JAMES JOYCE: THE CATS OF COPENHAGEN

BACK IN FEBRUARY, my post on James Joyce's picture book The Cat and the Devil went slightly viral when it was announced that a small Irish publisher would be publishing a new picture book by Joyce entitled The Cats of Copenhagen. The circumstances around this event were slightly controversial (refer back to the original post), so it was unclear if the book would ever be available to the general public at an affordable price. Just last week, Scribner published an American edition, which can be found in stores now.

Unlike The Cat and the Devil, there isn't a strong narrative in The Cats of Copenhagen. It's comprised mainly of absurd observations about cats and policemen and crossing streets. Its tone is somewhere between Ruth Krauss's A Hole is to Dig and the works of Edward Gorey. Casey Sorrow's single color line illustrations resonate with the spare text so that each page is a whole idea, the words and art almost a single lexical unit. In short, it's a wonderful book. But I haven't tested it out on any kids yet.

UPDATE: Ithys Press, the original publisher of The Cats of Copenhagen asked me to mention the work of typographer Michael Caine, who hand set the type for the book. From Anastasia Herbert at Ithys: "That extraordinary setting was all done by hand with lead and wooden type from rare, antique founts in his collection." To see more on Michael Caine see Ithys Press's blog here.

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Review Roundup: The Twenty-Year Death

BEFORE I PUBLISHED A BOOK, I had never been on Facebook. But in the lead up to the releases of One of a Kind and The Twenty-Year Death, I started a Facebook page to make it easy for people to follow the Ariel S. Winter news. It was important to me to not use We Too Were Children as an advertisement for my books, since you signed on to hear about obscure vintage kids' books, not me. But a number of people have complained that, since they are not on Facebook, they have no clue what is going on, and have even missed some major news. So, for those people, here are the big items.

The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post all gave The Twenty-Year Death rave reviews. The Baltimore City Paper ran a cover article on me, and then named The Twenty-Year Death Best of Baltimore 2012: Best Fiction. I wrote an article for The City Paper on James M. Cain's novel The Moth, an article for Criminal Element on the novel that inspired Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and an essay for Powell's Books on authorial voice. The Japanese language rights sold, so a year from now you'll be able to read The Twenty-Year Death in Japanese. For anything beyond that, dig through my Twitter or go to Facebook if you are able and check it out.

In children's book news, I had the pleasure of speaking to Val Teal's daughter and grandson about The Little Woman Wanted Noise, which was a real thrill, since so much of my research is strictly from books. Hopefully there will be more to announce in that regard soon. Stand by for more We Too Were Children some day.

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GUEST POST ON VKBMKL: THE LITTLE WOMAN WANTED NOISE

I HAVE A GUEST POST on Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves today, The Little Woman Wanted Noise by Val Teal, illustrations by Robert "The Story of Ferdinand" Lawson. It's an animal sounds book that all parents with little little ones should get their hands on.

In case you haven't been following on Facebook, I also appeared on NPR's The Dinner Party last week, got another rave review in The Washington Post on Monday, and had a list of great crime novels on The Huffington Post also on Monday, among other exciting things. I hope to be back with a proper We Too Were Children post sometime before school starts, but we'll just have to see. Thanks for your patience.

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THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH

IT'S BEEN QUIET here on We Too Were Children, but with good reason. My novel for adults The Twenty-Year Death comes out on August 7th. The L.A. Times today calls it a "Triumph." Stephen King (as you can see on the cover) calls it "Bold, innovative, and thrilling." Booklist says it is "immersive, exhilarating, and revelatory." People are excited! And as a result, I have spent the last month writing lots of guest posts, top ten lists, and essays that will appear on many different websites in the next few weeks. I have given a number of interviews, which will also show up online soon. And starting today, my new short story "Pawn" will be released on Hard Case Crime's Twitter feed sixty tweets a day for the next week (so make sure you follow @HardCaseCrime). To stay on top of all of the news, head over to my Facebook profile and hit the Like button. And most importantly, pre-order the book.

And as soon as the dust settles, I will be back with more We Too Were Children.

GERTRUDE STEIN: THE WORLD IS ROUND, FRANCIS ROSE ILLUSTRATIONS

WHEN GETRUDE STEIN WROTE THE WORLD IS ROUND, her first choice for illustrator was one of her protégés, the painter Sir Francis Rose. Her editors, William Scott and John McCullough, however were opposed. They felt Rose's art would not appeal to children. As McCullough wrote in a letter to Stein, the "rather studied decadence and sophistication, though possessing qualities of its own strikes me as neither appealing to children nor particularly appropriate to the imaginative vitality of your writing." Stein in a letter to her good friend Carl Van Vechten said, "the editor William R. Scott 224 West Eleventh Street and the editor of [The World Is Round] John McCullough have found an illustrator, I had suggested Francis Rose but they seemed to want an American, they sent me some of the illustrations by Clement Hurd, they seem sweet but very undistinguished..." Hurd became the illustrator, and ended up doing three iterations in his lifetime, as I have written about in my original post (link above).

In 1965, Haskell House, "Publishers of Scholarly Books," at last released an edition with Sir Francis Rose's illustrations. The first is a halftone reproduction of what looks to be a watercolor sketch labeled "Rose" and dated 1939, the year the first edition of The World Is Round appeared.

 The rest are black and white line drawings interspersed throughout the text. I have not been able to ascertain if the line drawings were also executed in 1939, making the Haskell House edition a restoration of sorts, but I suspect they were not and were created specifically for this edition.

In 1958, Rose again lent his talents to a book closely connected with Stein, The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, by Stein's life partner Alice B. Toklas. The cookbook went on to become a bestseller.

TO SEE ALL OF FRANCIS ROSE'S ILLUSTRATIONS for The World Is Round, visit my Flickr set here. In addition to the research I did for my original post, for this post I consulted The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten: 1913-1946, and Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened By The Moon by my distant cousin Leonard S. Marcus.

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