Paperback 1109: To Tell Your Love / Mary Stolz (Scholastic Books T124)

 Paperback 1109: Scholastic Book Services T-124 (3rd ptg, 1961)

Title: To Tell Your Love

Author: Mary Stolz

Cover artist: Uncredited (but the book is "Illustrated by Artur Marokvia" so maybe the cover is him too—hard to tell since there's only one shitty illustration in the whole dang book for comparison)

Condition: 8/10

Value: $6-8

Best things about this cover: 

• To tell your love what? That you've developed Giraffe Neck? That an anvil fell on your head and now your head is flat like an anvil? That you see the world entire in greenscale? That you still use a landline? From the 1930s? What are you going to tell him, Anne!?
• Man, her hands are fucked up. I know it's hard to draw hands, but ... is it that hard? Poor Anne. She can barely clutch her pearls properly.
• "... and so I stared directly at the eclipse and now I only see green. Annnnyway. What about you, my love? What's weird about you? ... Hello? Hello?!"

Best things about this back cover: 

• Kitty! I love this book now.
• I hope this book is about the kitty. Is the kitty her love? Tell the kitty he's good, Anne! Scritch Him!
• Wow, that blurb is ... not exciting. Or even coherent. What do I care about Anne's sister? Or Nora, for that matter? This book should've been titled "To Tell Doug He's Boring." That, or "Kitty's Grand Sleeping Adventures!"

Page 123~

    "What sort of pet is Cooper taking?"

    "That rooster of his," Johnny replied, shaking his head.

    "Does Mr. Maloney approve of that?"

    "Sure," Johnny laughed. "Mr. Maloney says it'll do the rooster good to get away from home and the hens for a while."

Mr. Maloney's crude rooster jokes would constitute the entirety of Johnny's sex education, and for that, Johnny's mother was grateful.

~RP

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Paperback 1084: Almost April / Zoa Sherburne (Scholastic Book Services T -254)

 Paperback 1084: SBS T-254 (1st ptg, 1966)

Title: Almost April

Author: Zoa Sherburne

Cover artist: David Jonas

Condition: 7/10

Value: $8

[Riverow Books, Owego, NY, May 2024]

Best things about this cover: 

• After his girlfriend April died in a tragic sea serpent attack, Steve tried to make every girl he dated into a new April. With this latest one (Karen, aka April 4.0) he'd gotten close, but the chin ... the chin was wrong. He knew it, Karen knew it, the whole town knew it. Could Steve be content with ... Almost April?!
• He's pretty casual for a guy who still has the blood of the drifter he killed splattered all over him.
• She could use a little sun, but her outfit is impeccable. Her: windswept elegance. Him: Tony Perkins' stand-in.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Ooh, wraparound cover. Always exciting (to me), although that washed-up branch is pretty badly rendered. It looks like it's sprouting tentacles—which would, admittedly, instantly make this book 10x cooler. But they're insufficiently tentacley to create terror and so end up just looking stupid. The rest of the landscape looks fantastic.
• "Poor Dad" is about the last thing I expected to follow the sentence "Karen threw herself on the bed."
• "How can she make him understand about Nels?" How can you make *me* understand about Nels? Specifically, his name. Talk me through that.

Page 123~

Karen felt a little sick, reading the letter. She knew how her grandmother loathed television and how she clung to her old-fashioned monstrosity of a house. 

When Karen thought of how dreary her life would be there, with no "Gilligan's Island" and no "Hogan's Heroes" to keep her company, she panicked and ran to the beach to throw herself into the sea. Would Steve save her!? Or just watch like the jerk he obviously is?

~RP

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Paperback 1070: Laughsville, U.S.A. / [No one willing to take credit] (Scholastic T 648)

Paperback 1070: Scholastic T 648 (2nd ptg, 1966)

Title: Laughsville, U.S.A.

Author: Uncredited

Cover artist: George Wilde 

Illustrated by: George Wilde

Condition: 6/10

Value: $6

Best things about this cover:

• So much to recoil at here, but tooth asymmetry is haunting me more than I would've expected. That's an odd number of teeth, with one central Tooth. It's very disconcerting.
• "Can you make it look like he has sort of stubby penis growing out of his forehead?" "I ... can, but ..." "And sort of pube-y little tufts of hair, but only above his ears?" "I don't under-..." "Also his eyes should be beady soulless little things." "[Sigh]. And his ears?" "Filthy."
• "Gulps" and "Gags" really giving this book a vibe I'm not sure it's aiming for. Also, wtf is a "gulps" in this context?
• Also, wtf is "pomes" in this context? It's like I'm being asked to imagine a balding middle-aged guy happily choking on small fruit. Truly weird.

Best things about this back cover:

• OMG the faces are somehow more horrific, how, How?
• Dude's face has been forcefully cleaved in two by the Laughsville sign and he's still smiling. Truly demonic.
• I do love a cover that tells you precisely, mathematically, how funny it is. If you're on a low-yuk diet, this book is for you!

Page 123~

I was packing for camp and one pr.

Of my socks disappeared 'neath the chr.

So I then from my bro.

Had to borrow ano.

Or my toes and my feet would be br.

 Well, I'm making sounds alright, but I'm not sure I'd call them "guffaws."

~RP

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Paperback 649: All-Pro Football Stars 1977 / Jerry Brondfield (Scholastic TK 3959)

Paperback 649: Scholastic TK 3959 (PBO? 1977)

Title: All-Pro Football Stars 1977
Author: Jerry Brondfield
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $5


Best things about this cover:

• Not sure why I own this. Must've been overcome by a wave of nostalgia for my earliest days of sports awareness. 1977 was pretty much the year that pro sports entered my consciousness, and I became a big sports (and stats) fan very quickly thereafter.

Best things about this back cover:

• Nothing. I think the real reason I own this book must be the amazing interior photos—a dazzling array of mid-late''70s men's hair styles. In lieu of "Page 123," here are a few:

~RP

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Paperback 387: The Great Houdini / Beryl Williams and Samuel Epstein (SBS T 76)

Paperback 387: Scholastic Book Services T 76 (12th ptg, 1970)

Title: The Great Houdini
Authors: Beryl Williams and Samuel Epstein
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: not for sale


Best things about this cover:

• Houdini simply would not let Run-DMC show him up, chain-wise.
• Access to Houdini's junk was so highly prized that he had to lock that shit down. For real.
• Houdini used a wormhole to travel through time. He ended up in the year 2024. Unfortunately, his clothes ended up in 1863.

Best things about this back cover:

• Worst back cover ever. I got nothin'.

Page 123~

Whenever he entered a new city he went straight to the police headquarters, to challenge the authorities to lock him in their strongest fetters and their safest prison cell.

I'm surprised this did not get him severely beaten on a regular basis, especially if he showed up dressed like he is on the front cover. Cops have real work to do, jackwad.

~RP

Thanks to Jami for sending this book my way. And I repromise to be more prolific.

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 25

Title: What Happened to Amy? (SBS T 579, 1969)
Author: Jane Edwards
"Cover design by" [???]: Julio Freire

Yours for: I think I have to give this to my sister

• Guess 1: her chin grew a hand-like appendage
• Guess 2: she bought a hideous shade of lipstick at Woolworth's
• Guess 3: she was drowned in a flood of Depression-colored paint
• Guess 4: an alien life form (part fox, part scorpion) attached itself to her cranium
• Guess 5: she caught sight of herself in the mirror after one of her evil sisters abused her hair in the middle of the night while she was sleeping: "Oh ... boo hoo ... I used to look like Crystal Gale ... sob."

• "Leave her clothes behind"?? — I may have to revise my list of Guesses

Page 123~

"This affair gets more mysterious all the time. The more we find out, the less we know."

~RP

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PS Thanks to Dan at "The Casual Optimist" for including this site in his list of "10 Websites for Vintage Books, Covers, and Inspiration"