Doll Book of the Month Club: Polar the Titanic Bear

   This month marks the 110th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and you should know by now that I have a Titanic obsession. So this month's Doll Book of the Month Club entry is connected. It's Polar, The Titanic Bear, by Margaretta 'Daisy' Corning Spedden.

My book doesn't have a dust jacket, so the title page will have to

suffice.

  The book is written from the point of view of a stuffed toy polar bear named Polar. (We now know Polar to have been a Steiff bear.) It was written as "My Story",  by Daisy Spedden in 1913, as a Christmas gift from Daisy, to her son Douglas, and never meant to be published. 

Daisy's original, hand painted cover for the book she gave Douglas.

We owe the existence of this book to someone else. The book was discovered in Daisy's trunk, many years after her death, by Leighton H. Coleman III. Leighton's grandmother had been a cousin of Daisy's. Leighton spent his summers with his grandparents, and at age 14, poking around in what has been called variously a 'shed' and a 'barn' discovered Daisy's trunk. When he was a bit older he perused the contents more thoroughly, discovering Daisy's photo albums and diaries, along with her hand written copy of Polar's tale. When he was 21 his grandfather gave him the trunk, seeing his interest in the family history it contained.  Eventually Leighton sent copies of Daisy's accounts of her Titanic experiences, and Polar's book, to a Titanic historical society, which led to him deciding to publish Daisy's Polar book. An illustrator was found, and the book was first published in 1994, the year before the actual long lost Titanic was discovered.

  It follows Polar's story, as he is completed in a workshop, packed up, and shipped to FAO Swartz in America. He's bought by a lady, and presented to her nephew, Douglas, in the Autumn of 1911, as he and his family are about to leave on a trip.

Illustration from the book, by Laurie McGaw.

  Polar goes on many adventures with Douglas, as his family travels to exotic places, and back home to their mansion. 

  Polar has his own furniture, and shares all special events with the family. I was reminded, reading Polar's story, how Emma and Fuzzy took their special dolls, named after them, everywhere we went, including vacations. Those dolls went more places than I did until I was in my twenties! 

  Polar keeps Douglas company while Douglas recovers from measles, a deadly illness back in Polar's day. 

Luckily for Polar, he's washed in disinfectant and kept, and not thrown on the trash heap to be burned, like the Velveteen Rabbit. (I'm not crying! You're crying!) But this is Polar the Titanic bear. Where does that come in?

  Well obviously the wealthy Spedden family booked passage on the Titanic, and you know what happened with that. Mr. and Mrs. Spedden were awoken by the jolt of the crash with the iceberg. They dressed and went on deck to see what had happened. They could see already that the ship was listing, so they hurried back to their rooms to wake their servants. Douglas was awoken by his nanny, 'Muddy Boons', (Douglas originally couldn't pronounce her name, Maggie Burns, and so she became 'Muddy Boons'.), who dressed the groggy boy, telling him they were going on 'a trip to the stars'. Luckily for Polar he was placed in six year old Douglas' arms as the family were heading for the deck and the life boats. Luckily for Mr. Spedden, Douglas' father, there were no more women or children around as the life boat was being lowered, and he was allowed to climb in, along with Douglas and Polar, Daisy, Daisy's maid, and Douglas' nanny.  So, the entire Spedden party survived the sinking. Douglas, in the arms of Muddy Boons, famously slept through the entire ordeal of the freezing night in the boat, with icy waters seeping in, to eventually reach up to the passengers knees. 

When he awoke in the morning, shortly before being rescued, he exclaimed, "Muddy, look at the beautiful North Pole with no Santa Claus on it."

  Daisy was a photography buff, as well as a dedicated diarist, but unfortunately her camera was lost on the Titanic. (Ken and I both said we would have grabbed our cameras, both for the photos on them, and to record the obviously historic events that were happening. Even if it wasn't obvious that the sinking would become so historic because of the circumstances, there was always the fact that it was supposed to be unsinkable. The mere fact that the ship so proclaimed to be unsinkable was going down would have warranted recording in photos.) There does, however, exist one photo of Douglas on the Titanic. Father Francis Browne was given a ticket for the Titanic as a gift. He was an accomplished photographer, and took many pictures during his time on the Titanic, including one of Douglas playing with his top on the deck, as described in Polar's story. 

Father Browne's photo of Douglas aboard the Titanic. Muddy Boons can be seen partially obscured by the gentleman on the far right.

Father Browne's ticket was for passage to Ireland, but he was seated at a dinner table with a wealthy American couple, who so enjoyed his company that they offered to pay for his ticket to New York. Father Browne sent a telegraph to his superior, requesting the additional time off, and received the response, "GET OFF THAT SHIP". I wonder if he thanked the man later!

  The book continues with events after the sinking. It doesn't seem to have been considered quite the historical event to turned out to be. 

Not that Daisy wasn't greatly affected by the experience. She wrote in her diary that after the Titanic tragedy, "...all the values of our life changed, and the daily incidents, which once seemed of such importance to us, dwindled into mere trivialities." Daisy, who had never worked a day in her life, as a wealthy person from birth, had helped care for the Titanic's survivors aboard the rescuing ship, the Carpathia, cutting up blankets to be made into clothes for survivors who had been rescued in night clothes, and had no other clothes with them.  

  Although Douglas survived the Titanic's sinking, there is a tragic ending to Douglas' story, making one of the book's final Polar quotes even more heart wrenching. At the end of the book "Polar" explains that he realizes he will spend less and less time with Douglas as the years go on, but he will be happy to know that Douglas is living a happy life. And Douglas did live a happy life after the Christmas of 1913, but only for 19 more months. During the Spedden's yearly summer vacation at their home in Maine, Douglas chased a wayward ball into the road, where he was hit by a car. Two days later he passed away from his injuries, at the age of nine, becoming the first automobile casualty in the state. 

  The Spedden's continued to travel and take photos, but Daisy never wrote in her diary again, after Douglas' accident. As for Polar, the book says no one knows what happened to him, as he has never been found. I wondered if perhaps he was buried with Douglas. That was the question I put to a Facebook page dedicated to the story of Polar, and the Spedden family, run by Leighton Coleman. (You can find it HERE.) I received a message back, (Not necessarily by Coleman, as he may not do the actual day to day responding from the page.), saying that Polar had indeed been interred with Douglas. I don't know what changed the story as to Polar's whereabouts. My follow up query about the previous statement that Polar's fate was unknown was met with only, "Now you know!" 

  That's the book for this month. I realize Polar is probably considered a 'toy', and not a 'doll', but I think Douglas' method of play with Polar gave him 'doll' status. When she was small Emma informed me that all her stuffed animals were "dolls". So there you go.

  There's a doll show in a couple of days. That should be interesting. I'll let you know how it goes. 

Will it NEVER be Spring?! And the Latest Doll Sized Goodies

  My daffodils are still blooming, my Jonquils, (I think that's what they are.), are bloomed and more numerous than ever before. My lilacs are budding. However, the trees still have no leaves and not much sign of having any, and yesterday afternoon as we headed to Fuzzy's, our street looked like this:

We live on a corner, so this was our other street, where the side of our house is.

Ken's lion has snow on his head.

My poor snow covered flowers!

Are those Jonquils?

This is the spot where I took some of the Tammy World Easter photos just the day before!

It snowed all day! None of it stuck after the initial covering, and by the time we got back last night the snow on the ground was all gone. It was still really cold though. It's freezing today and it's supposed to get down to 27 degrees tonight!  

  But now, the point of this post. Here are some of the latest doll sized goodies we've found at the bin stores lately. First of all, I got really excited when I found a bunch of these balloon lights in the bottom of one of the bins. 

Why? Because they can be used to make doll sized lamps that turn on and off. I've made some dollhouse sized lamps and one 1/6 scale lamp that are non-working, but I've been wanting to make some lamps that actually light. So I snagged as many as I could find. This is most of them.

  You may have seen my review of the Maileg Ginger Brother recently.  They're also known for their little mice family. I spotted this little suitcase in the bottom of a bin.

I opened it up and found this!

The inside of the suitcase is supposed to look like a nursery.

I was so excited that I ignored what the lid said and thought I had found one of those Maileg mice, but it turned out to be a Mudpie fox with her baby sibling.

Her little baby sibling Velcros to her arm.

She's a Big Sister Fox, and her shirt looks like it would come off if you could scoot it down over her shoulders. She'd make a sweet gift for a little girl who is about to be, or has just become a big sister.

  I also found this set of tiny Lego type blocks.

It was a good find. You might remember how happy I was to find a set of mini blocks like this at Disney when we were there on vacation a few years ago. It also puts some variety of colour to the mini Lego type blocks I found in the form of a build-your-own football helmet mini block set at a bin store once. I found the box in the bin, but most of the blocks were spilled out. I dug out all of the blocks I could find and refilled the box. I didn't care if they were all there and made the helmet. I just wanted the tiny blocks.

  I have made some non lighted dollhouse sized lamps, as I said, and to make them one of the things I use is interesting beads. That's why I snagged these out of the bin.

  I saw this, and I thought, 'Barbie sized clothes rack'. 

Without the hangers of course. They don't come with it.

I think it makes more sense for that than what it's intended for.

  Ken found these American Girl sized Zelda cards.

I'm not going to  keep them. They might go on the sales page, or on Ebay.

  I saw these, and immediately thought of Tammy World. 

They are for kids, for cleaning their glasses! They're connected and you use one on your thumb and one on your finger, to clean the lenses. Because they're little shirts it's supposed to encourage kids to keep their glasses clean. Okay.

  I've already made them into shirts for Tammy.

They're done all but for the closures on the backs.

  I found a couple of these figures that I think are the bootleg Nendoroids like Emily reviewed with her real ones recently on The Toybox Philosopher blog.

It's a pretty neat little figure, with a bunch of extra hands, extra faces, an extra coat, and a hat.

  I also got some leather repair stuff. It's sheets of adhesive backed faux leather, which I thought would be good for making miniature books. I got a pack of the one kind, and two rolls of the one that you can't see well here. It's brown.

  Just about the best find was Ken's spot. He wasn't sure what it was, but he thought it was something I'd be interested in, so he nabbed it. As it turns out, he was right!

It's one of those kits to build your own tiny house, complete with furnishings.

It comes with everything you need to make the house and all this stuff pictured in it. It even has the fridge and toilet, and supplies for making the table and chairs, bed, couch, etc.

 I was pretty excited at first, but then I thought, I would prefer to design my own house and decide on my own furnishings. So I will probably make sure nothing is missing and then sell it. Maybe I'll put it on the sales page here, but if it doesn't get any interest in a short period of time, I'll put it on Ebay.

  That's it. I have some neat things to show you soon and an interesting book for the Doll Book of the Month Club this month. See you soon.

Happy Easter!

   Happy Easter, Passover, Ramadan, or whatever else you celebrate! We celebrate Easter in our family, and Ken and I will be having dinner with Emma and AJ tonight, and seeing Fuzzy tomorrow. Unfortunately Ivy couldn't come home for Easter because her friend is shooting her thesis film today, and Ivy promised to help. But we saw her a few weeks ago. Doesn't make it better though! 

Tammy World with a tiny doll Ivy made me when she was a kid, and a Boyd's duck.

  Have a great day!

Review Time! Totally Tiny Chinese Food Set

  Holy cow! Here we are in April already, and today we're having MORE SNOW! It isn't sticking, but it is falling. It's 37 degrees Fahrenheit, and due to get down to 27 tonight! Ken and I took Ivy to eat at a Turkish restaurant we like on Wednesday, and it was 81! It didn't feel that hot, but it felt very Spring like. The Turkish restaurant had really good vegetarian moussaka. But my 'birthday month' is over now, so I have to stop eating things I shouldn't and get back to normal. 

  And now, I want to point out something I bought recently that some of you might be interested in.

  I got this set at Five Below. It's a Totally Tiny set that features 1/6 scale Chinese food.

Totally Tiny has been around for a while, but I just got this.

There are several food pieces, a full take out box...

... a bottle of soy sauce...

... and a pair of chopsticks.

  The chopsticks are all one piece.

  That annoys me as an adult, and would have annoyed me as a kid, but then, that's me. My sister would have cut them apart for me. (You may recall she was obsessed with using that little razor blade that came out of a pencil sharpener.) I suppose them being stuck together like that does make it possible to pick the little foods up with them. At least, that's what the picture on the back of the package wants you to think.

The orange slices are especially realistic.

Not so much this side.

But this side.

There are some steamed dumplings.

Also some fortune cookies.

The egg rolls are probably the least realistic pieces.

At least, I think they're egg rolls.

The weird thing about these sets is, they contain a non edible 'ooze' topping. It's touted on the front of the package as a "surprise slimy ooze topping!" The exciting thing is supposed to be the mystery as to which colour you'll get. Why would I want any colour? It seems a little dangerous because you're dealing with a fake food set, and you're putting something non edible and oozy in it. I know the kids aren't supposed to eat the food either, but... I supposed the food pieces are small enough that kids small enough to possibly think of eating them aren't supposed to play with them anyway. Still. It also doesn't help that the ooze topping comes in a little sachet like you get ketchup, or Chinese mustard or soy sauce in at restaurants.

  This stuff is bound to make a mess too. If I was buying this set for my kids, I'd revoke the ooze.  

  All in all these are pretty neat little sets. I think the Five Below price is more what I would pay for them, than the regular store prices.

There were two other sets the day I bought this one. They also had the French Breakfast set, and, I think, the Pizza Party set. There are a lot of other sets, but this is what the Five Below I went to had.

  That's it. See you later!