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.

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."

Splash pages from 1937 yearbook

Quickie post as I keep working to resimplify. This is a two-page layout near the front of the 1937 yearbook for Hammond High School in Hammond, Indiana. That's the year my grandmother, then Helen Chandler Adams (1919-2003), would have graduated from the school. But I guess maybe the family had moved back eastward by then, because she's not in the yearbook.* It's an interesting snapshot of teenage life in the Midwest as the world was slipping toward all-out war. (Click on the image to see a larger version.)

***

A few hours later ... addendum

*As I continued sorting and pruning family ephemera today, I answered this question by coming across Helen's resume in an envelope of family ephemera. This will be very handy for future posts. It clearly states that she graduated from Wilmington Friends School in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1937. What's not clear is precisely what year the family moved away from Hammond, but I guess we can assume it was sometime between 1934 and 1936. And I assume I'll come across clarity on that with different ephemera at some point.

Also, I absolutely should have remembered Wilmington Friends School as being part of the equation, given, among other things, this 2017 post and this 2018 post.

Snapshot & memories: At the Penn State computer lab

Here's a picture that someone (probably Jessica Hartshorn) took of me at a Penn State University computer lab in either 1992 or 1993. Wearing my lucky, lumpy USFL hat, I am surely working on a class paper or project for which I had been procrastinating. I was a bad student in college who didn't put much effort into most classes. Let's just say that my grade-point average would have made me a strong contender for the Cy Young Award if it were my ERA. I was a bad student because I spent most of my time at The Daily Collegian, writing, editing and/or paginating stories for the five-day-a-week student newspaper. I wanted to work in newspapers after college, so I figured that was my hands-on education. And here I am in 2026 still working for one of the dwindling number of newspapers in the United States. It didn't hurt, either, that the folks at The Daily Collegian were awesome and well worth spending endless hours newspapering with.

I have felt bad for years, though, about how little effort I put into my classes. Penn State's liberal arts curriculum offered classes on many fascinating topics that Older Chris would love to spend time on, especially in the realms of history, literature, social sciences, health and the arts. If only some of us could have had our later-in-life passion for continuing education when we were 19, 20 and 21...

I also regret that I haven't yet written much about my college days on Papergreat. When I began this blog in 2010, I was only 17 years removed from graduating from Penn State and it felt far too recent to qualify as "history." But now I wake up and it's nearly 33 years since I left Happy Valley with my diploma. I'm older than the majority of my professors were at the time they graded my low-effort papers, probably while shaking their heads (unless their graduate TAs did the grading).

And now I fear I've waited too long. My memories of Penn State are no longer crisp and detailed. They feel more like dreams I can recall if I close my eyes. I don't have a ton of ephemera from Penn State anymore to spur recollections. And I have very, very few pictures from my four years on campus, which seems bizarre but that was life before these times in which I take two dozen cat photos per day with my phone. There's this photo from my junior and senior year dormitory room (where you can also see the USFL hat in the background), and some photos from THON, but very little beyond that, until Graduation Day. I should have packed a camera for college in 1989! I can think of a hundred things I should have documented with snapshots. Sigh.

I'm going to try to do a better job in the coming months (and years?) of using ephemera as the jumping off point for telling stories about my days at Penn State. They're as worthy of preserving for posterity as postcards from 1915 or vernacular photography from 1935 or travel brochures from 1955. And those stories involve dear friends who represented the very best part of the college experience. 

Other snapshots and memories          

• Adorable little me on Mulberry Street
• Kitchen at Willow Street house in Montoursville
• Me and Pop-Pop in the kitchen
• Commodore 64 corner
• (Missing) snapshot & memories: Thanksgiving
• Me & Cyrano
• Me in a Star Trek shirt
• All kids do these days is play video games
• Posing with a Saturn V in 1982
• The Phillies are hot, and so was I
• Relocated fire engine in Montoursville
• Family outfits of 1972
• Our little bookstore
• Well-dressed for first day of nursery school

The ghost photo that haunted Gen X

Ghost-nerd Gen Xers such as myself had some great ghost photos to scare ourselves with as kids. There was the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, the ghost faces floating in the water beside the SS Watertown, the ghost(s) ascending the Tulip Staircase and some others.

But for me, and a lot of others I reckon, the scariest ghost photo of them all was what's known as the Chinnery Backseat Ghost. And it was right there in our middle school library, with the apparition's unforgettable glowing eyes sure to give us nightmares. It was one of the photos inside The World of the Unknown: Ghosts, which was written by Christopher Maynard and published by Usborne in 1977. We had this book in the amazing C.E. McCall Middle School library in Montoursville. In later years, the book became extremely difficult to find on the used market, probably because no one ever let go of it. But Usborne finally issued a reprint edition in 2019, allowing many middle-aged folks to revisit cherished spooky memories of their youth. 

And one of those spooky memories is the photo that shows a person who should not, could not, be there. As the caption states: "This picture is one of the most puzzling ghost photographs ever taken. The woman in the back seat was supposed to be in her grave when the photograph was taken. The driver's wife took this picture of her husband sitting in the car. She claims there was nobody in the car except her husband. Yet the photograph clearly shows the figure of a woman — her mother — who had died a week before. Experts say that the film has not been altered in any way."

Of course, like every other paranormal or cryptozoological phenomenon in the 1970s and 1980s that brought me joy and wonder, this photograph has been pretty thoroughly debunked, with a double-exposure being more likely than deception through fakery. Just one example: Blake Smith penned an excellent piece for Skeptic in 2015, concluding "This particular image has been in 'top ghost photo' lists for years now, but I think we can now take down this exhibit in the gallery of ghosts with some confidence, and put it to rest."

An essay on the website Anomalies tries to keep a more open mind, asking, "But what if there is no explanation? After all, if the spirit of a dead person decided to impress its own image onto a frame of film, what would that look like? And would it be fair to expect such an attempt to look perfect on the one and only time that spirit tried it?"

Personally, I've come to the firm conclusion that ghosts don't exist. Or, at least, they don't exist in any way that's capable of making their presence known to living people through visual, auditory or physical means. That's a bummer, because I want to believe there are supernatural things out there that we can't fully comprehend. And ghosts and hauntings are a lot more appealing than much of the stuff going on in the (scary) real world right now. But, in good news, being a nonbeliever hasn't changed the pleasure I still get from reading ghost stories and looking at ghostly images that seem unexplainable.

Related links

• 1979 middle school book: "The Mysterious Ghosts of Flight 401"
• Book cover: "Haunted Britain"
• Who wants to join me in buying a crumbling, haunted British estate?
• Saturday's postcard: Ghost toddler
• 1928 headline and spooky article: "Radio 'Ghost' Balks Experts"

And that's just a sampling. Who knows what you'll find if you dust off the spooky corners of Papergreat's archive of 3,800-plus posts.

Snapshot & memories: Well-dressed for first day of nursery school

That's quite the amazing outfit I'm wearing inside the house on Mulberry Street in Montoursville, Pennsylvania. The photo is captioned "First day of Nursery School, Sept. 3, 1974" — nearly 51 years ago. I am about 3 years and 9 months old in this snapshot.

Groovy fashion maven Wendyvee comments: "Moms of the mid-1970s — always dressing their boys as if they were cosplaying 'Junior Executive in Business Casual at a Team Building Retreat Weekend.' Winning the side hair part and mischievous smile game, though."

I'm also thinking what an amazing fireplace that is. That was an amazing house, overall; I wish I remembered more of it. Thank heavens for a few stray snapshots that still exist. I'm sure it would seem impossibly small if I went inside today. Even my hazy memories tell me the upstairs was very cramped, and I was tiny then. Here's another shot of the interior and another great Chris outfit.

(If I had access to the Mulberry Street house, and if that fireplace is still there and if I could find similar clothes at a vintage clothing store, I guess I could try to recreate this photo for the side-by-side effect. But it wouldn't be pretty.)

I have very few memories of my two years of nursery school, though I wrote about it a little in this 2018 post. I did eventually launch me on my successful public school journey, though!

Other snapshots and memories          

• Adorable little me on Mulberry Street
• Kitchen at Willow Street house in Montoursville
• Me and Pop-Pop in the kitchen
• Commodore 64 corner
• (Missing) snapshot & memories: Thanksgiving
• Me & Cyrano
• Me in a Star Trek shirt
• All kids do these days is play video games
• Posing with a Saturn V in 1982
• The Phillies are hot, and so was I
• Relocated fire engine in Montoursville
• Family outfits of 1972
• Our little bookstore

Strath Haven's David Letterman Club

In February 1988, The Philadelphia Inquirer published a story about the coolest club we had at Strath Haven High School in Wallingford, Pa. Yes, indeed, we had a David Letterman Club, in which students gathered after school to watch VHS tapes of his shows on a rolling AV cart.

The Inquirer story was reported and written by Gloria Hoffner¹, with a group photo that was taken by Al Tielemans. I'm way in the back of the photo and clearly in need of a haircut. This wasn't my only appearance in the Inquirer. I was also mentioned numerous times, in conjunction with the Steve Jeltz Fan Club, in Jayson Stark's Baseball Week in Review. And a ridiculous full article about that club, with a photo of me wearing a tie, was published by the Inquirer in, I think, the summer of 1990. I'll have to dig that one up.

Here are some excerpts from Hoffner's article:

• Each Wednesday afternoon, about 20 Strath Haven High School students gather around a TV set in science room 211. But instead of of watching the usual educational-television fare, they watch stupid pet tricks.² Did someone sabotage the videotape? Nope. It's Late Night with David Letterman, and it's no mistake.
• Armed with a fast-forward control button, the club members search past the commercials³ for the meat of the programs. They say their favorites are the animal acts and the sports foul-ups.
• Rick Kosel, a Strath Haven science teacher and the club's adviser, said that "about three or four years ago" Jamie Hooper, a resident of Swarthmore who is now attending Dartmouth, asked if we could have a club to watch taped videos of David Letterman because the show comes on at 12:30 p.m., and he didn't want to stay up that late. "We have a school policy that if a student comes up with a club idea, has 10 interested students and an adviser, then it can be considered an after-school club," Kosel said.
• "When I heard about the David Letterman Club, I thought it was a good idea because there are many students from one-parent homes or from homes where both parents are working, and this was a place they could go while waiting for their bus," [Activities Director Charlotte] Higler said.
• [Higler] said the David Letterman Club costs the district about $200 a year — the cost of Kosel's adviser's salary of $11 per hour. Kosel pays for the tapes, and the school already owned the videotape player.
• "I think it is a good thing because this way the kids who love David Letterman don't stay up until 1 a.m. watching, and it keeps their minds on their homework rather than on TV," Higler said.

That was 37 years ago. In 1993, Letterman left NBC's Late Night with David Letterman and began hosting Late Show with David Letterman on CBS. He retired in May 2015 after more than 4,200 episodes at CBS, including being the first talk show to return after 9/11. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert took over the famed Ed Sullivan Theater in Manhattan after Letterman retired, and Colbert was still going strong when CBS abruptly announced Thursday that his show will be canceled effective May 2026. There are strong indications that CBS's announcement represent a form of appeasement to the president of the United States, who has long expressed disdain for Colbert. Silencing comedians who poke fun at you is apparently what we do now in our democracy.

Speaking of the president, this is what David Letterman himself had to say about him way back in an interview with The Associated Press published on July 10, 2017:

QUESTION: Speaking of the current administration, late-night seems to have become mostly Trump jokes and tirades. Do you miss not being part of that?

LETTERMAN: "Here's what I keep saying: We know there's something wrong, but what I'm tired of is people, daily, nightly, on all the cable news shows telling us there's something wrong. I just think we ought to direct our resources and our energies to doing something about it. And other people have made this point: If the guy was running Dairy Queen, he'd be gone. This guy couldn't work at The Gap. So why do we have to be victimized by his fecklessness, his ignorance? But it's just the behavior is insulting to Americans, whether you voted for him or not — and I feel bad for people who did vote for him because he promised them things that they really needed and one wonders if he's really going to come through. I know there's trouble in this country, and we need a guy who can fix that trouble. I wish it was Trump, but it's not, so let's just stop whining about what a goon he is and figure out a way to take him aside and put him in a home."

That was eight long years ago. Which paradoxically seems even longer ago than when I was watching Letterman VHS tapes at Strath Haven in 1988.

Related posts

• Sorry "Infinity War," the greatest Avengers crossover was 34 years ago
• 33 years in perspective: It was really all about a monkey washing a cat

Footnotes

1. What a cool story Gloria Hoffner has! Here's an excerpt from her About the Author page on Amazon: "When I was a little girl my dream was to be an astronaut. So in 7th grade I wrote to NASA to ask what I needed to study in high school and college to travel into space. NASA sent me a form letter. It said study Latin and German, the language of scientific papers at the time, to study physics, math etc. Then as I reached the bottom on the page, in blue ink, handwritten, was a note that said, 'Of course we do not accept women into the space program.' It was 1967 and discrimination against women was legal and accepted. So, I turned to my second love, science fiction, and decided I would be the next Jules Verne. I read and wrote stories constantly(asked my teachers, family and friends to read them) and planned my career. I met a science fiction writer in high school and applied to college. I realized that I needed a full time job as I worked towards a career in fiction, so I majored in journalism." That led her to a career at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and later she published the award-winning book Science for Seniors: Hands-On Learning Activities.

2. Some "Stupid Pet Tricks" trivia from Wikipedia: "When Letterman left [for CBS], NBC asserted their intellectual property rights to several of the most popular Late Night segments. ... Notably, however, 'Stupid Pet Tricks' originated on Letterman's 1980 early morning show The David Letterman Show, to which Letterman, not NBC, owned the rights. This meant 'Stupid Pet Tricks' was able to cross over to the CBS show with its name and concept unchanged."

3. Nowadays those commercials would make those VHS tapes (if they still exist) pure gold. VHS tapes are making quite the comeback, as I plan to delve into later this summer. But even more valuable and collectible than certain commercial VHS tapes are home recordings of shows, movies and live sporting events onto blank tapes. They can contain commercials, news broadcasts, bumpers and other content that would otherwise be long lost. If you have these from the 1980s or 1990s, they usually sell for a decent price on eBay.

"Will You Buy My Story?"

My San Tan Valley hairstylist told me today that she has seen Wicked: Part I more than 60 times, which is amazing on many levels, but mostly because it only premiered less than seven months ago. Even as a movie lover, I cannot think of a movie I've seen even 20 times, let alone 60. 

We continued to talk about musicals as my head got buzzed, and that gives me a nice opening for today's ephemera. One of the first musicals I remember seeing is The Fabulous Fable Factory in the 1980s. But the crazy part is that I don't remember when or where. It was either fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh grade, and I went to four different schools in three different states over those four grades, so I can't nail down for sure when I saw it.

I know that it was a bus field trip, possibly to a local college. I don't know if was a full class trip or just the extracurricular chorus I was part of (in which case it was Montoursville, in fifth or sixth grade).

And the only part of the musical I remember is the extremely catchy Thomas Tierney/Joseph Robinette song "Will You Buy My Story?" That tidbit allowed me determine that it was 1973's The Fabulous Fable Factory and eventually to track down this worn copy of the book and lyrics.

The synopsis from Dramatic Publishing states: "Monroe wanders into a seemingly abandoned factory and accidentally trips a lever which activates the factory 'machinery,' an assembly line of seven actors who create fabulous fables. Then he meets the factory owner, a Mr. Aloysius A. Aesop, who explains that the factory has been idle for over 2,000 years because of a missing part."

According to this book, the one-act musical was first produced by Glassboro Summer Theatre at Playhouse 121 at Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) in southern New Jersey. That's another connection for me. We lived in Clayton, just a few miles from Glassboro, in the late 1970s.

Here are a few images from the book...

The Crestwood House monster books

Stripe, with her spiffy bowtie, helps with today's post.

It's a happy coincidence that her colors match the Crestwood House books.

Full disclosure: When I was a kid, I wasn't too interested in the Crestwood House series of hardcover books that focused on the Universal Classic Monsters, Godzilla, King Kong and other iconic films. I was drawn more to the Contemporary Perspectives/Raintree books about paranormal phenomenon and cryptozoology, and, of course, Ruth Manning-Sanders' fairy tales books. Public school libraries had so much cool stuff! 

But now I see how awesome the Crestwood House books are, and they're also an incredible historic record of some foundational monster and science-fiction movies in U.S. film. I've picked up a few well-worn ex-library copies over the years, including Dracula and Frankenstein, with Bela and Boris on their covers.

Here are some representative memories about the series I've curated from all around the web:

From a Facebook post on the "Mid Century & Vintage Halloween" group:

• "I credit the Godzilla book with making me a huge Godzilla fan as a kid. I used to check out that one all the time."
• "I would look forward to library day, because of these!"
• "OMG!!! These books taught me how to read!!!"

From a Reddit post earlier this year:

• "My grade school library had most of them. I absolutely loved these books. Being the early to mid-eighties, these things were an absolute treasure."
• "I loved these books. My elementary school library had them. Started my love of classic horror films."

There's a seven-page message board forum about Crestwood House books on the Universal Monster Army website. The first post was in December 2007 and the most recent one is from August 2012. In 2007, one poster wrote: "I was a librarian and teacher in another life, and had the Crestwood books on my shelves -- and they certainly were popular! I can't recall now if there was a different publisher or just a different 'line', but some were purple and some were orange. Maybe horror set vs sci fi set? I found the best info about them in UMA member Rick Stoner's MONSTER MAYHEM periodical."

A few posts later, the full Crestwood House monster series is listed. I'm sharing it here for posterity, hopefully to boost the ease with which people can find information about these beloved childhood books. But credit goes to that 2007 poster, who was reposting from an even older message board!

> Here's a list compiled by our very own Richard Olson from his article

> published in the Stoner's Monster Mayhem Fanzine (Series, publication

> release, ISBN and author):

>

> MONSTER SERIES (Orange Books):

> FRANKENSTEIN * Ian Thorne * 0-913940-73 * 1977

> DRACULA * Ian Thorne * 0-913940-74 * 1977

> GODZILLA * Ian Thorne * 0-913940-75 * 1977

> KING KONG * Ian Thorne * 0-913940-76 * 1977

> MAD SCIENTISTS * Ian Thorne * 0-913940-77 * 1977

> THE WOLF MAN * Ian Thorne * 0-913940-78 * 1977

> THE MUMMY * Ian Thorne * 0-89686-189 * 1981

> CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON * Ian Thorne * 0-89686-190 * 1981

> FRANKENSTEIN MEETS WOLFMAN * Ian Thorne * 0-89686-191 * 1981

> THE BLOB * Ian Thorne * 0-89686-215 * 1982

> IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE * Ian Thorne * 0-89686-216 * 1982

> THE DEADLY MANTIS * Ian Thorne * 0-89686-217 * 1982

> THE INVISIBLE MAN * Ian Thorne * 0-89686-372 * 1986

> THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA * Ian Thorne * 0-89686-373 * 1987

> MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE * Wm Sanford/Carl Green * 0-89686-374 * 1987

>

> MOVIE MONSTERS SERIES (Purple Books):

> BLACK FRIDAY * Wm Sanford/Carl Green * 0-89686-258 * 1985

> BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN * Wm Sanford/Carl Green * 0-89686-259 * 1985

> DRACULA'S DAUGHTER * Wm Sanford/Carl Green * 0-89686-260 * 1985

> GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN * Wm Sanford/Carl Green * 0-89686-261 * 1985

> THE MOLE PEOPLE * Wm Sanford/Carl Green * 0-89686-262 * 1985

> THE RAVEN * Wm Sanford/Carl Green * 0-89686-263 * 1985

> TARANTULA * Wm Sanford/Carl Green * 0-89686-264 * 1985

> WEREWOLF OF LONDON * Wm Sanford/Carl Green * 0-89686-265 * 1985

> THE BLACK CAT * Wm Sanford/Carl Green * 0-89686-310 * 1987

> HOUSE OF FEAR * Wm Sanford/Carl Green * 0-89686-311 * 1986

> HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES * Wm Sanford/Carl Green * 0-89686-312 * 1987

> REVENGE OF THE CREATURE * Wm Sanford/Carl Green * 0-89686-313 * 1986

>

> CRESTWOOD HOUSE/MCMILLIAN CHILDS GROUP "FILM SERIES"

> HORROR FILMS * Rhonda Nottridge * 0-89686-719 * 1992

>

> Maniacally,

>

> Rick

> Stoner's Monster Mayhem

If you want even more Crestwood House memories, check out this 2010 post on the Titans Terrors and Toys blog, and this 2008 post on the Cavalcade of Awesome blog. (I hope these blogs stick around forever; they are treasures.)

It seems appropriate to end this post with feral neighborhood cat Drac, aka Little Baby Dracula. 

She looks just like her sister Mercury, who lives with us.

A 1975 introduction to horror cinema

Here's Smoky with 1975's Movie Monsters by Thomas G. Aylesworth. This is a battered (aka "much read") copy in a school library binding. Although someone removed all of the circulation cards and tried to obscure its provenance with a thick black marker, I can tell you that this copy was in the Brandywine Heights Elementary School library in Topton, Pennsylvania. 

This was a right proper book for an elementary school library in the 1970s, when monster-loving kids wore turtlenecks and corduroy trousers and inhabited a world with the hue of Polaroid photos and the haze of cigarette smoke. Aylesworth's book covers King Kong, Godzilla, Frankenstein's creature, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Fly, Dracula, The Bride of Frankenstein ("the greatest monster sequel," it states), Mr. Hyde, the Invisible Man and Dr. Moreau's creatures (Charles Laughton version). 

There's also a section on the greatest copycat monsters, which basically calls the Hammer creatures of Christopher Lee and Oliver Reed nothing more than "interesting copies." And there's a short section on the greatest monster actors of all time, which cites only Lon Chaney Sr., Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price. The list could have been a bit lengthier and more expansive — Fay Wray? Elsa Lanchester? Barbara Steele? Agnes Moorehead? I know the idea of Scream Queens was still a few years away in 1975, but it would have been nice for Aylesworth to honor some horror actress pioneers.

Still, this book served as an solid gateway to horror cinema for a lot of kids nearly a half-century ago. In a 2009 review on Amazon, Rodney writes: "This was quite possibly the first book I purchased on my own as a kid. It set the stage for a life long love of monsters and horror movies."

And in a 2018 review on Goodreads, Timothy writes: "I had any of Aylesworth's books I could get my hands on ... when I was a kid. Read them over and over. It's 40 years later, and I am still an obsessed Monster Movies fan. I wish I could have met the man as an adult and told him how much joy I got from reading these little books, over and over and over."

Indeed, Aylesworth (1927-1995) wrote a lot of books for kids who were curious about monsters, ghosts, spooks and the paranormal. Even by 1975, he had quite the impressive bibliography, as seen here on the "Other books by..." page at the front of Movie Monsters. 

His papers from 1968 through 1983 are held at the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi. That website's biographical note states that when Aylesworth began writing nonfiction for children, he focused topics of science and the environment: "He enjoyed tremendous success with This Vital Air, This Vital Water (1968), a book on environmental pollution that was translated into seven languages. After hosting a houseguest with an interest in astrology and witchcraft, Aylesworth began writing juvenile books on the occult. Servants of the Devil (1971), a book on witches, was well received and followed by similar titles on vampires, werewolves, mythological beasts, and paranormal phenomena. He also served as ghostwriter for young readers' autobiographies of several celebrities and co-wrote a series of seventeen travel books with his wife, Virginia."

Great links: "A Wrinkle in Time" mystery is solved

In May, Sarah Elizabeth asked a simple question on the Unquiet Things blog: "Why is it that in this current year of 2023, no one seems to know who the cover artist is for this iconic Dell Laurel-Leaf A Wrinkle in Time cover art?? In a time when we have so much information available to us at our literal fingertips, how could it possibly be that the above marvelously and terrifyingly iconic imagery is perpetually credited to 'unknown artist'?"

Solving this mystery was not straightforward, but it was solved.

I was one of the members of Generation X for whom this was, indeed, an iconic paperback (first printed in 1976). We were assigned to read it at C.E. McCall Middle School in Montoursville in fifth or sixth grade, circa 1981 to 1983, and I recall many worn copies of this exact paperback lining a shelf below the classroom window. The cover was an attention-grabber, even if the story itself wasn't the easiest entry point into science-fiction for this middle school student. But I'm so glad my teacher introduced us to thought-provoking, challenging books. That matters.

Elizabeth's post spurred a lot of speculation and work by book sleuths. And the mystery was finally solved: The illustrator was Richard Bober (1943-2022). It took nearly a half-century for him to get public credit.

Taking the handoff from Elizabeth and finding the answer was Amory Sivertson of the podcast WBUR podcast Endless Thread, which focuses on questions and stories related to Reddit posts (Elizabeth had set Reddit to the task of solving the mystery.)

You can listen to the 44-minute podcast or read the full transcript here. It's hugely entertaining, especially for book sleuths. (And, as an aside that I can agree with wholeheartedly, someone says, "15% of everything is destroyed by cats." Also, the mystery comes to a conclusion in a Pennsylvania basement.

As Elizabeth wrote triumphantly, "I am a bit overwhelmed, and I don’t know what more there is to say about it anymore, but the case is cracked, and the mystery is solved!"

The story even caught the attention of The New York Times, where staff writer Amanda Holpuch described Bober's cover artwork thusly: "The mystery cover art shows a strapping centaur with delicate wings flying above a menacing green face with bright red eyes. Craggy mountains and fluffy dark clouds surround the haunting figures. The website Book Riot called the art 'nightmare fuel.'"

Menacing green face? Yes.

Haunting figures? Yes.

Nightmare fuel? Yup.

But mystery cover art? No longer. That was Richard Bober who fueled our 1970s and 1980s imaginations with his cover artwork to accompany Madeleine L'Engle's award-winning novel. 

Examining "The Abominable Snowman" from all sides in 1977

Previous Contemporary Perspectives/Raintree children's books covered on Papergreat:

• This House is Haunted!
• The Case of the Ancient Astronauts
• Visions of the Future: Magic Boards

Today's book...

• Title: The Abominable Snowman
• Author: Barbara Antonopulos. I can't find anything about her or anything else she wrote. That's a mystery we should solve.
• Cover illustrator: Lynn Sweat
• Interior illustrations: Nilda Scherer (that includes the one above and the one below). A 1981 article in The New York Times mentions in passing that Scherer also worked as a courtroom sketch artist.
• Publisher: A Contemporary Perspectives Inc. (CPI) book distributed by Raintree Children's Books, Milwaukee
• Year: 1977
• Pages: 48
• Format: Hardcover
• Photo research: "All photo research for this book was provided by Roberta Guerette." 
• Chapter titles: Monster of the Moutain; Just How Abominable Is the Snowman?; Footprints in the Snow; Hillary's Search; The Village of Beding; The Snowman's Scalp; Man or Myth?; American Relatives?
• First sentences: A small group of men made their way slowly up the steep mountain slope. The air was still. No one spoke as they climbed. Each man thought only of the blinding white snow and the steep mountain still ahead of him. Suddenly, the men froze in terror.
• Last sentences: If these beasts are actually living in the mountains and forests around us, hopefully one day we will be able to prove that they do exist. By studying the Abominable Snowman, we may shed new light on the way people and animals have changed since prehistoric times. At this time, however, the strange case of the Abominable Snowman remains a great, unsolved mystery.
• Pause for comment: I think it's important to point out here that these Contemporary Perspectives/Raintree books were rarely hyperbolic or sensationalized. Yes, they were attempting to attract young readers with topics like ghosts, spooky mysteries, cryptozoology, etc. — stuff most kids are fascinated by. And it was the 1970s, when Leonard Nimoy's In Search of... was a popular TV show. But, generally, these are reasonable, thoughtful children's books that try to get young readers to think about what is and isn't credible and decide for themselves. As I included in the Visions of the Future: Magic Boards post, one librarian stated, "We found that the books represented, throughout, both sides of the issue."
• Excerpt from the middle #1: The scalp was examined by scientists in Chicago and Paris. But they didn't believe it had once belonged to a Snowman. In Chicago they believed that the "scalp" was really the hide of a serow — a wild goat antelope.
• Excerpt from the middle #2: Others say the Abominable Snowman is really a human being. Lamas, the religious men of Nepal, sometimes wander in the mountains by themselves. From a distance, dressed in their large hooded robes, they could be mistaken for a Snowman.
• About the above illustration: The illustration of Mih-Teh, Thelma and Dzu-Teh shows what the Sherpas describe as three types of Yeti. The largest is Dzu-Teh, which can be up to 8 feet tall. The middle-sized one is Mih-Teh, which is the fiercest and the most dangerous to man. And the smallest is Thelma, which is about the size of a human teenager. And it turns out that "Thelma" is as incorrect as it seems. Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman pointed out on Twitter earlier this year: "The editor of this book ... inserted a typo in the mix. The Teh-Ima, the Little Yeti, is a definite part of the history, not 'Thelma.'" You can read more about this on the Encyclopaedia of Cryptozoology.
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.80 stars (out of 5)
• Rating on Amazon: 4.00 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review: Matthew wrote: "This book I read when I was 9. It introduced me to the world of cryptids, ufos, and the paranormal. I've been looking everywhere for this book as I want to relive the nostalgia. Very good introduction to the abominable snowman."
• Twitter mention #1: Folk Horror Revival (@folk_horror) calls it "a cool little book" and highlights more of the illustrations by Nilda Scherer.
• Twitter mention #2: Richard Fay, responding to a post about favorite childhood books, wrote: "THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN by Barbara Antonopulos. Actually, the library in my grade school had a whole series of books about monsters and the unexplained. I read and re-read all of them! A while back, I ordered three of them to add to my personal library."
• Movie moment: There are many, many movies about Yeti and Sasquatch. Most of them are low-budget films made during the 1970s that will likely never receive a Criterion release. I have not seen many movies from this genre, unless you're counting animated Christmas specials. My one recommendation, as a fan of most things Hammer, would be 1957's The Abominable Snowman, featuring Peter Cushing. And my recommendation of one to avoid would be 1977's Snowbeast. Joan and I watched it in August 2008 and, in our movie-watching journal, I wrote: "This made-for-TV flick is basically 'Jaws' with a Yeti, which we barely ever get to see. It's also 'Jaws' without a good script, good directing, good editing and good acting. But, hey, it's got Bo freaking Svenson." Why is that this 1977 children's book treated its audience with more respect than a movie made for adults in the same year? 

Fun reading for 1970s kids? "Visions of the Future: Magic Boards"

Previous Contemporary Perspectives/Raintree children's books covered on Papergreat:

• This House is Haunted!
• The Case of the Ancient Astronauts

Today's book...

• Title: Visions of the Future: Magic Boards
• Why are they called magic boards? Because the word Ouija is trademarked, currently by Hasbro.
• Author: Saul A. Stadtmauer (1929-2018). He also wrote 24th Forward: The Pictorial History of the Victory Division in Korea and co-authored Jewish Contributions to the American Way of Life. He was married to poet Colette Inez (1931-2018). There's a photo of Saul and Colette on the sixth page of this PDF.
• Cover illustrator: Lynn Sweat
• Publisher: A Contemporary Perspectives Inc. (CPI) book distributed by Raintree Children's Books, Milwaukee
• Year: 1977
• Pages: 48
• Format: Hardcover
• Interior illustrators: Wayne Atkinson and Alida Beck
• Photo research: "All photo research for this book was provided by Sherry Olan." (More on her in a moment.)
• Chapter titles: The Unexpected Visitor; Where It All Began; Searching for the Spirit Seth; Dr. Hegy's Magic Table; and How to Build Your Own Magic Board. (The Spirit Seth involves the famous case of psychic/medium Jane Roberts (1929-1984) allegedly channeling a personality called Seth.)
• First sentence: Pearl Curran and her friend sat facing each other in the darkened living room.
• Last paragraph: Even if you never receive a message from the past or from the future, the magic board is sure to be fun. Some say that your success depends on how much you believe.
• Random photo caption from the middle: Ed and Lorraine Warren, famous "ghost hunters," advise against amateurs trying to contact the spirits.
• Random sentence from the middle #1: Dr. Hegy's game was similar to the magic board, and he planned to play it with passengers during long, fog-filled ocean nights. (Context: Dr. Reginald Hegy penned a 1935 book titled A Witness Through the Centuries. According to Weiser Antiquarian Books, "in this volume he outlines the experiences which led him to become a believer in spiritualistism. He then offers practical advice on how to start your own spiritualist 'home-circle' and test for yourself the actuality of the spirit world.")
• Random sentence from the middle #2: It is very important that the board has a slippery, smooth surface so that the triangle-shaped pointer you make can glide from letter to letter.
• Online reviews: Alas, none.
• Attempts to ban the Contemporary Perspectives books: I found a pair of examples of attempts to ban these books from school libraries. I'm sure there were other examples during the satanic panic of the 1980s and 1990s.

1. In 1991, a school board in Dallas, Texas, had to deal with a parental challenge on Visions of the Future: Magic Boards, for "poor writing." I don't know how the challenge was resolved.

 

2. A May 4, 1992, article in the Daily Press of Newport News, Virginia, details a request by the Rev. David A. Wade to permanently ban eight Contemporary Perspectives book, including Spells, Chants, and Potions, from the school system. The books deal "with such subjects as witches, palm reading, ghosts and astrology," the article states.

The article explains that the books were purchased by the school system in 1981. As just two examples, officials noted that Spells, Chants, and Potions had been checked out 32 times in 11 years, while Visions of the Future: Magic Boards had been checked out eight times in 11 years.

But Wade worried that many young students may have simply read the books in the library without checking them out.

”I’m not going to stop,” Wade told the Daily Press. ”We’ve got to get these books out of the city school system. They’re horrible.”

From the Daily Press article: "Perhaps the most intriguing of the eight books is 'Spells.' It has a whole chapter on the use and significance of different colored candles in making spells but gives somewhat sketchy information on three 'enemy' spells. The book concludes with a detailed 'recipe book' for a love spell, a spell to make money, and a good-luck spell."

Librarian Pamela Neilson defended the books: "We found that the books represented, throughout, both sides of the issue. They were not advocating to the reader that this was something to do.”

Neilson cited a seven-page account of an Apache medicine man in Spells, Chants, and Potions as having value and said the Contemporary Perspectives books all contained disclaimers regarding any inherent truth regarding topics like witchcraft, astrology and numerology. 

The Daily Press' thorough reporting involved contacting Contemporary Perspectives: "Sherry Olan, president of the company, said she doesn’t remember the books and declined to comment further. 'We stand by the books we publish,' said senior editor Kenneth E. Baranski."

A short item in The Virginian Pilot in June 1997 explains how Wade's dispute was resolved:

"FIVE YEARS AGO. Books on voodoo, witchcraft and astrology were placed back on the library shelves at Hampton’s Forrest Elementary School in June 1992 after a parent’s complaint prompted some restrictions on who could read them. A series of eight books had been pulled for review after the parent requested they be banned as too explicit for young children. The books, the parent said, contained too much detail, such as a list of recipes for spells and a detailed explanation of tarot card reading.

"It was subsequently decided that only children who received permission from a parent would be permitted to check out the books.

"Today, the books still have a place in the school library, with the staff continuing to follow the procedure handed down five years ago, according to Forrest Elementary librarian Pamela Neilson."

For what it's worth, there doesn't seem to be a single copy of Spells, Chants, and Potions available for sale anywhere on the internet. I guess the lucky private owners are hoarding that spell to make money.

***

Finally, here are a pair of interior illustrations from Visions of the Future: Magic Boards, both by Wayne Atkinson.

Contemporary Perspectives/Raintree children's books to be covered some day on Papergreat (hopefully):

• The Bermuda Triangle
• Ghosts and Ghouls
• Witches
• Bigfoot: Man, Monster, or Myth?
• The Mystery of Stonehenge
• The Mysterious Ghosts of Flight 401