Scuffy the Tugboat

Written by Gertrude Crampton
Illustrated by Tibor Gergely

Little Golden Books were originally published to promote literacy among poor people.  Which is commendable.  But it wasn't just the printing and binding that they spared expense on.

The writing is heavy handed.  The moral of the story is to stay were you belong.  Probably because it's written for poor people.

Scuffy dreams of sailing out beyond into the wide ocean.  But the wide ocean is too much for him!

Luckily he is saved and confined to his little bathtub for the rest of his life.

The art is dreadful, too.  The artist had a terrible time with faces.  The only redeemable thing about this book is that it's slightly better than Tootle.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

By Barbara Shook Hazen
Adapted from the story by Robert L. May
Illustrated by Richard Scarry

My daughter picked this one out at the thrift store.  She insisted on it. She loves Rudolf.

Whatever.  Palatable Christmas fare.  It's pretty long winded, though.  At least it isn't a transcript of that weird Christmas special.  Don't get me wrong; the Christmas special is totally adorable.  But the script is crazy.  Santa and the reindeer are horrible people, and Rudolf should have just hightailed it and never gone back.

 This part is a bit weird, just because it has unnecessary details that don't make much sense.  I bet you Santa only brought the reindeer into the toy factory to break the elf union.

I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this stuff.  We're pretty anti-Santa for a number of reasons, which I guess could make us seem like a couple of Scrouges.  It can be really crummy for kids to be fed a bunch of lies about Santa and then finally find out the truth.  I feel, especially now that my daughter is old enough to play pretend, that it makes sense to pretend Santa rather than feed it to her as some kind of weird almost-religion.

The Monster at the End of This Book

Uncredited because there isn't much of a story.  You figure the artist would be somewhere, though.

 This book is SO dated and kind of garbage, but it features Grover, who is adorable.  Plus, it breaks the third wall with Grover talking to the reader, which, really, any kid would be totally crazy about.  We got it because it's a classic.

Look at that typeface.  So dated.  But colourful.  I think my daughter mainly loves this for the colourful text.

The big joke at the end where Grover is the monster?  She's bored by that.  "I need to see the colours." She says as she grabs the book from me and rifles through the pages.











I hear that the sequel is exactly the same book, except that it features Elmo.  Ugh.

Good Night, Little Bear

By Richard Scarry

An excellent simple book about a typical bedtime routine where baby bear is doing anything and everything to get out of going to bed.  Unlike you and I, the bear parents think his antics are charming and adorable and go along with them.

No, really, it's very cute.  Father bear pretends that he can't find baby bear.  The narrator asks, "Do you think that Mama and Papa bear knew where Baby bear was all along?"  To which my daughter decidedly says, "No, they didn't."  Because she's too young to understand most forms of humour.

But, really, we all love this book.

Tawny Scrawny Lion

By Tenggren


A Little Golden Book.  Great art in this fairly dated and a long-winded tale of a lion who becomes vegetarian... and somehow becomes fat?  But it's a good thing!  Skinny is bad!

Which is great.  He also goes from being disliked to being jovial and loveable.

My daughter likes this one, probably just for the bunnies. She makes me read it and then I have to sing a song about it.  Sometimes I'm fortunate enough that she'll tell me how to sing it too.  She really likes this book.

The Boy and the Tigers

By Hellen Bannerman

A classic Little Golden book, Originally titled "The Story of Little Black Sambo", this story has been edited to remove racial slurs and offensive illustrations.

It's very folk-tale like with a bit of slapstick thrown in.  It's not an amazing book, but my daughter likes it.  It's still a little long-winded, even for her liking.

Tootle

By Gertrude Crampton
 Illustrated by Tibor Gergely

Seriously, what is this crap.

This is the story of a poorly drawn engine that had to get 100 A+ in staying on the rails no matter what.

What does that even MEAN?  And they keep REPEATING it.  And he just wants to play in the flowers, but he's an engine, and he has to work and never play, so they trick him into always working, and then he's happy.  Arbeit Macht Frei, right?  Maybe I'm reading too much into this.

My daughter was so confused when I read her this and had no idea what was going on... but... TRAINS!  She loves trains.

This book is going to disappear.

Busiest Fire Fighters Ever

 By Richard Scarry

This is a full story with explanations as to how a fire station operates.  In a world where there are public fire alarm boxes.

It's for pre-school and school age children.

We love it.  Mr. Fumble is a main feature, and there's lots of slapstick.

Pocketful of Nonsense

 By James Marshall

I buy anything I see written by James Marshall or his alter ego Edward Marshall

 This book is a bunch of childhood rhymes, mostly.  Some of them are written by him.  The pictures are pretty entertaining.

My daughter doesn't understand these much.  But I'm happy that I have it in my collection.