The Sea Serpents Around Us...Lois and Louis Darling...Little, BrownDonald Duck Sees South America...H. Marion Palmer...D. C. Heath & Company
Thaddeus Jones And The Dragon...Jerry Hjelm...Oddo Publishing
Walt Disney's The Adventures Of Mr. Toad...adapted by John Hench...Simon and Schuster
Grandpa Bunny...Told By Jane Werner...A Golden Book
Witches, Witches, Witches...ed. Helen Hoke...Mulberry Books
The Visitors From Oz...L. Frank Baum...The Reilley & Lee Co.
The Absolute Sandman Volume I...Neil Gaiman...Vertigo
The Absolute Sandman Volume II...Neil Gaiman...Vertigo
The Absolute Sandman Volume III...Neil Gaiman...Vertigo
The Absolute Sandman Volume IV...Neil Gaiman...Vertigo
The first seven books on today's list are all copies of books I that loved and that were very influential to me in grade school. I suppose their impact at first was mainly visual: in Grandpa Bunny, the blue shadows on white snow, the autumn leaves in yellow, purple and red; the "solid" warm style of The Adventures Of Mr. Toad; the slick skin of sea monsters that the Darlings evoked just by using pencil. I can point to these books and say "This is where this taste started, here is where I first realized something about what I like," but a sort of mystery remains: why do some things call forth responses from your soul, and not others?
The Sandman books are massive tomes (12 1/2" tall by 8 1/2" wide), ribbon book markered, and slip cased. It is the story of Morpheus, the King of Dreams and Lord of Stories, and as such is not only a collection of amazing stories and riveting story arcs, but a meditation on the nature of storytelling itself. It is some of the best of Gaiman's writing, and is unusual in comic book history in that it was conceived and executed as one complete tale with a definite ending: the tragedy of the passing of one aspect of the person of Dream of the Endless.
Book Count: 1544.
1 comment:
I remember the effect of "Witches, Witches, Witches" being so powerful that the library copy we had had to go outside to the garage for one spooky night so that it wasn't in the same house with us!
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