Saturday, September 25, 2010

On the Good Ship, Lollipop

Blue glass Shirley Temple dish I had packed away in the attic. It's actually a perfect circle, but when I scanned it, being three-dimensional, I guess the depth-of-field distorted the edges into an oblong. It says "Hello, Everybody—Shirley Temple." The image is screened on the bottom of the dish, so candies or whatever might be inside the dish won't scratch it, but you really can't see it unless you turn it over.
In the same carton as the dish was this 1936 edition of Shirley Temple's Favortie Poems.
A few of the interior pages of the 94 page book. The poems and the artwork are surprisingly sophisticated, witty and artistic. I was expecting Silly Willy type poems and juvenile appearing art. This just further reinforces my opinion that the dumbing down of America is alive and well. What 7-10 year old child alive today would ever be amused by these poems and images? Certainly not your everyday, ordinary mall-rat, Sponge Bob-watching ADD diagnosed, Ritaline-addicted 3 footer, and I blame everyone but the child for that. The inside covers, or "endpapers" as they're called in the trade, are especially decorative and so evocative of the mid 1930s. Each interior spread will open to a full 1250 pixels in width when clicked for you reading ease! : )

For more on Shirley Temple, click here for the Wiki.

6 comments:

  1. Here, here Casey my dear. Words of wisdom among those pages. Love it.

    Mary Middling... I wonder if she had anything to do with the saying... fair to middling?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I found this on Yahoo answers:

    "Fair to middling," which first appeared as a phrase in the mid-19th century, thus really means "fair to fair," a little joke in that the range between the two qualities really doesn't exist. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker's famous quip on the subject of Katherine Hepburn's acting ability ("Miss Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions from A to B"), something that is "fair to middling" runs the gamut from "C to C."
    Source(s):
    http://www.word-detective.com/080401.htm…

    so Mary Middling might have picked up from the expression. : )

    ReplyDelete
  3. NOW YOU REALLY TOUCH MY HEART

    GRANNY

    ReplyDelete
  4. I knew I had a photo of Little Shirley Temple in my photo box. She was a regular visitor to Newport Beach in the summers. I wasn't born in 1934 (yet) so this is my brother's wife's photo. Enjoy.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ANNIE, WE POSTED AT THE SAME TIME.

    GRANNY

    ReplyDelete