The Doll Book of the Month Club: Raggedy Ann's Mystery

   Sorry we seem to be heavy on Raggedy Ann recently. Right now I have to post whatever I have access to, and a few weeks ago I bought this book, Raggedy Ann's Mystery.

 It was, in fact, the same weekend I bought the boxed Raggedy Ann,  but not at the same sale.

  This book was published in 1962, so it's the same age as I am. I believe this edition is a reprint of a 1947 one. It's a story by Johnny Gruelle, the Raggedys originator, and not a later story by someone else. Gruelle didn't do the illustrations though. They are by Ethel Hays.

Now, before I get to the story of this...story, I have to say something. This story concerns a missing character, and the efforts to find him. What kills me is, the character, who has what looks sort of like dreadlocks, is called...wait for it! Snoopwiggie!

Is it just me, or is that funny?! Ken barely gave me a smirk, but Emma got a good laugh out of it. I just keep thinking of the name and the coincidence and giggling to myself. I mean, I suppose Snoopwiggie just has what Emma, (or was that Ivy?), used to call 'boingy curls', but come on! It's especially funny when you hear that Snoop Dogg is going bald, and is considering just being bald and wearing wigs all the time. Then he really will be Snoopwiggie! I kill me!

  Anyway, on to the book. The 'mystery' is that Snoopwiggie, (HA!) is missing, after inviting everyone to his birthday party. A guy called The Nice Fat Policeman, (must be the doughnuts...), wakes Raggedy Andy up in the middle of the night because of the missing...guy. 

Did this guy invite everybody to a middle of the night birthday party? Why is TNFP so worried and checking on him at night? Oh right: cake. So the Raggedy's get on the case, mainly because trying to think clogs up TNFP's brain. 

They come across Betsy Bonnet String. 

Apparently she's magic. She can twitch her apron and make things appear, like a birthday lunch for everyone, so they don't miss it. (The heck with Snoopwiggie. We don't need him and his birthday! We can have a birthday party without him! That's basically what Betsy says!) It's a lunch, in the middle of the night too. What's with that?

  Raggedy Ann notices that there are no footprints around Snoopwiggie's door, so 'someone must have carried him off'. Okay then. Where are their foot prints? She then guesses that the culprit who snatched Snoopwiggie, (Who said anyone snatched him? Maybe he went all 'wiggy' because he was having another birthday, and flew off on an age induced vacation.), MUST be the No Fun Elf, because of course it was. Sounds a bit...'elfist' to me.  She figures he used his magic cart. Maybe it doesn't leave tracks. Who knows?

  Raggedy Ann says that if they had red bicycles, because 'red ones go faster than any other kind', (Raggedy Ann seems to use the same logic as the Highway Patrol.), they could go to the No Fun Elf's house and find Snoopwiggie. 

  So Betty Bonnet String twitches her apron again, and two bikes with red wheels appear. They ride them to the No Fun Elf's house and find the door is locked.  Raggedy Ann says she knows Snoopwiggie is in there because she feels it in her candy heart But how do they get him out?

Wow. Raggedy Andy action hero. But isn't that a felony?

They decide to laugh, to aggravate the No Fun Elf so he will come out to try to drag them into his depressing house. Then Raggedy Andy can run in and get Snoopwiggie. It works, but the No Fun Elf notices and winks his eye, closing and locking the door, with Andy and Snoopwiggie inside!

  They struggle with how to get them out. Why can't Betsy wiggle her apron again? That's my question.  Then Raggedy Ann suddenly remembers that anyone with a candy heart that says 'I love you' can make one wish for someone on their birthday. So she wishes them out and the door springs open. (Why couldn't she have just wished for Snoopwiggie in the first place? 

  Raggedy Andy is carrying a black heart. It belongs to the No Fun Elf, and Andy found it in the house. So they wash it in the Laughing Brook, and the No Fun Elf gets nice.  

They all ride off to Snoopwiggie's, (HAHAHAHA!!!), for the party, including the now Fun Elf, and everybody has a happy ending.

Cake for everyone! Where's TNFP?

  Sorry for the lack of seriousness in this review. It was late and...Snoopwiggie! Ha!

Doll Book of the Month Club: Raggedy Andy Stories by Johnny Gruelle

   Last month, (Or rather, the beginning of this month, since it was late!), we looked at the original Raggedy Ann book, "Raggedy Ann Stories". This month we're looking at the follow up book, "Raggedy Andy Stories", by Johnny Gruelle.

  Raggedy Andy Stories first appeared in 1920. two years after the first Raggedy Ann book. 

  As the story goes, Andy was invented when a friend of Gruelle's found an old rag doll from when her mother and Gruell's had made their daughters rag dolls, and gave the doll to Gruelle. The story found in the Raggedy Andy book is slightly different. The person who gave him Raggedy Andy was someone who had played with his own mother when she was a child, and it their mothers who had made the dolls.

The whole tale became part of the stories themselves.

  Like the Raggedy Ann Stories book, Raggedy Andy Stories is a sweet, gentle book, full of stories about what toys get up to when people aren't around. 

Like pillow fights.

A nd running into Santa Claus. As in most dolls stories, the dolls collapse at the risk of being seen being alive, because no one can see them that way. By the way, the Santa thing is why I was going to use this book for December...forgetting it would be after Christmas when I posted this.

I hope kids these days still like things like that. (Oh, nd the illustrations are also beautiful.)

The original illustrations by Johnny Gruelle are bright and colourful, and full of life and coziness. 

Andy isn't as popular as Ann. I see way more Raggedy Ann dolls and other products than I do Andys. Traditionally boy dolls aren't as popular as girl dolls. But I always loved Andy best. Raggedy Ann and Andy aren't as popular in general as they used to be. The Raggedy Ann and Andy museum in Gruelle's hometown of Arcola, Illinois, closed down in 2009. The museum was run by Gruelle's granddaughter. When it closed some of the books and rare dolls were donated to the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. The museum has 43 pages of Ann and Andy goodies on their website, which you can start perusing  HERE. 

  See you tomorrow for Doll-A-Day 2023!  

The Doll Book of the Month Club: Raggedy Ann Stories by Johnny Gruelle

   Well, we're back from our trip, but obviously the Doll Book of the Month is late. That's because, like everything else connected with our trip, something screwed up. We got home to find that our internet had been out for days. Ken contacted our internet provider and we were told they could get to us about December 5th. I, in the background, shouted, "That's WEEKS!" Apparently the person on the phone heard me, as she said they might be able to expedite things. 'Might' is the operative word there, as they didn't actually show up until the 5th. Ken suggested I write my review in notepad and copy and paste it to the blog. But another problem is, the paper with all my passwords on it, that I always keep in my desk drawer, has disappeared. As I alluded to at the beginning of this post, that is a carry over from the world's most bad luck trip, which we just returned from. Not that we didn't have a good time, and things weren't pleasant most of the time. But Ken says he was talking to someone at work after we returned, and he asked them to name every bad thing that could happen on a trip. They did, and all of it had happened to us on this one, and more besides that no one would even think of. But never mind about that. I'll cover that in my posts on the trip. This is our Doll Book of the Month Club post. And the book this, (or, rather, last) month is "Raggedy Ann Stories", by Johnny Gruelle.

  I won't bore you by repeating the story of Johnny Gruelle and Raggedy Ann's origins in full. For that, I'll refer you to my 2014 post on my childhood Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls. I will only give you the basics here. Johnny Gruelle created the Raggedy Ann doll after either finding a doll his mother had once made for his sister when she was a child, or when his daughter found an old rag doll in his mother's attic. There are conflicting stories. He received a patent for the Raggedy Ann doll in 1915, the same month his young daughter Marcella, for whom Raggedy Ann's owner in the stories is named, passed away from vaccination poisoning. (That's a whole tale in itself too, for which I also refer you to the 2014 post.) The first Raggedy Ann book was published in 1918. So the doll far preceded the books.

   Johnny Gruelle, apart from being an author, was also an accomplished artist, and the original Raggedy Ann book is blessed with his beautiful illustrations. 

  The stories are sweet and simple, mostly focusing on Raggedy Ann and how the other toys adore her.

 They adore her because she is kind, loving, and honest. But she isn't sickening, which is nice. 

  This is one of those books about what toys get up to when no one is around. 

As old fashioned as these stories are, I can see them still appealing to children today. I'm not talking about modern Raggedy Ann stories, because I know pretty much nothing about those. But this book is a pleasant and entertaining read. I wish I had had a copy when Ivy was small, because she loved Ann, even if she pretty much ignored Andy, who had always been my favourite. 

The character of Uncle Clem looks very like Andy, who hadn't yet been invented.

  If you do look for a copy of this book, which has probably been reprinted many times, (My copy s quite old.), try to find one with Johnny Gruelle's original illustrations. 

They are absolutely beautiful and the modern illustrations can't hold a candle to them.

Doll-A-Day 273: Soft Dolls Week: Raggedy Ann and Andy

  First of all, Sunday is the Big Doll Show in Columbus, Ohio. It's a huge show. I was told by a doll maker who had a table at the show a couple of years ago that it's bigger than the United Federation of Doll Collectors Show she attended. She said it was the biggest show she had ever seen. So, if any of you are going to be in the Columbus, Ohio area on Sunday, stop by. We'll have a table there, (Which, admittedly, I won't be spending alot of time at myself!), and it would be great if you could stop by to say hello. Ken will be manning the table most of the time, but I'll be around.
  Today we're concluding soft dolls week with the king and queen of all soft dolls, Raggedy Ann and Andy.

These are my childhood Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls.They were made by Knickerbocker.

I still have Ann's tag.

I got Andy first. I can't remember when I got him.I had been asking for Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls for every Christmas and birthday for a while. One Christmas I got a foam rubber Andy with a wire armature, and a Raggedy Gretel doll. Finally I received this Andy.

He has a 'bruise' on his forehead, due to an unfortunate accident that occurred at my neighbor's house. Occasionally we walked through the cornfield that separated out house from our neighbor's, and my mom would set neighbor Myrtle's hair. Such it was on this occasion, and I had taken Andy to help me while away what seemed like forever at Myrtle's house. Playing in a dusty shed, I dropped Andy on the floor.He had a dirt spot that would probably have brushed off, but being a kid I tried to clean it with that old stand by: saliva.Once it got wet of course, there was no brushing it off.

I bought Ann later, with money I got for my birthday when I was in third grade. I remember actually going to a toy store somewhere, which is something I only remember doing one or two other times.Ann is musical. I wanted a plain one, but on the occasion when I bought her, the musical version is all that was available.

Since I was older by then I didn't play with Ann as much as Andy, and she stayed fairly new looking. But Ivy fell in love with Ann, and that's where most of her wear has come from.

That and plain old AGE. Ann wears socks now because her toes 'blew out', and then her shoes began to divide from her striped stockings. I only noticed recently that Andy's toes are doing the same thing. The black fabric seems to have a weakness. The rest of them, especially their bodies, is fine.

All the white spots you see through the sock are holes!

Why does it load sideways?!

Ann should have a hankie in her pocket that matches her dress. It's around here some where.

Raggedy Ann and Andy have been around for a long time. They were the creation of John Barton Gruelle, who was born in 1880 in Arcola,Illinois.

But you can just call him Johnny.

Before Raggedy  Ann Gruelle did several comic strips, and beat 1500 other entrants in a competition for a comic strip job, which resulted in his writing and illustrating the tales of a wood sprite named "Mr Twee Deedle" that appeared in newspapers from 1911 to 1914.

Beautiful!

There are many different stories of how Ann and Andy first came about. The story most often told is that Gruelle's daughter Marcella found an old rag doll with no face in her grandmother's attic, and brought it to her father, who put aside his work and drew a face on it for her. Taking a book by family friend James Whitcomb Riley off his shelf he took names from his two favourite poems, "The Raggedy Man" and "Little Orphant Annie", and suggested they call the doll 'Raggedy Ann'. According to "Raggedy Ann and Andy: History and Legend" by Patricia Hall, the most believable version of the story, (since it's the version that was told by Gruelle's wife Myrtle),finds Johnny finding an old rag doll his mother had made for his sister, while rooting around in his mother's attic one day around the turn of the last century. He remembered the doll years later when their daughter Marcella was small and playing with dolls. .

Myrtle and Marcella Gruelle.

The name Marcella will be familiar to those who have read the Raggedy stories, as the name of Ann and Andy's young owner. Gruelle named the character after his daughter when writing the stories, following his daughter's death at 13 years old. (Marcella Gruelle died from either an infected small pox vaccination at school, or a second vaccination, after which she developed diphtheria and died. Vaccinations were given at school in those days, and parental consent was not needed. Children were also vaccinated several times for the same thing. Marcella Gruelle's case was determined to be vaccination poisoning by 6 out of the 7 doctors called in on the case. The 7th was head of the school board, so make of that what you will. In any case, Gruelle became part of the anti vaccination movement, and Raggedy Ann became a symbol for  the same. Ironically, Gruelle was granted a patent for Raggedy Ann the same month in 1915 as Marcella's death.

The original patent for Raggedy Ann.

The first Raggedy Ann book was published in 1918.Andy came about when a family friend found a rag doll that was left from when Gruelle's mother and her own had made their daughter's rag dolls.She gave the doll to Gruelle, who began to incorporate twin brother Andy in the stories of Raggedy Ann in 1920

 Gruelle's family made an unknown number of hand made Raggedy Ann dolls to be sold with the books. As everyone knows, Raggedy Ann is supposed to have a candy heart  sewn inside her, which is why all the dolls have a printed heart that says "I Love You" on their chests.

Like Andy's here.

According to legend, real candy hearts were sewn inside those original dolls made by the Gruelle family. Johnny Gruelle's son, Worth Gruelle, claimed to remember being sent to buy candy hearts, and picking out the ones that said "I Love You" from all the others. He was five or six years old at the time, which makes the story a little harder to believe, since he may not even have been able to read the hearts at that age.Nobody knows how many dolls the Gruelle's made, and no Raggedy Ann dolls have ever been found with real candy hearts, or the remains of such.
  Johnny Gruelle wrote and illustrated other books besides the Raggedy books.

Like this gorgeous one from 1922.

Johnny Gruelle died in 1938.
Raggedy Ann and Andy don't seem to be very popular any more. Sales of the dolls are down.The Raggedy Ann and Andy museum in Gruelle's home town,Arcola, Illinois, which was run by Gruelle's granddaughter, closed in 2009, and the town's Raggedy Ann and Andy festival also ceased after 20 years. Some of the museum's collection of family papers, books, and rare dolls were donated to the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.

Tomorrow is Skipper Saturday. See you then.