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Rereading: SOMETHING ABOUT EVE by James Branch Cabell - Todd's Blog
I’m not sure I would have finished this if it weren’t for the delightful illustrations by Frank C. Papé. In the eleventh book of Cabell’s long series “The biography of Manuel,” there’s plenty of fantasy and whimsy and humor, but also far too much talk and little action. The author seems to be trying to […]
My Music: JUST FOR A MOMENT - Todd's Blog
I wrote this in November, 1980, and recorded it soon after in my living room studio. It’s another song of romance gone wrong, as many of my songs were at the time, but this one has an ironic bite that I still like. My friend Tim has said it’s his favorite of my songs, which […]
Rereading: THE LOST KING OF OZ BY Ruth Plumly Thompson - Todd's Blog
Thompson chose an interesting topic for this one that Baum never explored: what happened to Ozma’s father? The evil witch Mombi did away with him somehow, but nothing is known about that, and until this book, Mombi herself has long been absent as well. It turns out that, with her magical knowledge removed, she has […]
Rereading: HORSESHOES AND HANDLEBARS by M. E. Atkinson - Todd's Blog
At the end of her writing career, children’s novel author Atkinson abandoned series books for two standalone stories, this is one, and it’s quite good. Five children are staying for the summer at a cottage run by a middle-aged woman, Miss Shepperson. Returning for a second year are Guin and Margaret. Guin loves riding, and […]
Rereading: THE PHANTOM DEER by Joseph Wharton Lippincott - Todd's Blog
Published in 1954, Lippincott was ahead of his time in advocating for the preservation of the tiny subspecies of White-Tailed Deer that live in the Florida Keys. This book is about that. Old Man Hickey lives alone in a cabin he built on Big Pine Key, one of the larger Florida Keys. He gets along […]
My Music: FAITH IN DREAMS - Todd's Blog
Some time in 1980 I began dating Kathy, who had a fine singing voice and played the piano. We sometimes sang together in my apartment with me on guitar (I didn’t have a piano), my songs or songs by others. At some point we created this song together, words by her, melody and arrangement by […]
Incoming: THE SPECTRE OMNIBUS VOLUME 1 - Todd's Blog
Just arrived, this large hardcover includes issues 1-31 of the original series by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake as well as a glow-in-the-dark dust jacket. Page count is 888 pages, weight is 5 pounds. I haven’t checked, but I believe I lettered them all, and it was an entertaining run. Includes a new introduction by […]
Rereading: THE AMBER SPYGLASS by Philip Pullman - Todd's Blog
The third book of Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy came out in 2000, and I bought and read it then. I didn’t have good memories of it, and I recall thinking that if the second book, “The Subtle Knife” was somewhat disappointing, this one was more so, and the first book, “The Golden Compass” was […]
My Music: SUMMER'S GONE - Todd's Blog
In 1980 I became friends with Brenda Sloan through a mutual friend, and we shared things we had written with each other. She gave or mailed me three poems she’d written. On the typed page is this note: “Written October 1974 – first time away from home. Not really poetry, just talking to myself.” I […]
Rereading: THE WONDERFUL GARDEN by E. Nesbit - Todd's Blog
Caroline, Charles, and Charlotte have parents away in India, and they live with an aunt and uncle who are rather dull. They’re delighted to learn their Great-Uncle Charles has invited them to stay at his large home for the summer. They’ve never met him, but when they arrive, they find him friendly, though the housekeeper […]
Rereading: THE DIAMOND IN THE WINDOW by Jane Langton - Todd's Blog
Eleanor and Edward live in an unusual Victorian house in Concord, Massachusetts with their Aunt Lily and somewhat confused Uncle Freddy. The house needs work, and they are well behind on taxes. Aunt Lily does her best, but can’t seem to keep up, and Uncle Freddy, with his obsessions about local authors Thoreau and Emerson, […]
My Music: GOIN' TO SEE HER - Todd's Blog
I started this song in March of 1980, but did not finish and record it until 2002. By that time it was very much about my wife Ellen, remembering our dating days in 1987-89. In 2002 I had gotten back into recording my songs after not doing any of that since the early 1980s, and […]
Rereading: THOMASINA by Paul Gallico - Todd's Blog
My copy does not have a dust jacket, I found this image online, so I don’t know who the artist is. Mary Ruadh MacDhui lives with her father Andrew, a veterinarian, in the small Scottish town of Inveranoch. Mary’s mother died a few years earlier when she was very small. The doctor employs a live-in […]
Rereading: BUTTONWOOD ISLAND by Lavinia R. Davis - Todd's Blog
Davis’s second book and my second favorite after “Hobby Horse Hill.” As you can see, I colored in some of the great Paul Brown line illustrations with crayons in my youth. Lyb and Sandy Hardwicke are having a great summer. Their mother is recovering from an illness, but home with them again at last, and […]
My Music: WAITING TO HEAR FROM YOU - Todd's Blog
Written in December, 1979 and recorded soon after, this is one of several songs of mine with a similar theme of longing for love. I think it’s all there in the lyrics. I like the recording and the song, can’t sing or play it as well now, so I’m happy to have this version. Waiting […]
Rereading: THE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIONS by Dodie Smith - Todd's Blog
The Disney film based on this book is one of my favorites, but the book itself is also well worth reading, and different enough to keep one guessing even if you’ve seen the film. Pongo and Missis are a mated pair of Dalmations living with a mated pair of humans they own, Mr. and Mrs. […]
Rereading: THE LOTUS CUP by Jane Louise Curry - Todd's Blog
An interesting but specialized sort of story revolving around a particular setting and trade, pottery making in Ohio. Corry Tipson comes from a line of potters, her great grandfather owned a successful Ohio pottery, her grandfather was a talented artist and potter, but not a good businessman, and by Corry’s generation her family has fallen […]
Rereading: GALLANTRY by James Branch Cabell - Todd's Blog
The tenth book in Cabell’s epic “Biography of the Life of Manuel” was originally published in 1907, and revised in 1922 to add references to Manuel and Jurgen, making it part of his epic, just slightly. Unlike other short story collections from Cabell in this series, the ten stories in Gallantry are one continuous narrative […]
My Music: LOVE - Todd's Blog
I wrote this in November, 1979 as a kind of parody of pop music hits that gained attention by repeating a short, catchy melody or lyric over and over. I didn’t record it at the time, didn’t really think much of it to be honest, but unlike many other songs in the same situation, the […]
Rereading: THE COWARDLY LION OF OZ by Ruth Plumly Thompson - Todd's Blog
Thompson’s third Oz book, published in 1923, has Baum’s Cowardly Lion as a main character, but he doesn’t show up right away. The story begins in a desert-like corner of Oz’s Munchkin section, where Mustafa, an ill-tempered monarch, collects live lions, and he wants one more: the Cowardly Lion. The sudden arrival of two people […]
Rereading: RIDERS AND RAIDS by M. E. Atkinson - Todd's Blog
The fifth book in the Fricka series takes place, for a change, all at the country home, Combedene, of Fricka and her father the sculptor, who they call The Bear, and Fricka’s three cousins Hugo, Sugar, and Adrian, taken in by The Bear on the death of their parents. They are home from school after […]
My Music: EASTERN - Todd's Blog
I wrote this song in September of 1979, and it’s still one of my favorites. The recording is from around the same time in my living room in Highland Park, NJ. While I didn’t live in New York City, I commuted to work there every week day, and perhaps an urge to break away from […]
My Music: AFTER THE OPERA - Todd's Blog
This song was written after my first trip to England with friends in June and July of 1979. It’s not based on an actual event, but suggested by one that did happen on the trip, though the song makes more of it than the reality. I never recorded it, and it’s one of the songs […]
Rereading: PETER GRAVES by William Pène du Bois - Todd's Blog
Du Bois wrote a number of excellent fantasy novels/stories for young readers, this is my second favorite after “The 21 Balloons.” They are illustrated by him usually in black line with gray tones, as above. Peter Graves is a teenage boy in the town of Houndstooth in a rural area of the eastern United States. […]
Rereading: BLACK AND BLUE MAGIC by Zilpha Keatley Snyder - Todd's Blog
I’ve read dozens of books by Snyder, and this, her third, is my favorite. Harry Marco lives with his mother at her boarding house in San Francisco where he tries to help out, even though his clumsiness causes lots of accidents and bruises. His father was a stage magician who died too young, and Harry […]
Rereading: THE BLACK STALLION CHALLENGED by Walter Farley - Todd's Blog
For the previous book in his racing horse series, “The Black Stallion and Flame,” Farley brought The Black to the hidden island home of his other stallion, but while the two horses worked together to defeat a common enemy, a bat infected with rabies, their owners were not present and did not meet. Readers may […]
My Music: WEDDING DAY - Todd's Blog
This was written for a ceremony held at Rutgers Kirkpatrick Chapel, New Brunswick, in May of 1979 to celebrate the wedding of my friend Paul to his first wife Dorothy, they’re above. They lived in Baltimore, and were married there, but Paul had many friends in New Jersey, and wanted to have an event here […]
And Then I Read: INKWORLD, THE COLOR OF REVENGE by Cornelia Funke - Todd's Blog
Cornelia Funke wrote a trilogy of three Inkheart books some time ago, and has returned to it with this new title. The concept is that a few gifted people have the ability to bring fantasy stories to life simply by reading them aloud, and to put real people into those worlds as well. This story […]
Rereading: THE LOST FARM by Jane Louise Curry - Todd's Blog
This book is connected to “Mindy’s Mysterious Miniature,” though it works fine on its own. Pete MacCubbin lives with his father and grandmother on a remote farm in Summit County, Pennsylvania. Pete is twelve as the story opens, and doing a lot of the farm chores, caring for their sheep, cows, mules, and chickens, while […]
My Music: A TALL TREE TALE - Todd's Blog
Another song I never recorded back in the day, and made a new recording of earlier this year. In addition to voice and guitar, it includes mountain dulcimer and tin whistle, above. The dulcimer was Ellen’s, I use it occasionally when it’s the right sound for a song. This is a tall tale as might […]
Rereading: PLOW PENNY MYSTERY by Lavinia R. Davis - Todd's Blog
While America was getting involved in World War Two, Lavinia Davis was trying to keep America’s children entertained with stories of kids and horses (and other animals), and doing it well. Larry has recently come to stay with his uncle in rural Connecticut for the summer. Larry’s mother and new stepfather have gone off to […]
Rereading: THE SEA IS ALL AROUND by Elizabeth Enright - Todd's Blog
Elizabeth Enright is one of my favorite authors, but this is an early book of hers I hadn’t read in decades, and didn’t remember much about. Mab Kendall îs on her way to a remote New England coastal island, Pokenick. She’s traveling from Iowa, where she grew up. Her parents died when she was five, […]
Rereading: THE HIGH PLACE by James Branch Cabell - Todd's Blog
The ninth book in Cabell’s “Biography of the Life of Manuel” is set in 1698 France in and adjacent to the author’s imaginary province of Poictesme. Florian, whose ancestors include Manuel and Jurgen, has a strange encounter with beauty on a hill in the magical forest of Acaire next to his ancestral home, the “high […]
Rereading: KABUMPO IN OZ by Ruth Plumly Thompson - Todd's Blog
Thompson’s second Oz book, and the first one with her name under the title, features some familiar characters and some new ones. As it was so often done by Baum, the story starts in a remote part of Oz, the kingdom of Pumperdink. A birthday party in the royal castle for Prince Pompadore, also attended […]
The Eisner Awards Hall of Fame - Todd's Blog
On Friday morning I was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Also inducted was one of my favorite letterers Ira Schnapp, and a few years ago they inducted my favorite letterer Gaspar Saladino. We are the only creators known mainly for lettering so far included. I am honored to be among many giants of the […]
Rereading: THE SUBTLE KNIFE by Philip Pullman - Todd's Blog
When I read this the first time I was disappointed, rereading it I was not. Perhaps I was so enamored of the world in the first book that to leave it behind for much of this one was disappointing, and perhaps I was also unhappy with the overall storyline that develops here, which I now […]
Rereading: THE BLACK STALLION AND FLAME by Walter Farley - Todd's Blog
As the cover blurb says, a story requested by more than 3 million readers, this is almost fan fiction except that it’s written by Farley. In the previous book about Flame, “The Island Stallion Races,” he had to stretch credulity by using aliens to get the horse into a real race, here the stretch is […]
My Music: NIGHTLIFE OF THE CAT - Todd's Blog
The other song I should have recorded back when but never did, it was written on January 28, 1979, my 28th birthday. Theodora, above, was my most recent kitty, I’d had her for about five years. She was an indoor cat, as all my cats have been, but not long after this photo was taken […]
Rereading: UNEXPECTED ADVENTURE by M. E. Atkinson - Todd's Blog
This is the fourth of Atkinson’s “Fricka” books, I don’t have the third one, “The Barnstormers.” Fricka and her three cousins, Hugo, Sugar, and Adrian, are boarding with elderly Mrs. Harcourt in the lodge of a large manor house while Fricka’s father is away in France. They had thought they’d be staying in the manor […]