Friday Night Record Parties usually consist of a lot of talking about old times...There's nothing like blasting a bunch of records, drinking a ton of beer and boozily talking about the good ol' days...Last night the topic turned to a favorite old children's book of mine and I decided to do another entry in the "Sacred Things" category...Here it is...A list of my favorite childhood books...The merest mention of any of these takes me back (I'm excluding floppy, staple-bound comic books this time around cos I already covered those here.
Garfield Makes It Big: Comics (and my parents) taught me how to read. Plain and simple. There are photos of me sitting on my Dad's lap as a toddler as he held the daily Flint Journal in front of my face and apparently we used to just read the comics together. As a result, I learned to read at an extremely early age. So Garfield books were a natural progression. I know it's puzzling to modern sensibilities, but I cannot convey to you how popular Garfield was in the 80's...And I considered "Makes It Big" to be the peak...The one I returned to the most...After all, the celebratory back cover made it clear that this was no ordinary Garfield book. This was a big deal...
Special mention should also go to the epic "Garfield's Nine Lives" which ran the gamut from Lisa Frank cuteness to out-and-out old lady-murdering horror...
I was utterly taken with the wide variety of styles on display...Especially the noir realism of the "Babes and Bullets" section...
Crestwood House Godzilla Book: Oh, man...The memories...Crestwood used to put out the most ballin' series of monster books that I would relentlessly check out at the library as a kid...Seriously, every time I went there, I would pick out another one...I mean, look at the line-up listed on the back cover...
It's very hard to pick a favorite, but if forced at gunpoint, it would have to be the Godzilla entry. I lived for Godzilla Week (when WNEM TV5 would air Godzilla films for a week straight) but this book included stills from films I had never seen! And those stills! I used to stare at them longingly for hours on end...
What was Gigantis?!?! I could only read about this stuff until the VHS/DVD era was in full swing and I could finally watch some of these films...And oh yea, I consider the following page to be one of the defining images of my childhood...
So many monsters!! Drool...Drool...
I suppose I should give an honorable mention to the Creature From the
Black Lagoon book...That was probably my most 2nd checked out book...
Hot Dog Jokes-Told With Relish: I recently bought a copy of this and as I turned each page, there was an overwhelming rush of nostalgia...I read and re-read this book growing up...My most vivid memory of it, was a family gathering where I opted to stay in the car and pore over this book instead of visiting relatives...A very similar memory to the AC/CD "High Voltage" cassette that kicked off this blog...
I don't know what made me think of the book again, but one day I was sitting there and suddenly it popped in my head, "Oh, yea! The Hot Dog book!" Re-reading it I now, I realize it's basically an ad for Hebrew National Hot Dogs...
I took a photo of this particularly striking page. It's Columbo eating a hot dog! I figured the world needs to see this drawing...
GM- The First 75 Years of Transportation Products: My Dad worked for General Motors and used to bring home copies of this book. Chock full of striking colorful photos of old and (then) new vehicles...Of particular interest was a sleek, silver rocket concept car..."Dad?! Why can't we get one of those?!?!?!" Strongest memory of this book, was a sunny summer morning in the late 80's...It was the day of my sister's graduation party and I recall everyone getting everything ready, while I sat on the brown shag carpeting, drinking a big cold bottle of Faygo and reading this book...
Again, overwhelming stuff...
The Muppets at Sea: There was something about comics in book form that have always sucked me in...And when those comics were about The Muppets, that was even better...It's difficult to explain the pull of the Muppets at the time but I'll try to explain...Imagine having to endure Hee-Haw...
...and once it was over, you'd have to sit thru a bunch of Art Van commercials...
...but suddenly the TV screen would go blank, then that unaccompanied drum roll began...The sense of excitement was palpable... Then Kermit would introduce tonight's guest and the bonkers theme song would begin and you knew you were in for a good half hour of entertainment...
You never wanted it to end...That's why these books were so sacred to me...There were no DVD's back then...Once the Muppets were off the air, you couldn't see them anymore...It was as simple as that..Unless you had the books...
(Muppets on the Town...Another favorite)
In this same vein...Wembley's Egg...I first saw a girl reading this on the schoolbus and as soon as I saw it, I had to have the book! It consumed me! What was it?!?!? Then at the next school book fair, there it was...I begged and pleaded with my parents until they relented and I can still recall the sweet, sweet moment when I was the one reading it on the bus...The paintings in this book were flat out gorgeous...At the time, I had no idea this book was based on an episode of the show, so when I finally saw the episode years later, it was quite a rush...
Also in the staple-less comics category are these old Marvel Hardcovers that I used to check out all the time...
I now have the soft-cover version of this Spider-Man one and I still love it...Lots of text backstory and reprints of the Amazing Fantasy origin, a beautiful John Buscema Chameleon issue and some Ditko stuff from an old annual...There was also a Captain America one I used to check out (and apparently kept, cos I traded it to JJ somewhere in the 90's)...
Sandlot Peanuts: I still have a copy of this one too and still read it often...A collection of baseball-related Peanuts strips including the famous "Baseball Rash" series which I consider to be the pinnacle of Western Literature...
Lizard Music: A brilliant book that I still bust out and read regularly...Although, it does fall into the category of Twin Peaks category of "Bizarre Mysteries That Should Never Actually Be Solved." The setup is so intriguing that no actual answer can ever payoff sufficiently...My favorite moments are simply the descriptions of the protagonist watching mundane television...Very relatable to a kid like me, who would stay up all night watching TV like I was culture pop-spelunking...The copy I have now has a completely different cover, but it's all about that MC Escher dustjacket...
Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back Storybook: Another one of my most-checked out library books. I was crazy about all the big, glossy Star Wars story books but this one was the clear winner.
I think it comes down to the Bounty Hunter page and the Hoth battle scenes, with their rich orange explosions juxtaposed against the white snow...Pure imagination fuel when you're growing up in the snow-swept wastelands of Northern Michigan.
I still have a full set of these Star Wars storybooks. You can get them super cheap and they bring back lots of memories...Honorable mention: The paperback of Marvel's Empire Strikes Back adaptation...
Y'know...The one with the purple Yoda...
'
The Thing at the Foot of the Bed: YES! Haven't read it in a krillion years, but I used to love this book and carried it around with me every where I went one summer...It was basically a bunch of scary stories for kids...The standout for me was the titular story where some guy thinks he sees monster eyes at the foot of his bed but it's actually just his toenails glistening in the moonlight...He might even shoot them off or something...I remember there's even a little drawing that accompanies it that illustrates how one could make that mistake...
Alright...Enough reading for the day...We'll get back to the records next time...Thanks for indulging me...
