still part of timeless East Anglia. A county slandered as flat, damp and dreary, can still retain a lot of its old-world charm — and its ancient traditions. Phantoms may retreat from the modernism of arterial roads and concrete runways — but ghosts still walk in Essex, and many of their haunts are surprisingly and appropriately unchanged by progress.
• Notes from the web: While the front cover has been a popular post on Tumblr, on message boards and in other locations, there's very little online about the book itself. Amazon reviewer Jackie Garcia wrote this in 2017: "It was a very enjoyable reading. My favorite part was the information given about T.E. Lawrence and the ghost at Clouds Hill." ... A passage from Harries' book is cited on a 2024 blog post about the Flixton Werewolf. ... And the book serves as a reference for the Wikipedia entry about the Shug Monkey.  

Book cover: "The Haunted Mountain" by Mollie Hunter

Sorry it's been so long between posts.¹

• Title: The Haunted Mountain
• Author: Mollie Hunter (1922-2012). Her full name was Maureen Mollie Hunter McIlwraith and she was known for her fantasy-tinged tales that are inspired by Scottish history or folklore. Her 2012 obituary in The Scotsman notes: "She produced most of her books from her home in Milton, a small village near Drumnadrochit in the Highlands, becoming totally immersed in her characters. ... Mollie spent a great deal of her time touring schools and libraries and was made particularly welcome in the United States."
• Illustrator and dust jacket designer: Trevor Ridley, who also illustrated at least one Ruth Manning-Sanders book (Stories from the English and Scottish Ballads).
• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
• Publication date: 1972 (my copy is the 1974 reprint edition)
• Pages: 127
• Format: Hardcover
• Dust jacket price: £2 net
• Provenance: This book once belonged to Mary Lou White and it has an inscription from the author: "For Mary Lou, Best wishes from Mollie Hunter. 11/7/78"
• Dust jacket excerpt: "There is no doubt that the mountain called Ben MacDui in the Highlands of Scotland is haunted, as this story of MacAllister tells. MacAllister lived long ago in those parts, and he was a very stubborn man. He ignored the Skeelie Woman's² warning not to defy the strange creatures that went by name of 'the Good People' — fairy people they would have been called in English, though they were not at all as fairies are sometimes imagined to be."
• Excerpt #1: MacAllister had a good distance to travel to Peigi-Ann's home — five or six hours riding altogether, in fact — for the track to it was by way of a lairig, as they call a mountain pass, and this lairig was a long one that cut right through the Cairngorm Mountains . The Lairig Ghru — the Gloomy Pass — it is called, for it is a wild and desolate lace and even in high summer that are stretches of it that never see the sun.
• Excerpt #2: "I want more of these!" the Skeelie Woman exclaimed, holding up her fist with the little store of cairngorms clenched in it. "Bring me more of them Fergus — bring me a great double handful of them! If I cannot be part of the world of the sidhe, I want some of the treasure that belongs to it."
• Excerpt #3: The heap of grey stone that was once An Ferla Mor is easy to see among the red granite rock of Ben MacDui, and the lost jewels still lie where they fell around it. The gleaming gold of them among the rocks is easy to see, too, and anyone who chooses may climb the mountain to gather them. However, it would have to be a very brave person indeed who did this ...
• Rating on Goodreads: 4.18 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review: In 2018, Bridgett Leslie wrote: "I read this as a child, and it struck me enough that I have remembered it over the years. It was fun to re-read it as an adult. It did not frighten me the way it did when I read it as a nine-year-old, but it was still enjoyable."
• Rating on Amazon: a sterling 4.9 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt #1: In 2009, Jo J wrote: "Was disappointed with the quality of books available for my kids ages 7 and 9 and looked for books I read as a child that were fun and clean. Was pleased to find Haunted Mountain for them. It has a great mix of adventure, fantasy, mystery, and fright that is perfect for kids."
• Amazon review excerpt #2: In 2004, Laura Day wrote: "Only true bibliophiles will understand when I ask: Do you remember those books that touched you when you were young? Those that simply spurred you to read further and become a genuine book lover? The Haunted Mountain was mine. It was a book that I read and promptly lost, and couldn't for the life of me remember the author's name or the title! It was a labor of love trying to discover this book for the second time! After countless internet searches I have finally found it! Mollie Hunter is amazing! ... There are elements of magic, love, lore, and sacrifice woven expertly throughout Hunter's novel. This book is an absolute jewel!"
• Another good review: Check out Nick Campbell, who calls it "a cosy novel for the autumn months."

Footnotes

1. In a nutshell, on top of work, I've spent the past month taking care of two dozen indoor cats (four of whom had/have health issues and multiple veterinarian visits), the outdoor feral cats who are trying to weather the 110-degree heat (Mamacita, Creamsicle, Splash, Yinzer, Meowmix and Marmalade), a fledgling raven named Poe who was blown here during a dust storm and now comes for daily snacks alongside the wary cats, a gaggle of baby skunks (one of whom jumped into the pool three times, requiring three rescues) and a raccoon the size of Godzilla. In good news, former outdoor-cat Gumball has made an excellent adjustment to living inside among the other cats. 

2. "Skeelie wife" is an old Scottish term for a woman credited with great or supernatural ability to cure ailments. Their duties often involved assisting in the delivery of babies. And the skeelie wives themselves were often thought to be half-human/half-fairy.

Another George Manning-Sanders novel surfaces

I suspect I may be the only one keeping track of such things, but another novel by George Manning-Sanders (1880 or 1881 to 1953, when he died at age 72) for which there's no online record has popped up. (I had both his birth year and death wrong in previous Papergreat posts, by the way.)

I discovered Little Comfort via a listing on eBay. According to the photos and item description, it was published in 1932 by Grayson & Grayson of London. It must be exceedingly rare.

It joins 1930's The Third Day (also published as The Burnt Man) and 1929's Drum and Monkey as confirmed novels by George Manning-Sanders. These may very well be his only three published books, as he was more known as an artist.

The gorgeous dust jacket illustration of Little Comfort seems to promise a tale of life in a rural English town, but who knows? It's a little hard to tell given the level of resolution, but there is what appear to be the initials GM toward the lower right of the cover illustration. So perhaps it's by George himself?

Here's an excerpt from my copy of Drum and Monkey that I randomly turned to:

"Bickford Honey, aged seventeen years, the product of care and the source of contention, strolled in the evening of a summer day toward the home of Mr. Mason. In his trousers pocket there were a few pence, his hat set jauntily on the back of his head, he felt that life was good."

Related posts

• The jaw-dropping dust jackets of George Manning-Sanders' novels
• Jaw-dropping dust jackets of George Manning-Sanders' novels, Part 2
• George Manning-Sanders' short obituary from 1953
• Happy 130th birthday, Ruth Manning-Sanders

From 1976: computers & kindness

Browsing through this 1976 edition of Grolier's The New Book of Knowledge Annual, which I really do have to prune, along with a few other similar hefty-size tomes, I came across a few things worth sharing.

First up is an article about KIND, aka the Kindness Club. The Kindness Club, a humane organization, was founded in New Brunswick, Canada, in 1959. The Human Society of the United States took responsibility for the U.S. youth clubs and branded them KIND — Kindness In Nature's Defense.

"To carry out the club's program, members are encouraged to help fight against the abuse of animals. And members do more than speak out when they see evidence of cruelty to animals; they follow their words with actions," the Grolier's article states.

For an update, Wikipedia adds: "In 2009, the Kindness Club's 50th anniversary year, most of its members were in Canada. Continuing to base itself on [Albert] Schweitzer's reverence for life philosophy, the club promotes humane education for children and contributes to local initiatives including subsidized spay/neuter programs and donations of pet food to food banks."

Given that I took a break while putting this post together to take a bowl of food to a skunk on the back patio, I think I might qualify to be in the Kindness Club. 

Meanwhile, another page in this book from a half-century ago touts the emergence of a computer's "artistic skills." 

"This portrait is 'painted' by a computer," the caption states. "It is made up of about 200 separate squares, each in one of 16 shades of gray. The portrait is part of an experiment being carried out by Bell Laboratories 'to learn the least amount of visual information a picture may contain and still be recognizable.' Have someone hold the page about 15 feet (5 meters) away from you, and squint your eyes. Hint: the subject of the portrait was president of the United States during its most critical period."

Indeed, if you hold the computer portrait further away, you can imagine an extremely low-res Abraham Lincoln. 

While the short caption doesn't mention it, the computer programmer for this Lincoln 'portrait' was Leon Harmon. And the image inspired Salvador Dalí to create a famous lithograph (though that's not quite the right description) that has been much-counterfeited. 

I couldn't help but think of how all of this relates to one of the most contentious ideas of our modern moment: generative AI taking the work of human writers and artists and creating "new" content that is just a facsimile of human originality. AI slop barreling toward model collapse.

I saw Backrooms with Ashar a couple days ago, and afterward I struck by this insight about the horror movie from writer Bianca Michelle Parker on Bluesky: "Saw Backrooms. Pretty hard not to read it as an allegory for AI. The Backrooms seem massive and fascinating at a cursory glance, but ultimately just regurgitate stuff at random. They have no meaning, insight or significance and are only of continued interest to those who have no capacity for growth."

I think that's just one of many interesting angles to touch upon regarding Kane Parsons' well-done film about eerie liminal spaces. I'm fascinated and invigorated by how millennials view and try to recreate the 1980s and 1990s. Why they are nostalgic for an era they didn't live through. What they view from those decades as the beginnings of what's gone sideways in the 21st century. And it goes hand in hand with the love some millennials have for "old" physical media, from the world before the internet and smartphones. There's a lot more I hope to dig into.

To end on a completely different note, here's a cool photograph of Bobby Clarke of the 1975 Stanley Cup champion Philadelphia Flyers from the Grolier's book.

An Ace Giant Double of Charlotte Armstrong novels

Today we have an Ace Giant Double featuring two novels; flip it over and you get the second novel! 

• Titles: The Better to Eat You & Mischief
• Author: Charlotte Armstrong (1905-1969). The best article I found about her was published on PopMatters in 2015 and written by Imran Khan, whose insights include: "Why Armstrong’s novels have never left the indelible impression that the works of her fellow female mystery-writers have may be the biggest mystery surrounding her. Like many authors of her ilk, Armstrong’s women were fearless investigators of their environments, digging for clues, crossing boundaries and generally engaging in what was considered a 'man’s work.' But her characters were more than just women combating the realms of male-dominated environs; they also re-envisioned the roles that were designed by women writers like Armstrong herself. Her women opened the same forbidden doors to the same cellars that the women in the stories of Agatha Christie and Patricia Wentworth did, scavenging the deep, dark depths of a mystery for some decisive clue. But Armstrong’s characters also opened doors for other reasons; widening the shafts on the predicaments of their intrinsic mysteries, their inner worlds were just as much up for cross-examination as were the murdering fiends of the author’s tales. Armstrong knew, in essence, that her stories were only as good as the women leading them."
• Cover illustrator: Unknown, to the best of my research, which is a real bummer. Cover illustrations for mid-century mystery novels are not nearly as well documented online as sci-fi and fantasy covers. If anyone knows, please leave a comment! 
• Is that a scary clown on the cover of The Better to Eat You? Yes.
• Does ... does the clown eat people? It's unclear.
• Publisher: Ace Books (G-521)
• Publication date: July 1965 (Mischief was originally published in 1950 & The Better to Eat You was originally published in 1954.)
• Pages: Mischief is 123 pages and The Better to Eat You is 164 pages.
• Format: Paperback
• Price: 50 cents
• Excerpt from The Better to Eat You: "Sarah sat before her typewriter, holding her head together with both hands. All the long train of her sorrows was dragging through her memory."
• Excerpt from Mischief: "Bunny listened politely to the story. When Mommy read, the story seemed more interesting. When Daddy read to her, it was interesting, too, although Daddy never did finish a story. He always got off to explaining something, and the explaining turned out to be another story."
• Film adaptation: Mischief was made into the 1952 movie Don't Bother to Knock, featuring Marilyn Monroe, Anne Bancroft and Elisha Cook Jr. It's considered to be one of Monroe's best acting performances.
• Mischief's rating on Goodreads: 3.63 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt: In 2016, E.G. wrote: "A chilling read, suspenseful to the end and a view of insanity that is very present and forceful. It is a dark read -- bordering on too dark -- and that sometimes makes the characters annoying."
• The Better to Eat You's rating on Goodreads: 3.58 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt: In 2018, Historygirl wrote: "This is a comic thriller. Truly scary but with a screwball comedy element. The Better to Eat You features an extended literary metaphor that gets funnier and funnier as the book goes on. It is also an excellent romance."
• But what about the clown?? I guess you'll have to find out for yourself.

Ghoulardi's kid

Speaking of TV horror hosts (as we were last week with Zacherley), Ghoulardi: Inside Cleveland TV's Wildest Ride, is a wonderful book about Ernie Anderson's antics as late-night host Ghoulardi on  Cleveland's Channel 8 (WJW) from 1963 to 1966. He is one of the most widely and fondly remembered of the regional horror hosts. And one of the most influential.

As Tom Feran and R.D. Heldenfels wrote in this 1997 book, WJW and Anderson "created an icon of popular culture whose legacy, decades later, would defy the disposable standards of modern media. Television was growing, still rough around the edges, into the common thread of community consciousness. Ghoulardi would first conquer it, amassing an audience of a size unimaginable today; and then transcend it, surviving in memories, attitudes, and language of a generation who would carry him to even wider attention."

It's a terrific book and one I highly recommend. And it comes with a fun coda. This passage appears on the final two pages of the book:

"Ernie's son Paul, an up-and-coming movie director, is stirring up trouble as eagerly as his father did. Paul's first movie, Hard Eight, came and went, but his second feature, Boogie Nights, was causing comment months before it was released. A look at the people working in and around the pornographic movie business in the '70s, the movie was the subject of eyebrow-raising stories about its subject, its male frontal nudity, and its two-and-a half-to-three-hour length. ... Through the efforts of the twenty-six-year-old auteur, it also boasted a cast of solid players like Don Cheadle, Julianne Moore, and William H. Macy. 'The worst thing you can do is be wishy-washy,' Paul said of moviemaking. His old man seems to have lived his whole life by the code, and Paul acknowledged 'I definitely inherited that trait.' As Boogie Nights sat on the verge of national release, Paul said he was next considering making a film about his dad — one that would focus especially on his years as Ghoulardi. He already had paid tribute to his father by naming his production firm The Ghoulardi Film Company."

Indeed, filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson is the son of Ghoulardi — Ernie Anderson.

Anderson hasn't made a movie specifically about Ghoulardi yet, but his most recent film, One Battle After Another, is up for 13 Oscars this coming weekend. To which Ghoulardi might exclaim, “Stay sick, knif!”

Book cover: Ida Chittum's "Tales of Terror" (1975)

• Title: Tales of Terror
• 
  Author: Ida Chittum (1918-2002). According to her profile page on IllinoisAuthors.com, "Ida Chittum was educated through the eighth grade in a one-room schoolhouse. She was a prolific reader and advocate of literacy. Her love for all living things as well as her warm sense of humor are evident in her many published children's books." She had a talking mynah named Poo Bah and was a friend to stray animals. Her other books included A Nutty Business, Clabber Biscuits, The Empty Grave, Farmer Hoo and the Baboons, The Cat's Pajamas, The Ghost Boy of El Toro, The Hermit Boy, and The Secrets of Madam Renee. (Some of them appear to be quite rare, though, on the used market.) In an article by Mardy Fones that was published in the Oct. 1, 1978, edition of the Decatur Sunday Herald and Review, Chittum explains that she used the front of a brown envelope to rough out chapters and then stored the completed chapters inside, annotated with brightly colored corrections and notes to herself. There are a website and a Facebook page devoted to Chittum's legacy.
• Illustrator: Franz Altschuler (1923-2009)
• Book dimensions: 7.5 inches by 10.5 inches
• Provenance: My copy was previously shelved in the Edmeston Free Library in Edmeston, New York. (The library is inside a gorgeous old building.) Stamps say it was checked out various times between 1980 and 1992.
• Publisher: Rand McNally & Company.
• Series: Rand McNally published Tales of Terror alongside a few other truly spooky books for children in the mid 1970s. The other volumes include Monsters Tales and Horror Tales (both of which I have and both of which are psychedelic collections edited by Roger Elwood) and Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures.
• Publication date: 1975
• Pages: 124
• Format: Hardcover
• Original price: I can't confirm. I saw one reference to $4.95, but that seems a little low, by at least a couple dollars, for a hardcover in 1975.
• List of stories: The House the Dovers Didn't Move Into; Vision of Roses; Uncle Ned Kunkle; The Twins; The Snipe Hunt; The Yellow Cat; Giant; The Feather Reader; The Woman Who Turned to Paper; Sod Miller's Money; Print on the Window; The Haunted Well; The Special Gift; Bring Back My Teeth; The Lovers; the Cruel Girl; The Twisting Wind; and Courtland Wethers and the Pit.
• Excerpt from Ida Chittum's introduction: "These stories of the hills are taken from my childhood in the Ozark mountains, those scenic hills in the south central part of the United States that are now, for the most part, national forests and wildlife conservation areas. There, every visitor was a storyteller — a source of mystery. Having no books I read the folks who came calling of a Sunday afternoon. The hills were fertile grounds for listeners. These are accounts of a passing way of life, stories of a people who lived out their lives never seeing the outside world or expecting to, any more than one sees into heaven before dying. ... In a sense these stories are mysteries — accounts to wonder on and ponder over. They are tales that need telling before they are lost or forgotten."
• More about this book: In the 1978 Decatur Sunday Herald and Review article, Chittum adds: "We lived on a 40-acre fruit and tea farm — that's persimmons and sassafras sprouts — between St. James and Salem, Mo. When you live with people in the country as I did, you become one of them. They're different than city people. They have more time to be closer to nature in every way. ... Where we lived was five miles from any other house so anyone who came through was as welcome as the sunrise, and they had their stories to tell. ... About 50 percent of these stories I know to be true." (Chittum adds in the article that her "know to be true" stories include a personal encounter with Bigfoot.)
• Excerpt #1: "The strange part, though, was how the footprints of Enoch Schradder, a slender man, were sunk so deep in the earth all the way from the ravine into the timber, as if he were carrying a very heavy burden."
• Excerpt #2: "If Sod every changed his aging bib overalls or took a bath in the cheerful creek which tumbled past his shed, no one would have known it from walking downwind of him."
• Excerpt #3: "Folks around about considered it a marvel the way Ada learned to travel in the vast, timbered area without getting lost. They didn't guess her guide was Geoffrey, and she never said, fearing that the slender thread of joy that ran through their friendship might be broken by those who couldn't understand."
• Rating on Goodreads: 4.82 stars (out of 5). One of the highest ratings I've ever seen.
• Goodreads review: In 2020, Maria wrote: "I read this so often my elementary school librarian refused to let me check it out any more. The illustrations are excellent and greatly contribute to the mood of the book. I treasure the copy I have now."
• Rating on Amazon: 5 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2017, Cynthia wrote: "I first read this book when I was in I think third grade. I feel in love with it instantly. It's still one of my very favorites ever."
• 
  Thoughts and memories from The Haunted Closet blog in 2008: "The beautiful, yet vaguely disturbing illustrations perfectly capture the tone of these tales of drowned children, restless ghosts, magic spells and malevolent wildlife." In 2010, one of that blog's commenters added: "When I was younger I lived in southern Illinois, not far from the Ozarks that Ida Chittum depicted. We checked Tales of Terror out of the library over and over and it stuck with me down the years. The stories were weird and eerie but had the ring of truth to them as well. Some were so sad and beautiful and others were full of dark humor. In our family we often refer to Uncle Ned Kunkel as though he were a relative. And that cover with the faceless people and the illustration that goes with the first story about the house that didn't get moved into are still some of the scariest pictures I can dream up." And in 2012 another blog commenter relayed this personal story: "Mrs. Chittum lived down the road from me, in a very tiny town in Illinois. As memory serves (again, from the mind of a very young child) she lived in an old Victorian house. How fitting! I'll have to check facts with my parents to find out if that is true or not! I remember being scared to death after a visit to her home. She told us a story (could have been from one of her books, I don't know) of the monster that would grab the uncovered feet of kids & drag them off, never to be seen again ... I was never so scared in my little life!! I couldn't peddle my bike fast enough to get home ... and to this day, I cannot sleep with my feet uncovered!" (For what it's worth, I cannot sleep with my feet uncovered, either.)
• This book's availability: In great news, a hardcover reprint is available for the very reasonable price of $22.99 on BookBaby and Amazon. One person writes on Amazon: "I had an old falling-apart copy that was the only one I could possibly afford, due to it being such a rare find, so I was very glad to see this book republished in an affordable volume." Ida Chittum would be rightfully thrilled that in 2026, these tales are not being lost or forgotten.