Todd Klein's Blog, page 8

Rereading: THE BOOK OF DRAGONS by E. Nesbit

Illustrated by H. R. Millar

Edith Nesbit was a prolific author of books for children and adults, as well as poetry and other work. Her life was full of marital and family turmoil, socialist politics, and many children, both hers and others under her roof. Worth a read at the link above. This book collects eight stories about dragons published in The Strand magazine in 1899, with fine illustrations by Millar.

The writing is charming, humorous, and eventful, with most of the dragons having unexpected aspects of some kind, and the children in the stories are resourceful and clever, while also acting and speaking like real children, something Nesbit pioneered, rejecting the overly pious and treacly approach of many previous authors. The first story is perhaps the best, “The Book of Beasts,” in which an ordinary child suddenly becomes king on the death of a distant relative and inherits a castle with a library of books. One of them is magical, and when a page is opened, the beast on it comes to life and emerges into the world. This is harmless enough with a butterfly and a small bird, but the large dragon is quite a different story, and it causes all kinds of trouble.

While many of Nesbit’s books are fantasy, and there are some fine ones, what I think gives them continuing appeal is the reality of her children (and she had plenty of her own as models). Readers are quick to sympathize with their troubles and adventures because their reactions seem so believable, even if the subject is not. Some stories seem more rushed and made up as the author was writing them, but they’re still fun to read. Recommended.

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My Music: TRIO

Written in September, 1978, this was an experiment to see if I could write three separate parts that could be combined in a way that worked, and end on three-part harmony. You can judge for yourself if I succeeded or failed, I find it a bit hard to hear all three voices in the final combination, but I think it works pretty well. As for the subject, I lived next to the Raritan River at the time, and often walked there, but “get out of the crowd” suggests I was thinking of New York City and one of the rivers that surround it. The song: Trio

Trio is © Todd Klein, all rights reserved.

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Rereading: THIS ISLAND EARTH by Raymond F. Jones

There are several 1950s science fiction novels by Jones that I like, and I was always curious about this one because of the film made from it. A few years ago I finally found a used copy.

Cal Meachum is a hot-shot pilot and also an engineer for a small instrument maker. He orders some condensers from a supply company, but mysteriously, a very different kind of condenser arrives unlike anything he’s ever seen, but it performs much better and is much smaller than the conventional type. When he orders more, he also gets an amazing catalog full of parts and products he’s never heard of, including something called an interociter. Cal is fascinated, and orders all the parts to make his own interociter, whatever it does, and spends all his free time putting it together. When he’s finished, he turns it on and a view screen comes to life. On it, a middle-aged man with a commanding stare tells him he’s just passed a test, and he’s being offered a job by the company that makes interociters. It will pay well, and all will be explained if he takes it. A private plane will arrive at his airfield that night to pick him up.

Thus begins Cal’s involvement with a mysterious group called the Peace Engineers. The work is fulfilling, and Cal soon makes friends with Ruth Adams, the staff psychologist, and is reunited with Ole, another engineer he’s worked with before. Ruth and Ole think there’s something else going on behind the scenes, though, and the three of them try to find out. They discover their products are being shipped out to an unknown destination by…flying saucer!

This is a pretty good read, though at times it moves slowly through the process of building tools and running the factory. The exciting space part, which the movie focused on, is at the end. I also rewatched the film, and as is typical, only about ten percent is from the book, mostly at the beginning, though it does follow a somewhat similar arc. The book and film now seem old-fashioned, but are still work a read and a look. Mildly recommended.

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IRA SCHNAPP GIVEAWAY COMICS 1954 & 1966

This and all images © DC Comics

One area of comics I haven’t searched for Ira Schnapp lettering is giveaways. These were free comics usually inserted in packaging or given out in stores. DC Comics didn’t do a lot of them, Western Publishing was the primary US producer of such things, but there were a number of them over the years. I’ve already written about a similar tie-in, a series of single-page Superman comics printed on the back of Pep cereal boxes. Recently DC Comics archivist Benjamin Le Clear posted a photo of proof sheets from some 1966 Kellogg’s Pop Tarts giveaways that had lettering by Ira. I had never seen them before. I researched that and found five of the six mini comics were lettered by him. I decided to search further on the Grand Comics Database and found this one earlier giveaway lettered by Schnapp from 1954. It’s a four-page comic that was inserted into packaging for a Superman playsuit. The GCD reports:

This four-page comic on glossy paper was included with “the OFFICIAL 4-piece SUPERMAN PLAYSUIT” produced by Funtime Playwear (and sold by ANRA INC. according to the coupon). The four pieces were “Superman-style pants, shirt, plastic belt, and cape.”

I found an example of this first printing on eBay with images of the first and fourth pages. It seems to be standard comics size, and horizontal crease marks suggest it was folded in half. Art is attributed to Win Mortimer. The lettering is clearly by Ira, typical of his work at the time. There was a second printing in 1958 in a single color (blue).

Three of six Kellogg’s Pop Tarts mini comics, 1966

Here’s the best image I could find of three of the Pop Tarts mini-comics from 1966, all original material. Each features Batman and Robin. These were small, 5.5 by 3 inches, and each was folded in half to fit into a Pop Tarts package. Each was 16 pages, with the title page as the cover, so they had a short but substantial amount of story and lettering. I’ve looked at all the title pages on the Grand Comics Database. (They’re hard to find, as they’re listed individually by the story title, not as a series.) In addition to these three, the other titles were “The Case of Batman II!”, “The Penguin’s Fowl Play!”, and “The Man in the Iron Mask!”. All were lettered by Ira except the final title, I don’t know who lettered that one.

These items will be added to Ira’s lettering database in THIS article. There could be more of these that haven’t turned up or come to my notice yet.

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Rereading: THE CAT WHO WALKS THROUGH WALLS by Robert A. Heinlein

Cover art by Michael Whelan

Heinlein is one of my two favorite authors, along with J.R.R. Tolkien, but I don’t love all of his works equally. In the last years of his life, after serious health issues, Heinlein wrote five novels, this book from 1985 is the next-to-last one. All of these novels are long, interconnected with each other and previous Heinlein books and stories, and are way too talky. Despite all that, I can still enjoy reading them, though I like his earlier work better.

The viewpoint character is Colonel Colin Campbell, though he goes by the name Richard Ames, and many of the other characters also have aliases, adding to the confusion. As the story opens, he’s having dinner with his date, Gwen Novak, but when she goes to the restroom, an uninvited stranger sits in her place and announces he wants to hire the Ames to kill someone. Moments later, this stranger is himself fatally shot. Richard and Gwen flee to his apartment where, after a night together in bed, she declares she wants to marry him, and they have their own private wedding ceremony.

That begins 24 hours of persecution and evasion for the pair, as it seems everyone is out to arrest or kill them. Eventually they manage to escape the space colony where they live in a junker rocket car, and head for the moon. Their luck is no better, as that car dies under them, forcing a crash landing. By the time they reach Luna City, more harrowing adventures have happened, and more people have died. But it’s only the beginning of the strange adventures Richard finds himself swept up in, taking him to distant times and places.

When action is happening, this is gripping reading, when lots of talk is going on instead, it’s less interesting. The talk consists of bragging, lecturing, sexual banter, bargaining, arguing, and so on. The main character is stubborn, and sometimes intentionally stupid, leading to more talking. He’s wanted for a dangerous mission. Gwen is really someone else from the past sent to recruit him, but convincing him is very difficult, even when he sees the attacks his new friends are fending off. Will he come around in the end? And speaking of the end, I found it unsatisfying in this book. Still, it’s Heinlein. And there is a cat who seems to be able to get anywhere it wants. Mildly recommended.

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Rereading: SANDY’S SPURS by Lavinia R. Davis

Davis loved horses and children, and wrote some excellent books about them. This is the last of those, and not quite as good as earlier ones, but still quite an enjoyable read. One thing I really missed was the excellent illustrations by master horse artist Paul Brown from the earlier books, the ones here are not nearly as good.

Sandy Martin can’t go for a summer vacation at the beach with his family this year. Instead he’s been invited to spend the summer with his mother’s old friend Mrs. Trowbridge and her three children at their farm in Virginia. When he arrives, Sandy doesn’t understand why the two older Trowbridge kids, Ashe and Matty, treat him with polite coldness. The youngest, Carter, is more friendly. When they arrive at the farm, Sandy is taken to see the two horses they have and ride regularly. Black Arrow is a spirited horse that Ashe rides, while Buster is a comfortable plodder. Sandy has only ridden a few times at fairs, but Ashe insists he ride Black Arrow, a brief ride that ends with a fall. Sandy is angry, and he and Ashe fight, then Sandy runs off.

Later, Sandy finds out the reason for his treatment is that his parents are paying the Trowbridges to have him, and Matty and Ashe think they have to entertain him, thus letting him ride their best horse. Eventually it all gets sorted out, and the children become friends just in time to encounter some mysteries involving an ancestor of Sandy’s mother, and a mysterious figure who drowns some woodchuck babies they wanted to raise. Are these mysteries connected, and if so, how?

A fine book. By this time, Davis was also writing adult mysteries, and that side of the book shows it, with lots of complications and a possible hidden treasure. There’s still time for riding, some horse shows, and other adventures. Recommended if you can find it.

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Incoming: BATWOMAN ELEGY Compact Edition

Image © DC Comics

This smaller edition of stories from DETECTIVE COMICS #854-863 looks fine to me in general, and a good value for the price. The size is smaller than comics, but well larger than digest size, 5.5 by 8.5 inches. The paper is not glossy and somewhat absorbent, which means there’s dot gain in the printing: the dots of ink spread out a little more than on glossy paper. Some of the lettering is white on black, and the thin white lines are thinner here, and a bit hard to read because of it, but nothing is filled in or unreadable. Due out June 17, cover price $9.99.

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My Music: ME AND YOU

This was written on August 20, 1978, in the middle of a very busy music year for me. I don’t recall it being written about anyone in particular, so perhaps it’s just a made up situation to fit a melody I came up with. The only event I know of in this month was when my brother Russ and I performed at an open mic show at the Rutgers student center in New Brunswick, NJ…

…but this song would not have been performed there. As I recall, we did several songs that Russ wrote, none of mine. It was one of the few times I performed for an audience other than friends and family. Here’s the song: Me and You.

Russ had learned to play guitar by ear, as I had, and had begun writing songs a few years earlier. I recorded some of them, and perhaps will share them in the future. In 1978, he was living in an apartment in New Brunswick, and we played and sang together a few times a month, I think.

Me And You is © Todd Klein, all rights reserved.

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My 2025 World Series of Birding Report

Cape May Meadows viewing platform at dawn

If you’re coming in late, yesterday, May 10, 2025, I participated in New Jersey Audubon’s World Series of Birding. I was on the Cape May Bird Observatory team of 28 people. The object of this fundraiser is to tally as many species as possible in one day. Participants make donations to New Jersey Audubon based on the number of species a team sees, and also can gather donations from friends, family, and businesses. Some Level 1 teams cover the whole state of New Jersey from midnight to midnight. We’re a Level 2 team with a more relaxed schedule, going from about 5 AM to about 9 PM. The traditional plan was for the team to travel by bus (originally in their own cars) to various locations around Cape May County, and that’s what 20 of us did. Since covid, new rules allow others to be on the team while birding on their own from wherever they live. This adds a lot to our list, especially as some team members were birding in New York State, and New Mexico, but for me, the bus group total is the important one. Of course, more species means more donations to a good cause, so I’m fine with that.

Cape May Point, early morning, looking for a female Painted Bunting at a feeder

One factor that makes a big difference in how the team does is the weather, and this year it was sunny all day with temperatures from the 50s to the low 70s. That sounds ideal unless you know that there was a 20mph northwest wind most of the day that often made it difficult to hear birds (heard calls count), kept birds from being active in the trees and sky at times, and made it a VERY cold start to the day. Well, there’s always something! But the wind definitely affected our team bus total. After a freezing start at the Cape May Meadows, we found some good birds at the Cape May Bird Observatory’s Northwood center in Cape May Point, including Summer Tanager and Red-Headed Woodpecker. The former is rare at that location, and the latter is rare all over New Jersey, I hadn’t seen one in a few years. Then we walked along Lily Lake and down a residential street in town to where someone’s backyard feeder has been hosting a female Painted Bunting, an even more rare bird in New Jersey. They usually don’t come this far north, but young birds of many species do tend to wander, perhaps one way they expand territory. After a short wait, we had good looks. A little later by the lake, we saw two more rare birds at the same time, soaring overhead: a Swallow-Tailed Kite and two Mississippi Kites. Again, birds I haven’t seen in years, though a few are tallied every year in New Jersey. We were off to a great start, my own list was at 60 species when we headed north into the rest of the county at around 9 AM.

At the bridge on Sunset Road, Belleplain State Forest

From there things did not go so well with for us. We did woodland birding in several places, but missed species we knew were there, but weren’t calling or in sight. At Cox Hall Creek we added a few more, and at Belleplain State Forest, where I do a lot of birding on my own. A good half dozen species I knew were there could not be found. Team members in other places were adding to our total, but our bus group seemed to be well behind the usual count as I remember it. In the past we would often reach 100 species before lunch, this year that didn’t happen until mid afternoon, and as the count goes up it becomes ever harder to find new ones to add.

Two Dunlin and a Dowitcher at the Wetlands Institute, Stone Harbor

After a late lunch, we began pursuing wetland and coastal birds, first at Jake’s Landing, on Delaware Bay, then at Avalon and Stone Harbor on the Atlantic Ocean side of the county. I can rarely get good bird photos with my phone, but this one turned out okay. I was compiling my own list on eBird on my phone, but there are some problems with that. First, you have to finish and file a checklist for each location the way I was doing it, and you then can’t go back easily to check things over. In some cases I listed things twice, in others I forgot to list them. It wasn’t until this morning when I could put my results on a printed checklist that I could finally find out what my own list total was.

Sunset at Coral Avenue, Cape May Point

After our last few stops resulted in only one or two new species, the bus team began to lose the will to carry on, and just after sunset, as seen above, we called it quits around 8:30 PM, earlier than usual.

The entire team total was 206 species.

The bus team Toal was 120 species. (The previous year it was 140, I think closer to average).

My own list came to 109 species. Not bad, but today, also sunny and beautiful but with no wind, I could probably do better even by myself. Ah well, that’s the way it goes sometimes. Maybe until next year will be better…!

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Rereading: THE GREAT FLOOD MYSTERY by Jane Louise Curry

Cover art by Bradley Clark

Curry throws lots of intriguing elements into this story, which has origins in the Great Flood of 1889 in Johnstown, PA, after a dam break washed out much of the town. The story revolves around three old houses and a possible lost treasure, and there are secret rooms, secret doors, a mysterious burglar, stories about the flood from a very old survivor, and one written in a diary. Gordy Hartz and his friend Zizzy take on the mystery and find themselves in all kinds of trouble.

Entertaining and historical, recommended.

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