Summer isn't over yet, so here are a few books that capture the whimsical spirit of these final days of the season.  


Now Open the Box, by Dorothy Kunhardt; The New York Review of Children's Books, $16.95, 72 pages, ages 4-7.


Before Clifford the Big Red Dog, there was little Peewee the circus dog. Originally published in 1934, Dorothy Kunhardt's Now Open the Box tells the story of a beloved red canine and his opening act at the circus. 


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Now Open the Box by Dorothy Kunhardt. Reproduced with permission from the New York Review of Children's Books © Dorothy Kunhardt.   


To beckon spectators, the ringmaster stands in front of a large red tent while holding a yellow box that fits in the palm of his hand.  Inside is Peewee. Although the tiny pooch can't perform a single trick, everybody loves the cute canine, from circus-goers to fellow performers. Unfortunately the dog begins to grow, and this threatens his place under the big top.


The New York Review of Children's Books has just reissued this book by the author of Pat the Bunny. A torrent of words, coupled with bright illustrations and simple sentences lend a childlike, innocent quality to the storytelling.  Kunhardt's iconic line-drawn illustrations employ a basic color scheme of fire engine red, canary yellow, black and white. 


At times, the story may seem lengthy and very young children might lose patience, but most readers will enjoy following Peewee on his adventure extravaganza. Kunhardt aficionados will surely want to add this edition to their collection.  


More magical reviews and great illustrations from Now Open the Box are here.

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Serendipity has always played an important role in the lives of book collectors and scholars. One day Dr. Michael Walsh, a linguistics professor at the University of Sydney, was browsing through the stacks at Mitchell Library, Sydney, (part of the State Library of New South Wales) when he randomly pulled down an object that looked like a codex, but was actually a box containing two notebooks. After flipping through several pages of "doodles," Walsh stopped at page seven, intriguingly entitled "A short vocabulary of the natives of Raffles Bay." Walsh soon realized he had stumbled across a guide to a lost language from the aboriginal people settled near the coast in Australia's Northern Territory.

The notebook, written by the Victorian colonist Charles Tyres, was entirely unknown to modern scholars.

Using that find as a launching pad, Walsh instigated a two year research project trolling through 14km worth of colonial manuscripts in search of mention of the lost or endangered indigenous languages of Australia.

The Australian government estimates that 145 aboriginal languages are still spoken around the country today, with a further 110 hovering at the edge of extinction. Walsh's research project has contributed to the knowledge of 100 of these native languages. One of his favorite finds was a 130 page, tri-language dictionary in German, Diyari, and Wangkangurru, the later two being aboriginal languages from the north-east part of the South Australia state. 

The next step of Walsh's research project is to disseminate the findings to the aboriginal people around Australia who still speak these languages, or are culturally descended from the native speakers. The Mitchell Library also hopes to digitize the findings, if granted the appropriate cultural approvals, making them accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.
905.1 NOLA Churches just front.jpgAt FB&C, we love to celebrate the successes of our writers, many of whom write for top newspapers and magazines and even books of their own. Today I'm happy to announce Deborah Burst's debut in book form, Hallowed Halls of Greater New Orleans: Historic Churches, Cathedrals and Sanctuaries (History Press, $19.99). Filled with 45 beautiful photos, Burst's book explores the rich history and culture of NOLA's devotional spaces: From Belgian Monk Gregory de Wit in Saint Joseph's Abbey to the history of Black Catholics at Blessed Sacrament - St. Joan of Arc church, to Philip Cazalé, who dedicated his life to building a network of 30 Romanesque Catholic churches and schools across south Louisiana. And the book contains a foreword by Anne Rice, whose own baroque childhood church, St. Alphonsus, is seen below.  

Burst, a New Orleans native herself, has been freelancing for us for years--her feature on a little library in Rugby, Tennessee, is in our current issue, and she's also written about topics that range from post-Katrina library cleanup at Tulane University to vintage cocktail books. Both a photographer and a writer, she has published more than a thousand articles and has received nineteen writing and photography awards over the last nine years.

st Alphonsus from 2nd floor-2.jpgFor more information about her book, take a look at her website. Congrats, Deb!

Image credit: Deborah Burst.
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News surfaced this weekend that posthumous works by the famously reclusive author J. D. Salinger will see publication between 2015 and 2020. In the upcoming biography of the writer, entitled Salinger, by David Shields and Shane Salerno, the authors claim that Salinger's literary trust will release the five books with a yet-to-be-determined publisher. Salinger apparently approved of their publication before he died, at age 91, in 2010.

So, what's on the way?  Quite the variety:

1) The Family Glass, an anthology of Glass family stories including several new ones.
2) A WWII novel inspired by Salinger's difficult relationship with his first wife - a possible Gestapo spy.
3) A manual of the Hindu Vedanta religion to which Salinger was devoted in the second half of his life.
4) A novella based on Salinger's experiences as a counterintelligence officer in WWII.
5) A Caulfield anthology, including a reworked "The Last and Best of the Peter Pans."

And so, in the span of a few years, Salinger collectors will more than double the amount of books in their collection. Salinger only published four books in his lifetime, The Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey, and Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters.  

After managing to afford a first edition, first printing of The Catcher in the Rye, (roughly a $20,000 feat), the Salinger collector must spend most of his time tracking down copies of the magazines Salinger first published his stories in.  This blog post at Magazine History offers an excellent overview of the various magazines that published Salinger stories, including his first, "The Young Folks," published by Story magazine in 1940.

Guest Blog by Catherine Batac Walder

On Wednesday, August 21, I listened to Neil Gaiman's conversation with Philip Pullman at the Oxford Playhouse in Beaumont Street. Gaiman's visit is part of a signing tour of his new book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, but it felt like an hour and a half of eavesdropping on two grown men talking about the books they loved as children, favorite characters, comics, and finally, story ideas from nightmares. I could think of other magnificent buildings more suitable as a setting to this dreamlike night, but then again, the playhouse also seemed like a gateway to literary Oxford. Just around the corner is The Eagle and Child pub (meeting place of Tolkien, Lewis, and other members of the Inklings) and a couple of doors down is the Randolph Hotel, which featured in the Inspector Morse TV series based on the novels by Colin Dexter (they now have a Morse Bar).

I had attended two talks of Pullman's in the past, and they both had a serious tone. In this third one, as soon as he started the chat with the comment that the last time he saw Neil Gaiman was about a year ago and "he was dressed as and made up as a badger," I knew that the night was going to be like reading one of their fantastical stories. Gaiman talked about reading the Mary Poppins books when he was six or seven and how they helped form whatever worldview he had as a kid. "The idea that the world is incredibly unlikely and strange secret things are always happening, that adults don't really explain to you, or in fact, that adults may be oblivious to," he said. Of The Wind in the Willows (the book that prompted him to dress up like a badger), he said, "It was just weird, and I think it was the kind of thing that I like 'cause it's also the kind of thing I'll do when I'm writing - throw everything in. That certain point when you look around and you go, artistic unity may say that this armchair should not be in the novel but it's my novel." His wonder was infectious as he recalled discovering the library when he was very young and having that incredible feeling of power; discovering the card catalogue in which you could actually look up subjects like witches or robots or ghosts; or you could just take down books and read the interesting ones. Both authors talked about discovering American comic books and marveled at the speed in the stories, the size of them, with Gaiman adding, "Everything was alien, everything was equally as strange and unlikely, so skyscrapers, and pizza and fire hydrants were just as alien to my world as people in capes flying around."

What struck me the most about this conversation was how authors influence the public to read other authors--sharing their literary wealth. Gaiman mentioned how A.A. Milne wrote about Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows (1908) in an essay in the 1920s and became a one-man campaign to give the book the fame he felt it deserved, and one of the things he did was extract the adventures of Mr. Toad and adapt them to stage. In a way, Gaiman did the same for one of his favorite books, James Thurber's The 13 Clocks, reintroducing it to readers via the 2008 New York Review of Books edition.

At the book signing afterwards (which lasted for hours), I told Gaiman that it was great to finally meet him and mentioned that he started the Philippine Graphic/Fiction awards in my home country the same year I left. "You missed me," he said. Having been introduced to the rich Philippine mythology and contemporary urban legends, Gaiman established and funded the competition that ran for three years, and at that point in time, it was something he had never done anywhere else. I asked him to dedicate my copy of Blueberry Girl to my daughter and, as our family is also a huge fan of The Wind in the Willows, requested that he doodle a badger for the little one.

Known as an author who has always tried to connect to fans, Gaiman is currently touring Scotland to promote his new book, but he has revealed that this current journey across Canada, Europe, and the U.S. will mark his last book-signing tour. If you live in the UK, you can pre-order his upcoming children's book Fortunately, the milk from Bloomsbury UK and have a chance to get a signed bookplate.

Many thanks to Catherine Batac Walder, a freelance writer living in the UK, for this report. She has previously written for us about Sherlock Holmes, ex-library books, and the Oxford Literary Festival. 

And now, for your viewing pleasure, the just-released trailer of The Book Thief, based on the 2006 novel by Markus Zusak. Set in Germany during World War II, it is the story of an orphan who loves books--even stealing them--and then shares them with the Jewish man hidden in foster parents' basement. The film releases in theaters this November.


Soccer to us - "football" to the rest of the world - is the most widely played sport on the globe, employing thousands of people, inspiring millions of fans, and generating billions of dollars in revenue. In many countries, including England, football is akin to religion in terms of the devotion and passion it inspires in its followers.  Perhaps it's only fitting then, that the centerpiece of the British Library's new exhibition on football is a book of handwritten rules from 1863 defining the modern conception of the game. Yes, the 13 Original Rules of Football currently has a place beside the Magna Carta.

BL-Football-small.jpgThe handwritten book, entitled the 1863 Football Association Minute Book, was compiled by Ebenezer Cobb Morley (no joke) as he attended a series of meetings of the Football Association.  The organization formed in 1863 to set ground rules for the new sport, meeting in the Freemasons' Tavern in London. Morley's book contains the thirteen original rules of football along with the minutes of the Football Association meetings from that year.

In short, this little book is where it all began. Perhaps it's fitting, then, that the book was recently included in Melvyn Bragg's Twelve Books that Changed the World.

The price of the 1863 Football Association Minute Book on the open market is staggering to think of. Its current assessed value is £2.5 million, however I have a sneaking suspicion it would go for much higher at auction. It is, after all, the only copy of a exceedingly influential document.  But as the current chairman of the Football Association, Greg Dyke, said to the British press, that £2.5m ""would be a lot of money in most worlds but wouldn't buy you a decent full back in football."

So there you go.

Image: Courtesy of the British Library.
Many booksellers are setting up today for the Baltimore Summer Antiques Show. Held at the Baltimore Convention Center, the four-day event boasts more than 575 international art and antiques dealers, including a 90-dealer antiquarian book fair within the larger show. It opens tomorrow.

LuxMentis.jpegIan Kahn of Lux Mentis in Maine has packed a few hundred miniature books--trade editions, limited editions, and artist's books--as well as this lovely Anthony Hecht/Leonard Baskin production, The Gehenna Florilegium (Leeds: Gehenna Press, 1998), in a full peach leather binding.

Mallory.jpgGeorgia-based bookseller Kenneth Mallory believes this framed 1953 Marcel Duchamp lithograph of a Dada catalogue printed "in blocks of contrasting type running diagonally down the sheet," will have crossover appeal in Baltimore.

Additionally, we are told by the Antiques Show organizers, First Folio of Tennessee will bring a deluxe edition of The Rhinegold & The Valkyrie, illustrated by Arthur Rackham (1910), and Roy Young, Bookseller, of Ardsley, New York, plans to show a first edition of Metropolitan Opera Fine Art, a 1978 collection of graphic works by contemporary artists interpreting opera.  

One of our finest crime writers passed away early this morning.  Elmore Leonard, author of "Get Shorty," "Out of Sight," and "Rum Punch" died from complications following a stroke he suffered in July. An announcement on his official website read "Elmore passed away this morning at 7:15 AM at home surrounded by his loving family."

Leonard authored 45 novels in his lifetime.  After his start writing short stories for Western pulp magazines, he graduated to novels with the 1953 publication of "The Bounty Hunters."  Leonard continued to write Westerns for several years before moving on to crime fiction. Dubbed the "Dickens of Detroit," Leonard frequently wrote about his home city in Michigan.  He was widely praised by critics and readers for his strong dialogue, gritty sense of realism, and brevity.  Several of his novels and stories were adapted into Hollywood hits, including "Out of Sight," "Get Shorty," "3:10 to Yuma," "The Big Bounce" and "Rum Punch," which was transformed into "Jackie Brown" by Quentin Tarantino.

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Leonard was also famous amongst writers for his 10 Rules of Writing, which include such gems as "If it sounds like writing, I re-write it," and "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip."

I've been a big fan of Elmore Leonard ever since my Dad gave me a copy of Leonard's great Western vengeance novel "Valdez is Coming."

For collectors, building a Leonard collection is still an affordable undertaking.  Copies of Leonard's first novel, "The Bounty Hunters," published in paperback format in 1953 by Ballantine Books, will set you back about $50.

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Lot163.jpg One of two golf-related fore-edge paintings at auction this week. This one is by Martin Frost, "recently drawn but in an early/classic style," of the U.S. Women's Amateur Championship of 1898. It appears in/on Golf: Badminton Library by Horace Hutchinson. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1890. The estimate is $800-1,000.

An exhaustive collection of rare golf books and memorabilia goes to auction on Thursday at PBA Galleries in San Francisco. The collection of Dr. Robert Weisgerber, with additions, runs to 598 lots of golf books, art, and objects. In addition to some high spots of golf book collecting--Macdonald's Scotland's Gift, Mackenzie's Golf Architecture, Horace Hutchinson's Golf,--the collection contains magazines, club histories, tournament programs, autographs, photographs, posters, scorecards, even a few clubs. A long run of Golf: A Weekly Record of "Ye Royal and Ancient Game" has by far the highest estimate at $20,000-30,000. But I found the fore-edge paintings quaint.

Lot164.jpg The second of two golf-related fore-edge paintings. This unattributed painting shows a woman golfer putting, with a male golfer observing. It appears in/on a 1904 edition Sir Walter Scott's Poetical Works. London: Henry Frowde. The estimate is $400-600.

PBA is known for specialist golf book sales, and we've covered several in the past few years. For more golf books at auction, go here, here, and here.
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