Lookit: May 2011

Sunday, May 1, 2011

A Head for Happy by Helen Sewell, 1931

http://curiouspages.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html

Helen Sewell, original illustrator of Little House on the Prairie, did not win the Caldecott Award for A Head for Happy. The best book of any given year usually doesn't. Also the Caldecott wasn't created until 1937. Still it wouldn't have won anyway.

A Head for Happy tells the tale of a girl named Letty and her quest to find a head for her doll, Happy. She travels the world on a surreal, picaresque journey from New York to, with a few detours, the island of Guam, where a cocoanut makes for the perfect head. This book was published in 1931. Presumably cocoanuts in New York were scarce due to the Great Depression. Here are some sample pages. . .

from a post by Lane Smith and Bob Shea