10 Books A Day: #130

The Sea Serpents Around Us...Lois and Louis Darling...Little, Brown

Donald 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.