Saint Michael’s Fundraising Event This Weekend! Five Fab Finds!

Saint Michael’s Parish will host a fundraising rummage sale this Saturday, April 3, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Father Kahl Liberius says he expects a great turnout, insofar the weather cooperates, because parishioners have cleaned out the deepest, dankest corners of the church basement and scoured the building from altar to vestry all in the name of Saint Zita, patroness of housekeepers (“and this weekend, spring cleaning,” adds lay leader Wayne Spiggot).

All money raised stays with the church to help with operating costs and summer youth activities.  The church invites everyone from the community to come to the church and checkout some of the amazing items on sale, both donated by members of the congregation and those found in the church basement.  What great finds did parishioners find?  Here are five guaranteed to be popular!

Something About Your Own Fuss Closet

Ah ha, push that fuss!

Something About Dixon Reading Barnavelt

Fictional fan fiction?

Time Capsule: Nov. 22, 1935

After Johnny Dixon has a run-in with school bully Eddie Tompke, Gramma Dixon helps treat Johnny's cut finger:

"As Gramma fussed over him she went on about the Tompkes and their relations, the Tadmans and the Sweets and the Schemanskes. Gramma was like that.  She had lived in Duston Heights all her life, and she knew everything about everybody." - The Cure of the Blue Figurine (1983)

Conflicting Elements Exposed in Curse

Not long ago we were going through the archives and found some of Brad Strickland’s notes on inconsistencies and other tidbits in The Doom of the Haunted Opera. Since then we’ve come across some of our internal notes we took on oddities in The Curse of the Blue Figurine (1983). The book turns 30 this year (this month, no less) and we thought we’d share some of our notes on some of the “screwy moments” we found.

Time Capsule: May 1, 1983

May 1, 1983: We’re celebrating thirty years of evil charms, disappearing priests, strange spiders, and – of course – the ushabti.  Dial Books published The Curse of the Blue Figurine on May 1, 1983 – thirty years ago today – and ushered in a whole new slew of characters and locations.

Alert: Johnny Dixon & SF Gateway

In what probably will be our last post for 2011, we make note of yet another round of Bellairs e-books. Yes, we mentioned the American editions published by eReads earlier this summer and now we’re pleased to pass word along about the UK counterparts.

Alert: Johnny Dixon & eReads

We often wonder what John’s reaction would have been to the Internet (to Wikipedia, to YouTube, to iSchtuff, and even the CompleatBellairs) and the rise of mobile electronic devices.

For someone who wrote a celebration of olfaction by describing a book as smelling like Old Spice talcum powder (and adding that “books that smelled that way were usually fun to read” [The House with a Clock in its Walls; 19]), it might be unfathomable for a book to exist without smells, without textures, without the chance of paper cuts, and without...well...paper.

Goreyana: The Curse of the Blue Figurine

Notes from Goreyana about The Curse of the Blue Figurine:

In this return by Edward Gorey as illustrator, he begins the format he will employ throughout the remainder of the series. There is a big full color dust-jacket painting and (usually) a frontis illustration. Sometimes there are spot illustrations which are dropped into the text, but the books are not fully illustrated. The frontis drawing for this title is a particularly nice.

In November 2010, Goreyana acquired the frontis illustration and provided additional commentary:

The skill of Edward Gorey's crosshatching technique in this piece of art is a master class in line manipulation. In this single image Mr. Gorey uses variations of line to render the cave, figures, rain outside the cave, fire, smoke from the fire, and the enveloping darkness surrounding them. I especially like the two pinpoint glowing eyes of the advancing figure which are added with small dots of white paint. 

The Curse of the Blue Figurine Chronology (Part I)

Several years ago, probably as we were putting The Dullard’s Bane version of this website to pasture, I got the wild idea to go through the Johnny Dixon series and identify all the passages of time. When Bellairs noted the date, or a day or week or month passed, I scribbled down the particulars. Part of this was to gauge just how much of Johnny’s life was crammed into the “early 1950s” – the generic setting Bellairs used, and Strickland inherited. Also, if the events had happened chronologically, what year would it have been by the end of The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost? A case of too much time on someone’s hands? Maybe. Anyway, here’s when the initial chapters of The Curse of the Blue Figurine occurred:

Of Bobbleheads and Bears

Some news out of New Hampshire tonight.

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.

Remembering the Old Man of the Mountain

We’re a bit behind in marking the fifth anniversary of the demise of the Old Man in the Mountain but our friends at roadsideamerica.com remembered. They also share the story of a New Hampshire artist wanting to replace the stone head with a glass one.

Letting Thee Play the Scribe

We came across the a rather ambitious chap calling himself gollum42 whose summer goal is "writing a feature length screenplay adaptation of The Curse of the Blue Figurine, by John Bellairs."

We wish him well and hope we hear – or see - some of his endeavors. This may, naturally, bring up questions regarding films of John's books and all we can say for now is that something might surface someday but at the moment we're out of the loop of any such news.

Book Alert: The Best of John Bellairs, Vol. 2

Barnes and Noble have published a new hardcover anthology of the first three Johnny Dixon novels.

Tales of a College Nothing

In his June 23 article in the Daily Californian (Berkeley), David Boyk writes an interesting review of John Bellairs’s books, mentioning The Curse of the Blue Figurine, among others. What we found funny?

“...they have pictures by Edward Gorey. Sadly, new editions have replaced his stylish, weird scratchings with the work of some schmuck who wouldn’t know a cross-hatch if it hit him in the Roman nose.”

Our favorite?

“The world’s simple, and the biggest problems mostly have to do with Johnny accidentally hurting Grampa’s feelings.”

Bibliofile: The Curse of the Blue Figurine

John Bellairs' first three Johnny Dixon novels – The Curse of the Blue Figurine (1983); The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt (1983); and The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull (1984) – were published by British publishing house Corgi in the mid/late 1980s. David Langford comments on the foreign edition’s translation:

Book Alert: La Malédiction de la Statuette Bleue

It's the debut of Johnny Dixon in French: La malédiction de la statuette bleue. Lalex is back at the easel with her modern take on the popular characters of Johnny and Professor Childermass.

The Old Man of the Mountain

The Old Man of the Mountain, New Hampshire's natural stone profile that looks like a gnarled human face, fell from its mountainside Saturday, May 3.

Itinerary: A Journey with Johnny Dixon

By James Card (May 22, 2000)
(Originally published at groups.yahoo.com/compleatbellairs/)

I've been to some places described in John Bellairs’ novels, and I hope to see more in the coming years as I get a chance. Some are real places, and some are inspired by real places. Here are some....

In April 1996 I convinced my father to take me to New Hampshire. We always went to the Adirondacks (seeing we are from central New York), but after reading about the White Mountains in several of Bellairs’ novels, I really wanted to visit them.