Something About Mistaken Identity

What’s in a name?

BiblioFile: Puffin Publishes Monday

And now, a few words on the paperback editions of the Anthony Monday series from the 1990s.

Something About Puffin Paperbacks in the 1990s

Auk words.

BiblioFile: Puffin Publishes Barnavelt (Part 2)

I see a decade has passed since the blog promised a follow-up about Puffin Books publishing the Lewis Barnavelt series.  The post was near completion so I’ll give it a go and get this one out there.

Something About COBE

Circuses of babies expectorating.

Something About Box Sets

Just some books in a box!

Something About Being Purple-in-the-Face with Olmstead Press

A page from our bibliofiles.

Something About A First Printing of “Face”

From the collector’s corner.

BiblioFile: The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn (Bantam, 1980)

We’ve carried a lot of love for the Bantam Skylark paperback editions from the 1980s because that’s how a lot of fans first discovered John’s books. (Yeah, some of you had public or school libraries with the original Dial hardcovers on their shelves and you got the full Bellairs and Gorey experience....) In a word, the Bantams are colorful nostalgia trips that bring back lots of memories. (Never mind that “colorful nostalgia trips” may conjure thoughts of the 1960s…let us not be silly.)

BiblioFile: The House with a Clock in its Walls (1995)

In 1995 The House with a Clock in its Walls – as well as four other titles – was released in audiobook format by Recorded Books, LLC. The unabridged novel was read across either three audio cassettes or four compact discs for upwards of four-and-a-half hours of listening excitement. Telling the story is acclaimed award-winning narrator and actor George Guidall who has has recorded over 900 unabridged novels that have favorably earned reviews from Audiofile, Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly, and a variety of national newspapers and magazines.

BiblioFile: The House with a Clock in its Walls: A Study Guide

We’ve heard a handful of stories about John’s work being used in the classroom, everything from projects based on the books being presented by students to teachings introducing historical topics based on some of the stories. In 1994, Thomas J. Palumbo wrote Integrating the Literature of John Bellairs in the Classroom, and John’s life and work were the subject of a master’s thesis in 2011. Back in 1992, someone put together an entire workbook based on one book.

BiblioFile: The House with a Clock in its Walls (1973)

The Goreyana blog has been – and continues to be – a great source for information about collecting the artwork of Edward Gorey. Back in 2009 the blog’s author, Irwin Terry, began a series of posts about the artwork Gorey created for the books by John Bellairs and those completed and continued by Brad Strickland. It took about two years to get through it all but in the end there was some splendid insights shared into a side of the books many were not familiar with. All said, Irwin was at the top of our list of people we wanted to hear from about which of Gorey's interior artwork created for the original edition of House was the best.

BiblioFile: House/Ghost Flip Book (2002, Puffin)

Whoever said two books are better than one probably meant well. Then someone came up with tête-bêche and quite possibly blew the mind of that original person.

The House with a Clock in its Walls (1974, Dell)

In addition to The House with a Clock in its Walls being Bellairs’ “first book for young readers,” it was also his first book to hit paperback. Ace first released The Face in the Frost in 1978, but it was still four years after Dell released House. The edition, on Dell’s Yearling imprint, featured all of Edward Gorey’s interior artwork but enlisted a different illustrator to create the cover.

BiblioFile: eReads Artwork

Johnny Dixon and Edward Gorey will always be connected because of John Bellairs’s three series of young-adult adventures, only one had the same artist for the entire run of American hardcover editions. The Barnavelt series has had five different illustrators and there were two for the Monday series, but Gorey created the wraparound dust-jacket art for all twelve Johnny Dixon books published between 1983 and 1999. Because of that there is a certain consistency to their look when the novels are displayed end-to-end. (Some people do that, we’re told.)

BiblioFile: eReads and Counting Words

Bellairsia gets read by John's American fans, sure, but we've also gotten some attention in France, the Netherlands, Italy, and even South Korea (안녕하세요 환영). Another country is Singapore, where Kwan Hon Luen chimes in with occasional comments and reviews.

BiblioFile: Puffin Publishes Barnavelt (Part 1)

You can credit Brad Strickland for many things – continuing the sagas of Lewis Barnavelt and Johnny Dixon, extending John’s literary life, sparking fans to band together on the Internet, and so on – including the push of paperbacks.

When Strickland’s The Ghost in the Mirror was nearing its initial publication in April 1993, the powers-that-be, knowing it would eventually hit paperback, seemingly decided to start fresh with the series. John’s original Lewis Barnavelt trilogy was first released in paperback during the mid-to-late 1970s through Dell’s Yearling imprint and, with at least two new books in the series due out in 1993, there would have to be some changes when those covers went soft. Those Yearlings were approaching being two decades old by this point, for goodness sakes!  What better way to connect the original books with the new adventures than with a new round of paperbacks? What eventually surfaced was published through Puffin with contemporary layouts and artwork by illustrator Brad Goldman.

Bibliofile: Peter Smith Publishing

No book collecting topic has been discussed more at Bellairsia and the Compleat Bellairs over the years than the fine art of tracking down the hardcover first edition copies of John and Brad’s books with the wraparound dust-jacket artwork by Edward Gorey and doing so without shelling out fistfuls of money in the process.