Book Talk

It’s closing in on 6 months since the E. L. Moore eBook was released. So far its had 465 downloads, which is 365 more than my wildest expectations. If you’re one of those downloaders, thanks! If not, don’t worry, there’s still an infinite number of copies available.

Although the eBook’s been out for awhile I still think about many of its topics. A few are rather weakly argued, which gives me some heartburn. For example, Moore’s life story up until he becomes a model railroading author is skimpy, and his role as a folk artist is heavy with assertions. I would like to tie those two topics together much better than I have. If new information is found that shores up these or other wobbly parts, well, I do plan to do a second edition in that case. Time will tell.

I’ve been reading Robert Hughes’ 1997 book, American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, over the summer. I found his views on American folk art interesting, especially when read in light of E. L. Moore and his relationship to the American Folk Art Building tradition that I discussed in the eBook. Here’s what seems to be the core of Hughes’ thoughts on American folk art in general:

The folk tradition in America only came to be valued when it was almost gone. Today, America has 260 million people, but almost no folk. The forms of folk art were diluted or destroyed - and then “revived” as tourist goods or nostalgic images - by the inexorable pressures of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries: store-buying, industrial production, the impact of cities, historical self-awareness. Today, the “high art” view of folk art is tinged with benign condescension: here it is, the innocent social birdsong of early America.

It certainly does capture the spirit of what I think was the evolution of miniature building use in model railroading. 

I couldn’t update you about the eBook without some friendly nagging :-) If you’ve downloaded a copy - again, much thanks - have you also made some sort of contribution to supporting literacy? Say, given to a literacy charity? Donated some books to a Little Free Library? Donated to a church book sale?

Maybe it was you who donated this little book I bought early in the summer at the annual book sale held by the United church down the street from my house. The event was packed to overflowing with books and buyers, which was great to see. I had to promise not to come home with an armload, and I didn’t, but I did sneak in with this little gem, Toys and Models: Dealing with the Construction of a Wide Variety of Toys and Models Both for Indoor and Outdoor Amusement, published in 1948 by C. Arthur Pearson Limited of London as part of its Home Mechanic Series. It’s a shame no author is mentioned.

This is not a book of scissors, paper, and paste projects to keep young kids amused. No, there’s quite a variety of involved builds, and appears targeted at adults and older children. 

ToC and chapter 1 from Toys and Models

The book starts big with its first chapter focused on how to build a kid-sized play automobile powered by either peddles or an electric motor so they can have fun driving their own car. But, it was chapter 9 that sealed the 50¢ deal for me: it’s titled Cardboard Modelling, but it deals exclusively with how to build miniature buildings from cardboard at a level of quality you’d be pleased to display in your living room or on your model railroad. 

Inside chapter 9 from Toys and Models

Chapter 9 also taught me a new term with regard to bending cardboard: stunning. Here’s how the anonymous author describes stunning with respect to the process of folding a bend in some cardboard after its been scored:

To make a clean angular bend, lay the scored card flat on the work table, press a straight-edge on to it with the edge over the part of the bend, then press the card upwards and run the thumb nail along the bend. If the card is at all springy it will have to be “stunned,” that is, bent over flat on to itself and then bent back again to its proper place.

The book’s inside front has a label that says: Property of The Hockley Valley School of Fine Arts and Crafts. I couldn’t find out anything about this long gone school other than its possible location was likely in southwestern Ontario, about 460 km or so from Ottawa. So, this is a well travelled book: published in London, England, resided in an art school library in southwestern Ontario, and then made its way to Ottawa to finally be more-or-less given away at a local church book sale 75 years after publication. 

The book’s inside back cover has a library borrowing card with no entries and an annotation that indicates this was the library’s 3rd copy. No borrowers? A sad situation indeed. 

But, not as sad as the situation I came across a few days ago.

5 children's books rescued from recycling

One morning I decided to take my daily walk early in the morning before the heat cranked up to brain melting levels. It just so happened that it was the day the city picked up residential paper recycling, so all the houses had their recycling boxes out awaiting pickup. The truck hadn’t yet hit our neighbourhood so I could nosily glance at what people were recycling as I went along my way. 

Not too far along my route a bin outside one house stopped me dead in my tracks. Those lovely books over there on the right were stuffed amongst some pizza boxes, peeking out of a black recycling bin. I rescued them, otherwise they’d be pulped by the time you read this. Pulped! Good grief. 

They're all children's books. I didn't examine them in detail during rescue. They looked old and interesting, so I simply plucked them from the bin and hightailed it back home. It wasn't until I looked them over a bit at home that a story started to emerge.

Rose, Tom, and Ned; Hazel's 1900 Xmas present

Here's the inside cover of Rose, Tom, and Ned. The inscription reads:

To Hazel

from Aunt Bess

Xmas 1900

You read that right: it apparently was a Christmas gift in 1900, and now it's just recyclable material, no different than a pizza box, nearly 125 years later.

One of several colour plates in Rose, Tom, and Ned

There isn't any publication information inside. All we're told is that a Mrs. D. P. Sanford is the author. Maybe it's a pirated copy of a legitimate publication, or maybe it was simply considered a commodity. 

Regardless, inside it has several paintings like the one over there as well as numerous black-and-white sketches.

Hazel's 1903 Xmas present: The Children's Shakespeare

Three Christmases go by and I guess the adults in Hazel's life think she was ready for higher level reading material. This is the inscription in The Children's Shakespeare:

"Hazel"

From Uncle Ed

and Aunt Nellie

Xmas 1903

This volume isn't as well illustrated as her earlier present as it's simply a small collection of black-and-white reproductions of paintings presented along with the stories.

But this book does include publication information. The author is the famous children's author, E. Nesbit - full name Edith Nesbit - whose 1913 book, Wings and the Child or The Building of Magic Cities, I discussed here many years ago. The copy of The Children's Shakespeare I found notes it was published by the Henry Altmus Company of Philadelphia in 1900, and Wikipedia tells me the book was first published in 1897, a year before E. L. Moore was born.

The collection then jumps ahead 20 years or so. The last three books of the five date into the 1920s, a mere 100 years ago.

Inscription inside Flower Children

This is the last book in the collection to contain an inscription. It's from Flower Children: The Little Cousins of the Field and Garden and reads:

Katherine

from Aunt Minnie [JL: ?]

Dec. 25 1925

Inside it's noted that the book was published in 1910 by The P. F. Volland Company of Joliet, Illinois. The text is by Elizabeth Gordon and the drawings are by M. T. Ross.

Sample facing pages from Flower Children

Flower Children is basically a big collection of pictures and poems like those shown on the left.

Given the above three books were found together, and what with the gap in inscription dates of a generation, I wonder if Katherine was Hazel's daughter ? I'll never known. The house outside where these were tossed I believe was recently bought by a gentrifier, so the history is lost. 

End papers of Katherine the Komical Kow

The two last books, Three Little Cotton Tails and The Circus (1922) and Katherine the Komical Kow (1926), don't contain any inscriptions or other personalizations, but I'll go out on a limb and suggest Katherine was also a present for the Katherine who received Flower Children back at Christmas 1925. Some adult probably thought giving a child a book whose titular cow had the same name as theirs was hilarious.

For a modern, adult reader, Katherine is probably the more graphically sophisticated of the two. Cotton Tails is more sentimental. To me Katherine's  look seems reminiscent of the Toonerville Trolley cartoons, which began in 1913 so it's style was likely well entrenched in American culture by 1926. And like Flower Children, Katherine was also a product of The P. F. Volland Company.

Well, as charming as these books are, they need to be recirculated - not recycled ! - so I’ll donate them to the next church book sale, or pop them into a Little Free Library. There’s only so much I can do to help them be appreciated again, but hopefully someone will get some enjoyment out of them before they’re once again black boxed for The Grim Pulper.

I don’t want to end on a horror note, so let’s try to wrap up with a modest amount of happiness. During the summer I finally found a copy of Mike Gill’s 1984 book, The Peco Book of Model Buildings. I’ve been looking for a decent, reasonably priced copy for almost 2 years. I suspect in the UK this isn’t hard to come by, but it required some patience over here.

Gill’s book explains how to make model buildings from cardboard, much like chapter 9 in Toys and Models. However, where T&M applied the technique of laying out the walls in a long, foldable strip - hence, the sometime need for stunning - Gill builds his models up from individually cut cardboard walls. I’ve used both methods over the years and prefer the Gill approach, but that’s just me. John Allen used the foldable strip method for his classic Engine House, so I’d say try both techniques.

Inside Mike Gill's book

I like the book. It’s lively with lots of black-and-white line drawings, a centre section with colour photos of finished models, and highly readable and entertaining text. I think Gill might have taken a correspondence course from the E. L. Moore Creative Writing School of North Carolina. I can’t recall ever reading that an intrepid modeller should celebrate with a Kit-Kat and Tequila the accomplishment of getting his first little building to stand up, but that’s Mike’s advice and I salute him for it :-) Not for him the clinical writing of our era.

One last thing before I leave for coffee, if you can recirculate your unwanted books, please do so. It might be of benefit to some reader, young or old, somewhere out there. I know, it’s easy for me to say as it can be darned inconvenient. At least try to give it some thought before leaving a curb side offering for The Grim Pulper.