This month's Doll Book of the Month is one of my childhood favourites. I still love it as an adult. The book is called "Twilight Tales".
This isn't a Golden Book, so it's not as well known as some of those titles. This one is a Rand McNally Tip-Top Elf Book. It's by Miriam Clark Potter, and the beautiful, soft illustrations are by Dean Bryant.
My sister had this book as a kid, and so it was there when I was a kid. I borrowed it to read to my kids when they were little. Somehow I seem to have forgotten to return it...
In any case, I loved this book. It's sweet, and gentle, and somehow magical in every day situations. (If you can call stories about anthropomorphic animals 'every day'.) The book contains three stories...I thought. Be careful when buying a copy of this book. I needed a copy for this post, and mine is somewhere packed away at The House of Fire. I was super lucky a couple of days ago, to find a copy at an antique mall. I gasped and snatched it up. Hey, maybe someday my sister will remember and ask for hers back. It's good to have a back up. Anyway, I laid it up when we got back to Emma's, and today when I took it out of it's plastic to photograph it...HORROR! There were only two stories! And neither of them was my favourite, the one that makes this book eligible for The Doll Book of the Month Club. I thought it must have been torn out, but no. It didn't look like anything had been torn out, and in researching I found that there are various versions of this book, with different covers, and with and without the third story. Lucky me. I found one without it. I thought this book was different when I took it out of the plastic today. Ours was smooth and shiny, and this one has a textured cover.
So let's carry on. The other two stories are lovely. It's not that I didn't like them. I did. It's just that I loved the other story so much. The first story is "Mrs. Hen's Red Hat".
It's about Mrs. Hen and her three 'butter yellow chicks'. Mrs. Hen says she would like to have a red hat, and her one of her chicks tells her that if she wants one, she should have one. So Mrs. Hen takes her 'golden corn money' out of the pink sugar bowl, and she and her chicks go shopping for a red hat. Sadly, they can't find one anywhere. On the way home one of the chicks points out that Mrs. Hen has always had a red hat: the red comb on her head. "But that grew on me." responds Mrs. Hen. "But it's beautiful all the same and you look good in it." says a chick. So Mrs. Hen puts the golden corn money back in the pink sugar bowl and says, "I have you and you have me, and we have saved our money." It's a simple story, but warm and cozy and loving.
The third story,(since I remember 'my' story being the middle one.), is "The Big Noise at Half Past Three".
This story concerns a loud noise heard in the forest, and Timmy Squirrel being late home from school. Various animals in the forest end up at Mrs. Squirrel's house, and she invites them all to 'Have a piece of caraway cake', which has become a sort of catch phrase in our family now. Mrs. Squirrel learns that the noise was because 'the big dead tree in the forest fell over'. She gets more and more worried when Timmy doesn't arrive home from school. Eventually Timmy shows up, scolded for not coming home right after school. But then his teacher arrives, and explains that when 'the big dead tree in the forest fell over', it shook the school clock so hard that the hands moved back a half hour. Timmy's teacher, being, apparently, something of a nut case, made the kids stay until the hands said the appropriate hour again. (I think I'd be having a talk with her.) So all ended well, with Timmy home safe and sound, and vindicated about not coming home right after school.
Good thing Mrs. Squirrel hadn't watched a show I watched recently. She'd really have been freaking out.
But what about my favourite story from the book? (Without my book, I'm having to rely on pictures found on the internet.) Well, it's called "Jimmy and Mr. Boo".
The story opens with a post man coming to the door at Jimmy's house and asking for 'Master James Wilson Jr.'. "I am that little boy.", says Jimmy. So Jimmy's mother signs for a letter 'with two stamps', addressed to Jimmy.
The letter is from Jimmy's Aunt Alice, and says there is a visitor coming to see Jimmy. His name is Mr. Boo. Jimmy even gets a phone call, from someone with a squeaky voice, who says he will arrive about three o'clock.
Jimmy eats his lunch and takes his nap, and then watches out the window for Mr. Boo. He gets excited every time he see someone coming past the house, or up the walk. Finally, a boy gets off a bike in front of Jimmy's house, and comes up the walk with a package. Jimmy thinks this must be Mr. Boo, and is disappointed because the boy 'is quite old-- almost a man. Too big for me to play with."
But it isn't the boy who is Mr. Boo. The boy has brought a package for Jimmy. When Jimmy opens the box, there is something wrapped in blue tissue paper. Jimmy unwraps it, and it's a beautiful teddy bear, with 'a high black hat and leather shoes, green trousers, a blue vest, and a long tailed red coat with brass buttons'. There is also a card reading, 'Here I am!'.
This is Mr. Boo. He stays with Jimmy so long that he is no longer company, but just like one of the family. This is the last page of my book. Apparently there is a third version of the book, that includes this story, but has a different last page!
I think I like mine better.
I loved the way Mr. Boo is 'alive'. I always loved the idea of living toys. The description of Mr. Boo, and the picture of him laying in the box were always the perfect toy to me. If I could have found a bear like Mr. Boo I would have bought it for one of my kids. I did have a doll send letters to Emma the doll, saying she was coming for a visit. She was Emma the Doll's pen pal, and one day she arrived to live in 'Dolltown', (otherwise known as Emma's room.)
So that's my favourite story from "Twilight Tales". I think you understand! And okay, he's not a doll, he's a bear. Split hairs why don't you?
