Something About Will Keith Kellogg

Boxed surprise.

Something About #BobMontana

Archie Deluxe!

Something About Triple-Barreled Titles

The First, the Second, and the Third.

Alternate Histories in Children’s Literature

An email appeared late last week regarding an entry at the Academic Call For Paper Database seeking scholarly papers on the subject of alternate history in the children’s literature genre:

Historical fiction as a genre within children’s and young adult literature has been traditionally viewed by some as unpopular. Alternate History is fiction where something has changed in the historical timeline: take a known and tweak it. The resulting story can be about that change or the backdrop for a story, where the “what if” is less about the Changed World Event and more how that Changed World Event changed the world, people, culture and their points of view. It can also be great fun for the person who is familiar with the history, to find references to famous people, places, and things that are now just a bit different.

Book Alert: Gorey's Halloween, Ghosts, and Saint Melissa

You read it first at Goreyana earlier this year...new books by Edward Gorey.

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.)

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.

Time Capsule: 1951

September, 1951: On a chilly Monday night in late September – sixty years ago this month – 12-year-old Johnny Dixon walked home from his Boy Scout meeting and found his beloved grandmother sitting alone in the dark and wondering if her grandson was home from school early. As any child would be in such a situation, Johnny was thrown for a loop and unprepared for the battalions of sorrows that were to come his way over the next few months.

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.

Raising Up Spirits From Underground

I’ll admit there’s always been something about The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt that’s enchanted me. Part of it is that I think it’s the first book of John’s I remember reading (and you always remember your first, right?) but I think a lot of it has to do with Bellairs’ ability to tie together some interesting historical anecdotes.

Time Capsule: February 8, 1910

February 8, 1910: 100 years ago today – February 8, 1910 – William D. Boyce incorporated the Boy Scouts of America. Popular legend says that Boyce first learned of the Scouting movement organized by Lord Robert Baden-Powell from an Unknown Scout that gave him directions on a foggy London street in late 1909.

Goreyana: The Mummy, The Will, and the Crypt

Notes from Goreyana about The Mummy, The Will, and the Crypt:

I own the original watercolor artwork for the cover portion of the dust jacket. This watercolor is very painterly with its stormy night sky, and I really like the use of opaque watercolor for the snow and lightning. The touch of red in Johnny's jacket plays nicely against Mr. Gorey's "mushroom colors" in the rest of the painting.

The Alternate Ending to Mummy

Kaythryne penned for her Access Granted blog an alternate ending The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt:

Bibliofile: 遺書と地下聖堂

We were going through the archives this weekend and we came across our Japanese file, which turned out to only be a few notes about the Japanese editions of the books published a few years ago.

Researching Bellairs the Boy Scout

In a 1990 article with the Haverhill Eagle-Tribune, when asked about his childhood, John Bellairs noted he was somewhat of a loner until he made some "lifelong friends in the Boy Scouts."

We know John was a member of Marshall Boy Scout Troop 112 in 1951, and some of his Scouting experiences snuck into his books over the years. Take the story of Johnny Dixon, also a member of Troop 112: he goes off to Scout camp and also meets a lifelong friend in Byron Ferguson [The Mummy, the Will and the Crypt]. Camp Chocorua was probably influenced by his attendance at Camp T. Ben Johnston on Sherman Lake outside Augusta, Michigan, itself about 8 miles west of Battle Creek.

Time Capsule: Feb. 19, 1906

Battle Creek, Michigan, is celebrating the centennial of the founding of the Kellogg Company by brothers John and William Kellogg on February 19. The Kelloggs were trying to create a better-tasting alternative to the nutritious but bland bread served to patients at the Battle Creek Sanitarium and stumbled upon the corn flake. 

Bellairs spoofed his Michigan neighbors in The Mummy, the Will and the Crypt, introducing us to the health-nut patriarch of the Glomus family.

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.

Dost Thou Turn Away And Hide Thy Face

There’s news of a possible break in the case of Joseph Force Crater, the prominent New York City judge who disappeared on August 6, 1930. A recently discovered letter asserts Crater was murdered and buried near the Coney Island boardwalk:

Something About Kryptos

News of the Kryptos sculpture was passed on to us this week and it immediately reminded us of something Johnny Dixon might stumble upon – and then figure out while at Boy Scout camp (see The Mummy, the Will and Crypt) – and we thought others might enjoy its tale:

Book Alert: La Momie Dans La Crypte

The French edition of The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt is to be published this fall. It is the second book in Les aventures de Johnny Dixon series.