Emanuele Luzzatti

A while back I posted The Pirates Tale, illustrated by Jill McDonald. It was one of my favourite books as a child. I had meant to post, a whole host of books that had captured my imagination as a boy, but somehow never quite got round to it. So here is the second book in the series by the Emanuelle Luzzatti; Ronald & The Wizard Calico, first published in 1962.

It really is a gem! I can remember being completely enthralled by the images and copied the knights endlessly. This is the only book I have by Luzzatti, but there are others. Whats more, is there are some fantastic animations that were Oscar nominated, no less. Below is The Invisible City by Luzzatti, which he co-authored with Giulio Gianini. Its absolutely charming!



Luzzatti died in 2007, aged 85. You can read his obituary at the Guardian

Mr Magoo 1001 Arabian Nights

A while back I was lucky enough to find these lobby cards for UPA's first animated feature from 1959, 1001 Arabian Nights starring Mr Magoo. Unfortunately Ive never had the chance to see the whole film but you can view the trailer below



Sadly, the film doesnt seem to have been very well received, which is a real shame because I love the background drawings, and the super technicolor (see John Hinde). The drawings are by Jules Engel, whos pictured below.










If you like the whole fifties cartoon scene, theres a fantastic book by Amid Amidi called Cartoon Modern, which really is superb. If you cant wait to see the book, you can hop along over to his very informative blog , where the picture above is taken from.

tintin live action book

One of the most popular posts Ive listed is the live action Babar domino cards. While few people have commented, its certainly wracked up the hits and started some discussion on other boards. There were a couple of Babar live action books that Ive been meaning to post for a while, but have never quite got round to it.

In the meantime heres a pretty rare find. This tintin picture book, in English accompanies the second live action film, tintin and the blue oranges. Sadly Ive never seen either film, but the pictures look great. Jean-Pierre Talbot plays tintin, and certainly looks the part.

My brother in Law salvaged this copy from a skip, a while back. It still amazes me what some people will throw out.

Miroslav Sasek

As I hinted in the Jill Mcdonald post,the other day. Miroslav Sasek was one of my favourite Illustrators as a child. I was delighted to see that the This is Miroslav Sasek site has been redesigned and looks better than ever! I was really excited to see the link to the film of This is Israel on You Tube. Many thanks to oldlibraryfilms for uploading it.

Ive long collected anything to do with Sasek, and in fact probably my first purchase on ebay was for a signed Sasek book. Since then a few strange things have turned up, there were postcards from France and a poster from Hong Kong. But most excitingly, a tea towel of This is London. The tea towel came from America where the sellers aunt had collected "dish cloths" on her travels around the world. Screen printed on Irish Linen, its a lovely thing, but its lost some of the warmth of the book.

This tea towel is different from the one on the Sasek site, so who knows perhaps there are more gems out there waiting to be found. In 1996 I did attempt to find Sasek only to learn he had died in 1980. Virgin owned the rights to the books back then, and in a brief telephone conversation , I suggested it would be great to reprint. At the time I was told the world had changed a lot since the original books release and there would be too many inaccuracies if they were reissued.

Funny How times change!

Luckily I did manage to track down some original art work, more of which another time. Till then just a little detail from the above tea towel.

The Good Soldier Sveijk

Amongst one of my most cherished possessions and possibly earliest, are these postcards from Czechoslovakia from 1977. I was always lead to believe that they were from a film by the master of puppet animation, Jiri Trnka.

Ill be happy to be corrected and even more delighted if anyone knows more. Ive never seen the film, or read the book for that matter. But I do have two rather nice egg cups featuring him!

The story of Sveijk is set in World War I and follows the bumbling soldier as he attempts to follow orders and impress his superiors invariably lead to catastrophe.