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Rereading: THE ROYAL BOOK OF OZ by Ruth Plumly Thompson - Todd's Blog
The fifteenth Oz book has the author named as L. Frank Baum, but it actually the first by his replacement, Ruth Plumly Thompson. Thompson was born in 1891, and already a published children’s book author when she was asked by publisher William Lee in 1921 to continue the popular series. She was a fan of […]
My Music: WARM WINTER - Todd's Blog
When I began preparing for this music project, I made a list of all my songs in chronological order, as I planned to post them. I thought everything on my list had been recorded (ones I had never recorded weren’t on the list), but when I got to early 1979 recently, I found there were […]
Incoming: SWAMP THING BY RICK VEITCH BOOK TWO - Todd's Blog
This collection is nearly equally split between Swamp Thing issues written and pencilled by Rick Veitch and Hellblazer issues written by Jamie Delano with various artists. Constantine does appear in both, and the storylines are linked, so it makes sense as a collection, though perhaps Delano should have gotten better billing. Other artists involved are […]
Rereading: HUNTER'S MOON by M. E. Atkinson - Todd's Blog
This is the second book about Fricka and her three cousins, Hugo, Sugar, and Adrian, but most of the story focuses on a new character, Tony Martin. Tony had an alarming experience with a runaway pony when very young, but he doesn’t really remember it. Now that he’s older, staying in a house with Fricka […]
Rereading: THE GOLDEN COMPASS by Philip Pullman - Todd's Blog
I bought and read this when It was first published in 1996, having never read anything by Pullman, and I loved it so much I sought out and read all the other books of his published before it. Lyra Belacqua is a pre-teen girl living in Oxford at Jordan College, but her Oxford and her […]
My Music: DISTANT VOICES - Todd's Blog
I’m publishing these songs in the order they were written rather than when they were recorded. This one was written in November 1978, the last of many songs written that year, but it was not recorded until 2007. I had compiled a CD of favorite songs in 2000, in 2007 I did a second one. […]
Rereading: THE MAGIC CITY by E. Nesbit - Todd's Blog
Here’s a rare first edition Nesbit from my library, it’s even signed, bought at a London rare book dealer’s shop many years ago. I don’t think I appreciated it as much when I first read it then as I did on this rereading. Philip (also called Pippin or Pip) lives with his much older sister […]
ROBBUT: A tale of tails by Robert Lawson - Todd's Blog
A charming short book of 94 pages with lots of fine illustrations, Robbut is a rabbit who is unsatisfied with his tail. He envies the tails of some other animals he knows like the fox and the cat, and wishes his wasn’t so small that he can barely see it. One day Robbut comes across […]
Incoming: SHADE THE CHANGING MAN OMNIBUS VOLUME 1 - Todd's Blog
The full title of this massive book is SHADE THE CHANGING MAN BY PETER MILLIGAN AND CHRIS BACHALO OMNIBUS VOLUME 1, and it includes issues 1-37 of the original Vertigo series begun in 1990. I lettered them, they were crazy and weird and interesting. Some of these issues have never been collected previously. Retail price […]
My Music: A FOOL'S PARADISE - Todd's Blog
Something different this time. In the 1970s and early 1980s I wrote lots of songs, and recorded many of them in my living room, but some were never recorded, and over time I either forgot the tune or the chords or both. In the fall of 2024, while working on this My Music project, I […]
Rereading: FRIDAY by Robert A. Heinlein - Todd's Blog
Published in 1982, this is the second of five novels from Heinlein in the 1980s, the last years of his life, and my favorite of those. There’s less talk and more story action than the others, and the main character is appealing. Friday works as a clandestine courier for an organization run by an elderly […]
Rereading: THE ICE GHOSTS MYSTERY by Jane Louise Curry - Todd's Blog
Professor Bird has disappeared while researching strange earthquakes in the Alps, and his wife and children decide to try to find him. They fly from their home in California to the small mountain village of Risenmoos, known for its ancient festival around legendary Ice Ghosts said to live in caves in the nearby mountains. Before […]
Klein Letterer Biographies in JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #93 - Todd's Blog
In November 2024, John Morrow of TwoMorrows emailed me, saying: I’m getting started on Jack Kirby Collector #93, and the theme is “Supporting Players.” So I’d like to represent Kirby’s various letterers in some way. Alex Jay pointed me toward your amazing historical blog posts on Howard Ferguson and Ben Oda. I told him I’d […]
My Music: LINDA'S SONG - Todd's Blog
My good friend Linda, who I had known for about eight years, was going through a tough time. We lived several hours apart then, in different states, but kept in touch by letters and occasional phone calls, and I visited her once or twice a year. In October of 1978 I was shocked to hear […]
Rereading: JURGEN by James Branch Cabell - Todd's Blog
Jurgen, the seventh book in the “Biography of the Life of Manuel,” is Cabell’s best known and best-selling book largely because it generated a lawsuit against the author and publisher for obscenity. The book is a romantic comedy of sorts that does include lots of sex, but always inferred and making use of sly wordplay […]
Rereading: THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH by Norton Juster - Todd's Blog
A favorite of my childhood and I enjoyed rereading it the past two weeks, a chapter a day. The illustrations by Jules Feiffer are excellent, too. Milo is a boy who doesn’t know what to do with himself, or how to use his free time. One day a large package appears in his room with […]
Rereading: GLINDA OF OZ by L. Frank Baum - Todd's Blog
This fourteenth Oz book of 1920 was the final one completed before Baum’s death. His usual introduction is replaced by a note from the publishers telling of the author’s passing, and promising more Oz stories from his “unfinished notes.” In fact, they hired Ruth Plumly Thompson to continue the series, and she wrote way more […]
My Music: EVERYONE'S LOOKING - Todd's Blog
I wrote this song on October 5th, 1978, one of many written that year. In fact, I had filled up an 8.5 by 11 inch sketchbook where I wrote down all my poems, songs, and brief stories, and I had to start a new one. Here’s the title page: All done with a brush, something […]
Rereading: CASTAWAY CAMP by M. E. Atkinson - Todd's Blog
After fourteen holiday adventure novels for children about the Lockett family, Atkinson continued to write them, but began with a new cast of characters. The oldest girl, Fricka, is impulsive and temperamental, the oldest boy, Hugo, is dependable and good with tools. Sugar, the younger girl, is motherly, often caring for the others at home […]
Rereading: THE HORSE TAMER by Walter Farley - Todd's Blog
The fourteenth book in Farley’s Black Stallion series takes a different turn, as Alec’s friend and trainer Henry Dailey tells the story of his brother Bill, one of the finest horse tamers of the late 1900s, when they were both young. At the time, before automobiles, nearly everyone used horses for work and transport, but […]
Rereading: THE BOOK OF DRAGONS by E. Nesbit - Todd's Blog
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 […]
My Music: TRIO - Todd's Blog
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 […]
Rereading: THIS ISLAND EARTH by Raymond F. Jones - Todd's Blog
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 […]
IRA SCHNAPP GIVEAWAY COMICS 1954 & 1966 - Todd's Blog
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 […]
Rereading: THE CAT WHO WALKS THROUGH WALLS by Robert A. Heinlein - Todd's Blog
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 […]
Rereading: SANDY'S SPURS by Lavinia R. Davis - Todd's Blog
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 […]
Incoming: BATWOMAN ELEGY Compact Edition - Todd's Blog
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 […]
My 2025 World Series of Birding Report - Todd's Blog
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 […]
My Music: ME AND YOU - Todd's Blog
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 […]
Rereading: THE GREAT FLOOD MYSTERY by Jane Louise Curry - Todd's Blog
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 […]
Rereading: THE BOGGART AND THE MONSTER by Susan Cooper - Todd's Blog
In this sequel to Cooper’s “The Boggart,” Jessup and Emily are back in Scotland visiting Mr. Machonochie, the man who bought their family’s ancestral castle home Castle Keep on Loch Linnhe. They and local friend Tommy Cameron find out they all know about The Boggart, that mischievous spirit who lives in the castle and loves […]
My Music: AN OLD-FASHIONED BALLAD - Todd's Blog
One of my favorite songs that I play often. My notebook says I wrote it July 30, 1978. I don’t know what inspired it, but it reminds me of the Jack Finney novel “Time and Again,” and a film I will mention below that came out later. The song: An Old-Fashioned Ballad In 1980 I […]
Rereading: CHIVALRY by James Branch Cabell - Todd's Blog
The sixth book in the series, originally published in 1909, the 1921 edition I have was revised to fit into Cabell’s masterwork with the overall title “The Biography of the Life of Manuel.” Cabell may have been the second twentieth century author to retroactively put much of his work into one overall connected world and […]
Rereading: THE FOLK OF THE AIR by Peter S. Beagle - Todd's Blog
Beagle’s third novel published in 1986 sort of combines biographical experience with fantasy in an interesting and complex way. Joe Farrell, a world wanderer and lute player, has come to Berkeley, California to look up his old friend Ben, living with an older woman named Sia in her unusual house in the hills. (Joe appeared […]
Rereading: THE MAGIC OF OZ by L. Frank Baum - Todd's Blog
The thirteenth Oz book by Baum of 1919 tells several intertwined stories featuring magic. It begins on remote Mount Munch in Munchkinland, where Bini Aru, a former sorcerer, is reluctant to destroy his most powerful magic, the word P y r z q x g l which, if pronounced just right, can transform any being […]
My Music: A ROUND SONG - Todd's Blog
As the lyrics point out, this song doesn’t have much to say, it’s just a bit of amusing fluff that I came up with on June 17, 1978, and recorded around that time. Perhaps I was thinking of tunes that seem to roll along like clockwork, there are plenty of folk songs that do. Here […]
Rereading: THE BLACK STALLION MYSTERY by Walter Farley - Todd's Blog
The thirteenth book in the horse series by Farley takes readers to Europe and beyond, and has elements of gothic horror and a quite good mystery. Alec Ramsey and his partner Henry Dailey discover three yearlings shipped from Spain that have the exact look of their own champion race horse The Black, and they decide […]
My World Series of Birding 2025 - Todd's Blog
Two weeks from today, Saturday May 10th, is the annual outdoor escapade and fundraiser known as The World Series of Birding. I’ve signed up with the Cape May Bird Observatory Century Run team as I have many times in the past, beginning in 1988. It’s the only fundraiser I participate in. Along with lots of other teams we […]
And Then I Read: FOOLS AND MORTALS by Bernard Cornwell - Todd's Blog
My brother Doug recommended this book by an author he likes, and I found it excellent. It takes place in London in Shakespeare’s time, and the main character is Shakespeare’s younger brother Richard, who followed him to a career on stage, joining the same company. William and Richard have a difficult relationship, possibly William is […]
Rereading: FRIEND MONKEY by P. L. Travers - Todd's Blog
Best known for her Mary Poppins books, this novel is long for her, and not as good, but has its moments. Friend Monkey is a curious ape living on a small island, and when a sailor lands there to collect coconuts, he stows away inside the sack and finds a new home on the ship. […]