Sybil Bruncheon's "Our Little Peoples' Library"...
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Hello, Boys & Girls! Do you like to read?... oh, I hope so! It's very nice to let our imaginations help create the stories we hear, as opposed to sitting like dumb-ass Uncle Alf, or Drunky Cousin Julie, (or maybe even your parents and let the TV do all the thinking for the day!) Here are three books that are currently in your school library, but don't let the titles fool you! They're a good deal more interesting than they sound!… and Mummie will tell you a few more fascinating details about each of them, but don't worry! I won't spoil the stories or the surprise endings...
THE ADVENTURES OF JERRY MUSKRAT: Published by the Bedtime Story Books Co. and written by Thornton W. Burgess (later tried and convicted of espionage against His Majesty's Royal Navy). Jerry, though a rodent, proves to be extremely clever and even infernally brilliant at tricking various other animals in the village of Little Puddle-Wink into mischief, mayhem... and finally, murder. Fully illustrated including this cover of Jerry giving a ride to Mayor Tim-Toad Terwilliger across Lake Loon. Unfortunately, toads are not very good swimmers, and Jerry has fooled Mayor Tim Toad into playing "Let's Ride A Submarine"... can you guess who's the submarine... and who isn’t?
THE PIE AND THE PATTY PAN by Beatrix Potter: An early story by Miss Potter, long before she found her fame with much more wholesome characters like Peter Rabbit and his bunny family! She had started her career not with animals but with inanimate objects that had become living, talking, anthropomorphized beings, often wearing clothes, holding jobs, and even engaging in questionable “adult practices”. Her first stories were directed at young girls and their education in housekeeping, mothering their dolls, and “lady arts”. THE PIE AND THE PATTY PAN sounded at first like some sort of story about cooking and dessert, but within a page or so, the Patty Pan revealed its desire to fiercely spank a perfectly innocent and trusting Pie… and in a fiery oven fully illustrated as a 9th circle of Hell, complete with demonic rolling pins and other kitchen utensils waving red hot forks over their heads. This book is NOT for the faint of heart… or for diabetics.
FRISKY SQUIRREL’S STORY: … by someone named Amy Prentice; The title, the cover art, the opening page… it all claimed to be a merry little children’s story, but the more you looked, the more dry, ordinary, almost banal it was. Indeed there was nothing frisky about the title character, his cohorts, the prose, the so-called plot and adventures… nothing. Cover to cover, it read more like an FBI dossier except with furry forest animals and their vegetable and flower pals; Mr. Howard Badger smuggled his next door neighbor Blackie Raven out of the basement with a briefcase full of hollow walnuts, Mrs. Gertrude Stoat confronted Fred Weasel about their history overseas in a petting zoo reserved for Ferrets and their associates, Lipshitz Lambkin escaped his pen disguised as an artichoke at three in the morning and informed the Bulb Council that a tulip was hiding in a bed of daffodils… possibly armed with a fully loaded carrot…
Just as each chapter would end, instead of a resolution there would be a short addendum claiming “More Information Is Pending.” Within a week of publication and release to Children’s Book Stores, there were claims that government officials, intelligence agencies, and foreign embassies were deciphering all sorts of top secret “intel” hidden in the remarkably dull tales. And code breakers by the hundreds were assigned the task of figuring out anagrams from the characters’ names. The best they could come up with included “Queer Pooterzj”, “Commy Pinqbottum”, and “Haz Coootie derr”. Even the name Amy Prentice only turned into “May Pet Nicer”, or “Meant Pricey”, or “Prince Meaty”… whatever…
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