Day 317: more Random Topics
The second one that came up (after Fun With Poodles) was "The Secret Life of Benjamin Franklin".
I don't think it is all that secret that he was an inveterate flirt and womanizer, especially in France, as Ambassador.
What I remember enjoying about Ben Franklin was a young adult fiction book about him by one of my favorite 1940s/1950s authors, Robert Lawson, who is probably most famous for writing Rabbit Hill, but who wrote a number of other excellent books as well, including a sequel to that one. His books remind me of the ones by Robert McCloskey, who overlapped with him, though Lawson was much older (b. 1898, d. 1957). Lawson illustrated The Story of Ferdinand, the pacifist bull, which is older than I thought, having been published in 1936. Anyway, it looks like the very first book he wrote as well as illustrated was Ben and Me (1939), which was about a mouse who lived in Benjamin Franklin's headgear, a sort of capacious fur hat. It was an enjoyable biography and mouse adventure. Seems to me there was a long spate of time during which tales about talking mice were all the rage in the 1930s through 1960s. He also illustrated Mr. Popper's Penguins and Adam of the Road. I was never that fond of the former, but the latter was one of the many books set in the Middle Ages that I loved.
Other excellent books actually by Robert Lawson:
I Discover Columbus (1941)
Rabbit Hill (1944)
Mr. Revere and I (from the perspective of Paul Revere's horse) (1953)
The Tough Winter (sequel to Rabbit Hill( (1954)
Captain Kidd's Cat (1956)
The Great Wheel (1957) -- about Robert Ferris who designed the huge ferris wheel for Chicago's Columbian Exposition... a really nice book.
And this one is the scarred old veteran rabbit, Uncle something or other, lecturing the young fry about the dangers of dogs. From Rabbit Hill. Or possibly from The Tough Winter. I wonder if any of these are available as ebooks? I'll have to look.
I don't think it is all that secret that he was an inveterate flirt and womanizer, especially in France, as Ambassador.
What I remember enjoying about Ben Franklin was a young adult fiction book about him by one of my favorite 1940s/1950s authors, Robert Lawson, who is probably most famous for writing Rabbit Hill, but who wrote a number of other excellent books as well, including a sequel to that one. His books remind me of the ones by Robert McCloskey, who overlapped with him, though Lawson was much older (b. 1898, d. 1957). Lawson illustrated The Story of Ferdinand, the pacifist bull, which is older than I thought, having been published in 1936. Anyway, it looks like the very first book he wrote as well as illustrated was Ben and Me (1939), which was about a mouse who lived in Benjamin Franklin's headgear, a sort of capacious fur hat. It was an enjoyable biography and mouse adventure. Seems to me there was a long spate of time during which tales about talking mice were all the rage in the 1930s through 1960s. He also illustrated Mr. Popper's Penguins and Adam of the Road. I was never that fond of the former, but the latter was one of the many books set in the Middle Ages that I loved.
Other excellent books actually by Robert Lawson:
I Discover Columbus (1941)
Rabbit Hill (1944)
Mr. Revere and I (from the perspective of Paul Revere's horse) (1953)
The Tough Winter (sequel to Rabbit Hill( (1954)
Captain Kidd's Cat (1956)
The Great Wheel (1957) -- about Robert Ferris who designed the huge ferris wheel for Chicago's Columbian Exposition... a really nice book.
And this one is the scarred old veteran rabbit, Uncle something or other, lecturing the young fry about the dangers of dogs. From Rabbit Hill. Or possibly from The Tough Winter. I wonder if any of these are available as ebooks? I'll have to look.
