Grease Fotonovel 1978 – Tell Me More, Tell Me More

Walking past David’s Bookshop, Letchworth Garden City, this afternoon I noticed this in the secondhand books trays outside. As Grease is in my Top-Ten-Desert-Island-Movies-best-ever-feel-good-watch-over-and-over list I had to pick it up.

Published by Fotonovel Publications in 1978. It’s by Allan Carr and based on the Grease screenplay by Bronte Woodard.

Originally $2.50 with a Futura Publications sticker £1.25. Dated Christmas 1978.

I don’t know about you, but I’m hopelessly devoted. It’s the whole film from before the opening credits to Sandy and Danny flying away, including song lyrics.

What did you do this summer, Sandy?

You sure got a lot to offer a girl

I got chills

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Wonderland Tales 1973

Wonderland Tales and Story-and-Picture Book. Published by Ideabooks 1973. Featuring artwork by Spanish illustrators Jesus, Alessandro and Adriano Blasco. According the blurb the brothers lived and worked together. You can see the slight differences in style through the panels, and I love the definite 70s aesthetic Alice has to her.

The book also features Gulliver’s Travels and The Golden Box as well as a couple of short stories, Shouting Stones and The Brave Young Shepherd

Hare and Hedgehog 1970

This is a Picture Grasshopper book. Retold by Euan Cooper Willis and illustrated by Horst Lemke. First published in paperback by Abelard-Schuman Ltd in 1973. It was originally 50p (which is what I paid for it in the Salvation Army charity shop the other week).

The story goes: the hare is very proud that he can run so fast and challenges the hedgehog to a race. Hedgehog wins by roping in his family – who all look like him – and hiding them at various points along the course, so the original hedgehog is only there at the beginning and the end.

I think the moral is meant to be ‘don’t show off’ or ‘pride comes before a fall’ or something. I always found these sorts of stories a bit suspect – I know the hare is a show-off, but the hedgehog wins by cheating, so I’m not sure who gets the moral advantage here!

Anyway – the illustration is FAB. I love the costume touches – the hedgehogs’ neckerchiefs and the hats on the birds – and hare’s check trousers are brilliant.

Walt Disney’s Giant Book of Fairy Tales

Published in 1974 by Purnell Books. Over thirty fairy tales – and not all the usual suspects either, ‘Toads and Diamonds’, anyone? When there was an existing Disney film, they used scenes from that, but when there wasn’t, they just bunged in characters they already had. So we have Grumpy in place of Rumpelstiltskin, and Alice (of Wonderland fame) standing in for the little match girl as well as several other characters. Somehow I can’t imagine Disney going for this approach today!

Snowstiltkin?

Pre Lumiere, Cogsworth et al

Alice in disguise

Isn’t that John from Peter Pan? And Figaro? And King Stefan from Sleeping Beauty?

Thrilling Stories From the Past for Girls 1970

Edited by Eric Duthie, illustrated by Reg Gray and published in 1970 by The Hamlyn Publishing Group for Odhams Books. This is a collection of 14 stories by different authors – including KM Peyton.

I was an editor for the My Story series, published by Scholastic Children’s Books, for many years, and although I wasn’t in at the beginning (it was actually developed as the UK version of Scholastic’s Dear America series) this book was surely on someone’s bookshelf in the editorial team!

So how often do you see a story about the Lisbon earthquake in 1775?

jacket blurb

There were more in the series. I shall be looking out for them. There were also books ‘for boys’ in the same format.

Other books in the series

Every story has an illustrated opening page and one full-page illustration.

Robin Annual 1973

Robin Annual 1973 – A Fleetway Annual, published by IPC Magazines Ltd.I believe Robin was a children’s comic in the UK.

Alice in Wonderland card game

An Alice in Wonderland card game. It looks 70s to me, but I’m not sure. I bought this of Etsy as ‘vintage’. If you put the cards in order they tell the story.

In Vogue – Sixty years of celebrities and fashion from British Vogue 1975

By Georgina Howell – First Published in 1975 by Allen Lane, this edition published 1978 by Penguin Books.

I found this rather battered copy at the weekend for £5. Close to 350 pages, large-format paperback it covers the period from 1916 to 1975. It’s mostly in black and white with a couple of four-page colour sections.

It is set out in chronological order (except for the colour pages) and each year has at least two pages. There are also long intros to each decade.

1917

1927

1942

1953

1966

1971

June and School Friend Book of Heroines 1970

I picked this up yesterday for £2. Published by IPC Magazines in 1969. The price is still in at 10’6. June and School Friend were girls’ comics.

Joan of Arc is the main story – told in comic-strip form and taking up 24 pages spread through the book.

There are loads of inspiring stories of female derring do, self sacrifice and adventure. Including Edith Cavell, Queen Zenobia, Anna Leonowens (she of The King and I), Grace Bussell (Australian shipwreck rescuer), Gertrude Bell, Flora MacDonald and many others.

Here’s Violette Szabo – another long comic strip.

 

Gladys Aylward. This is the story the film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman is based on.

 

This is Grace Darling.

 

Suffragettes.

 

And someone I hadn’t heard of – Louise Sutherland – who cycled around the world solo in the 1950s.

The White Deer – A Latvian Folk Tale 1973

Listen, and you shall hear,
This riddle is not long:
There was a great White Deer,
Its antlers were so strong.
Seen by everyone,
It was caught by none.

I found this for 50p in a charity shop yesterday. It’s a 1989 printing of a 1973 book. It’s by Lyudmila Kopylova (English translation by Fainna Solasko). The illustration is by Nikolai Kochergin. It was published by Raduga Publishers, Moscow and printed in ‘the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’. It’s a stapled pamphlet-style book. I don’t know much about Russian books – I don’t know if this was usual at the time.