Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas, everyone, and I hope you have a happy New Year! Here's the now-traditional photo of my "funky tree angels." Those were the search terms I used to find Charity on eBay, a few years ago now, and it kind of stuck as a goofy nickname. Faith was my grandmother's original angel, the one that inspired my book The Angel's Name. Obviously she acquired a name at some point, possibly when, as a child, I demanded that Grandma name her angel before I would come to dinner. Anyway, since I'm the only one who can tell the various angels apart (I have one more that's not pictured here, and my sister also has I think two of them now), this year I decided to label them by making gold sashes with their names on them.

Temple of Fancy Paper Dolls--Frank Feignwell's Attempts to Amuse His Friends on Twelfth-Night

 

This is another old paper doll from the Temple of Fancy. This one didn't have a convenient digital base to work from (I guess the Bryn Mawr College doesn't own a copy), so it took me longer to figure out what all the pieces would have been and make sure they were the correct sizes. Anyway, Frank Feignwell's Attempts to Amuse His Friends on Twelfth-Night was printed in 1811. His story has much less of a plot than the others I've blogged about previously--it's mostly just a framing device for the sections introducing his costumes. You can read Frank's story at the Hockliffe Project website here, if you would like. The copy scanned for that page has one added outfit, which is obviously hand-copied from one of Little Henry's outfits. Anyway, Frank's story is that he is hosting a holiday party for Twelfth Night, which isn't so much of a thing nowadays but would have marked the end of the twelve days of Christmas. At this party, Frank decides to, well, amuse his friends by dressing up as various characters. Each character Frank dresses up as has a little section of poetry about it. Overall it's pretty cute, but it's marred by the awkward accent and mocking stereotype used for the "Jew Pedlar" character. The original audience would assumably have found that bit funny, but to a modern reader it's offensive. 

Most of Frank's costumes are lots of fun. He does also have a normal outfit, which shows him standing next to a Twelfth Night cake. His friends, of course, are not included, but I've made copies of quite a few other dolls from the same publisher by now, and those make perfectly natural party guests for him. (See previous blog posts about Little Fanny and Little Henry, Ellen, Frederick, and Cinderella, to make your own copies of them.)

It took me a while to figure out that Frank apparently came with not one but two wigs; the lawyer's wig and the barber's wig are actually a bit different from each other, with two traditional little ponytails on the lawyer's wig. It's not uncommon to see pictures of him wearing the lawyer outfit with the barber's wig, but this is not correct. The best picture I could find of the lawyer wig was a little pixelated, though not nearly as badly as the only one I could find of the peddler's hat. As we've seen from poor Frederick with his missing head and hats, Frank is lucky to have all his hats in any condition. 

And I'm quite sure that my reproduction Frank does indeed have all his hats. In his starting outfit he is holding his hat in his hand, so that would not have come with a separate one. And the only other outfit that does not have a matching hat is clearly based on an 1800 painting of John Philip Kemble as Rolla, which you can find on Wikipedia here but I will include in this post so you can see at a glance just how obviously it was copied. And the Rolla in that painting is not wearing any kind of hat. 

So, not only is Frank dressed as the character Rolla, he is clearly dressed as a specific actor playing Rolla. I thought that was amusing. In his Scotchman outfit, on the other hand, he is called William Wallace but is specified to be only a generic Scotchman named after the historical character. It's slightly jarring to see that combined with a statement that "Scotland now is free" as part of Great Britain; I'm not an expert on the politics from either era, but it somehow seems unlikely that the real William Wallace would appreciate having his name used to celebrate that particular union. 

The closest Frank has to the seemingly ubiquitous poverty outfit is the offensive "Jew Pedlar" costume, which I suppose is a bit of a stretch when you compare it to the beggar and peasant outfits his friends have. I took a group photo of them all dressed in their most ragged clothing anyway. Frank's hat or turban is badly pixelated, but I could only find one picture of that one and I thought it better to include what I had than to leave it out.

Frank is the character I borrowed the crown from for Cinderella's prince, so I had to take a photo of the two of them together. Frank's scepter was damaged in every photo I could find, but from what little I could see on the black and white scans from the Hockliffe Project page, I believe that it was a chunkier version of one I found in a portrait of Charlemagne. I didn't want to make the replacement scepter top stand out too much, so I have left it thinner and more delicate than it really ought to be. That's the only creative liberty I took with this set, except that the Harlequin mask originally had actual holes in it--I completely failed to cut out the holes neatly with either knife or scissors, so I just added a copy of Frank's eyes behind them so that they don't need to be cut out at all.

Download the printable PDF version of Frank Feignwell here (page 1) and here (page 2).

Pollyanna Reprints

 

My best selling project at the moment is these reprints of the first several Pollyanna books. Each of mine is two of the original books in one volume. I published a paperback version of Pollyanna and Pollyanna Grows Up all the way back in 2016, when only the first two of the original Pollyanna books had entered the public domain--all the others were trapped on the opposite side of the copyright freeze. I was a little reluctant to reprint the next books anyway, since I knew they were written by a different author. I shouldn't have worried! Harriet Lummis Smith's books are every bit as charming as Eleanor H. Porter's. They were a bit harder to find than Eleanor H. Porter's books, though, so to get the original illustrations to add to my reprints I had to track down and buy early editions of the books. All but the earliest editions were printed with no illustrations.

Here's a picture of the original copies I bought of all four Harriet Lummis Smith Pollyanna books. It took some hunting to find ones that were both in good condition and in the price range I was willing to pay for them, as they are close to a hundred years old.

The second of these three reprints, Pollyanna of the Orange Blossoms and Pollyanna's Jewels, is currently the most popular. There are many more competing options available for Pollyanna and Pollyanna Grows Up; that's why mine tends to disappear into the "see all formats and editions" link on the Amazon listing. The third one, Pollyanna's Debt of Honor and Pollyanna's Western Adventure, was new this January because Pollyanna's Western Adventure, being published in 1929, only entered the public domain this year. I believe I am currently the only one who has reprinted it since it did become public domain, though there are of course still secondhand copies available from when it was newer. But I think people are buying the previous book before that one, which makes sense if they haven't already read it. 

In Pollyanna of the Orange Blossoms, Pollyanna is a bride and a newlywed, and in Pollyanna's Jewels, she is a young mother. That obviously makes these a little more mature in theme than the original two books, but not in a weird way. Pollyanna is still her sweet, sunny self--and still getting into trouble in entertaining ways. There's also plenty of drama with higher stakes, though usually it's not Pollyanna herself who is in any real danger. I enjoyed these books quite a lot, probably even more than the first two. 

The plot of Pollyanna's Debt of Honor centers on some friends and neighbors of Pollyanna's family, as Pollyanna herself is pretty much settled down by now. Pollyanna gets to do some matchmaking and other well-meaning interfering. But in Pollyanna's Western Adventure, the whole family is uprooted and sent on, well, a Western adventure. No one seems to remember that Pollyanna spent the first eleven years of her life in "a little Western town," which should have prevented too much culture shock when she goes back West as an adult. I suppose by this point she had lived longer back East, but eleven is old enough to get used to a place and remember it. So it's kind of weird when she makes a rookie mistake like leaving the door open when she just has to go outside and get a drink of water straight from the pump in the middle of the night.

Pollyanna and Pollyanna Grows Up was my second attempt at designing a book cover, and it was my first attempt at formatting a book over five hundred pages long, so it was a valuable practice project. I gave it a font change and new hardback version in late 2023, when I was getting ready to publish the next book in early 2024, but since I had saved all my files from 2016 I could make the books match without having to do a complete redesign. One could argue that I went a bit overboard on the flowers and rainbows, but if you can't go overboard with flowers and rainbows for Pollyanna, when can you?

Stereo Card Recolor--Pilgrim's Progress 1, Evangelist Talks with Christian (1877)

 

Here's a stereograph recolor I've been working on for quite a long time. When I first discovered, back in I think 2022, that F.G. Weller had printed a set of Pilgrim's Progress stereoviews in 1877, I couldn't find as much information about them as I wanted. I couldn't even find a complete list, since the backs of the cards advertised Weller's Allegorical Series as a whole and only mentioned that the Pilgrim's Progress set had twelve cards. So I compiled my own list of their names by combing eBay listings and museum websites and wherever else I could find snippets of information about them. Surprisingly for something that was published in 1877, the cards themselves were not actually that difficult to find, and I was able to acquire several of them on eBay for a reasonable cost. The prices vary wildly, though, so I've only got about half the set in my collection of physical stereo cards. But I've at least found digital copies of them all by now! Maddeningly, the Library of Congress had eleven out of the twelve cards but at the time had not yet digitized them. In the end I was able to get a good scan of the first card in the series from the friendly people at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, though they have updated their web page since and I can't link directly to the page that showed me they had a copy of "Evangelist talks with Christian."

Image from the Davis Museum at Wellesley College.

Here's a nice image of what the original card looks like, credited to the Davis Museum. The Library of Congress did eventually digitize their copy as well, but since it's more faded than this one and I was already in the middle of coloring it, my version is based on this scan and not the Library of Congress one. 

Here's the full list of the twelve cards:

No. 667 Evangelist talks with Christian.

No. 668 Christian starting on his Journey.

No. 669 Christian at the Wicket Gate.

No. 670 The Fire secretly sustained.

No. 671 Christian losing his burden at the Cross.

No. 672 Christian passes the Lions.

No. 673 The arming of Christian.

No. 674 Christian's combat with Apollyon.

No. 675 Vanity Fair.

No. 676 The Pillar of Salt.

No. 677 Land of Beulah

No. 678 Christian and Hopeful cross the River

These are pretty fun cards if you're familiar with the book The Pilgrim's Progress. The 3D effect on them looks very much like a pop-up book, which makes me wonder if their creation involved paper figures set up in dioramas. Of course, each view matches up to a scene in the book. 

Here's the relevant scene for this one:

Now, I saw, upon a time, when he was walking in the fields, that he was, as he was wont, reading in his book, and greatly distressed in his mind; and, as he read, he burst out, as he had done before, crying, "What shall I do to be saved?" 

I saw also that he looked this way and that way, as if he would run; yet he stood still, because, as I perceived, he could not tell which way to go. I looked then, and saw a man named Evangelist coming to him and asked, Wherefore dost thou cry? 

He answered, Sir, I perceive by the book in my hand, that I am condemned to die, and after that to come to judgement; and I find that I am not willing to do the first, nor able to do the second.

Then said Evangelist, Why not willing to die, since this life is attended with so many evils? The man answered, Because I fear that this burden is upon my back will sink me lower than the grave, and I shall fall into Tophet. And, Sir, if I be not fit to go to prison, I am not fit, I am sure, to go to judgement, and from thence to execution; and the thoughts of these things make me cry.

Then said Evangelist, If this be thy condition, why standest thou still? He answered, Because I know not whither to go. Then he gave him a parchment roll, and there was written within, Flee from the wrath to come. 

The man therefore read it, and looking upon Evangelist very carefully, said, Whither must I fly? Then said Evangelist, pointing with his finger over a very wide field, Do you see yonder wicket-gate? The man said, No. Then said the other, Do you see yonder shining light? He said, I think I do. Then said Evangelist, Keep that light in your eye, and go up directly thereto: so shalt thou see the gate; at which, when thou knockest, it shall be told thee what thou shalt do.

I think the background looks like the Slough of Despond, which is the next scene in which Christian meets Evangelist. That's why I chose a sort of murky green color for the flat part that could possibly be a wetland. The figure climbing up toward the shining light is Faithful, a neighbor of Christian's who began the journey a little earlier. I've purposely colored the light on only one half of the image, for effect. Anyway, since the Pilgrim's Progress book was (and still is) so massively popular, I'm sure the stereoviews were also popular. 

Jeremiah's Robot ABC

 

My newest book is a thing I promised to one of my kids. When I published A Apple Pie: An Active Alphabet, back in January 2023, I showed it to my then-four-year-old and asked what he thought of it. "I hate it," he told me. "There aren't enough robots." Preschoolers are a tough crowd. Anyway, I told him that I didn't know how to draw robots, but if he would draw them for me, I would make him another book. So he did, so I did, and now Jeremiah's Robot ABC is a real book, with twenty-six robots drawn by my son when he was five years old. Since my last alphabet book was a rhyming one, I wanted to do something different with this one, and since my son is at an age when he likes to count things, I decided to make this one a counting alphabet book. That means the illustrations got progressively more complex as we went along, until I was trying to stuff over twenty counting objects onto each page. It was a wild ride. 

Oh, and we also threw in a bit of art appreciation. All the illustration backgrounds are from paintings by Vincent van Gogh. Here's one of my favorite pages--how can you resist counting sheep in Van Gogh's Starry Night?

My son insisted on holding a shiny gold plastic egg in his other hand when I took his picture with the book. That's what I get for sneaking in a photo session on Easter Sunday, I guess. Anyway, he's also happy with our new book.

The Angel's Name--Spanish Translation Available

 

The Spanish translation of The Angel's Name is now available on Amazon! El nombre de la angelita was translated by Amy Hernandez and has illustrations only slightly altered from the original ones. Here's a picture of the new book with the angel that inspired the story--she's not made of glass, but she did belong to my grandma when I was a kid, and I remember once asking my grandma why her angel didn't have a name. She was eventually christened Faith, perhaps because I wouldn't sit down to dinner until the angel had a name. There was also a glass music box that used to sit on my grandma's electric organ, with the angel next to it at Christmas time. One day the music box fell off and broke, and I guess that became part of the story, too.

You can see from this picture that the Spanish and English versions are meant to match each other. I added a banner across the bottom with the translator's name, but otherwise it's pretty much the same cover. 

Realistic Heart Valentine 2025

 

Happy Valentine's Day! Here's another silly valentine with a more realistic heart on it. (Two I've made in the past can be found here and here.) This one is just a heart I found and a frame that I colored to match it, but it might come in handy if you want something bold and a bit unusual. Below is a sheet with eight small copies of it that can be printed out and cut apart.