Nothing to sneeze at.
So Pal Joe dropped this by the store for me on Thursday, a real oddity of a book…the Little Golden Book Little Lulu and Her Magic Tricks from 1954:
If you look closely, you may notice the table in front of Lulu and Alvin, with all th ecrafts and goings-on there, is actually three-dimensional. Because that’s not just a drawing, that’s an actual gosh-darn pack of Kleenex tissue paper embedded in a hole cut into the cover! Here’s a shot of the inside front cover:
(Yes, it’s upside down, that how it looks when you open up the cover.)
Here’s the small-print text into on the copyright page, which is like a place where you’d put something for parents to read, but it’s definitely written as an in-universe explanation for kids:
“For a long time Little Lulu was wondering how she would look in a Little Golden Book. Here, finally, she makes her bow — and of all things — as a magician.
“It was a a pleasant surprise to us to discover that Little Lulu knew how to make cute toys and other objects out of Kleenex tissues. It occurred to us that thousands of other children might want to make these, too, and so we asked the International Cellucotton Products Company how they would feel about making up for us a special pack of tissues for Little Lulu’s book. They cheerfully agreed and we are properly grateful to them.
“Have fun, and we hope the things you make turn out beautifully.
— THE PUBLISHERS”
Children: never too young to learn about corporate collaboration. Also, what kind of Steve Jackson’s Illuminati-type name is “International Cellucotton Products Company,” anyway.
Most of the book is about Lulu and her magical tissue shenanigans, as per these pages:
And the last pages are devoted to Kleenex Krafts:
What’s really amazing to me is that book and its tissues and the tissue package’s attachment to the cover have remained intact for seventy years. That no kid ever popped the tissue back out and started making Kleenex bunnies or whatever. I mean, granted, after the first year or so of ownership, the likelihood of that happening goes down quite a bit as the book gets stowed away in a box in the garage for the next several decades, but still, it’s a sight to see.
But apparently not too uncommon a sight, as a quick glaces at he eBays shows plenty of intact copies of this book to be had, at far more reasonable prices than I expected. (And far less than the price expected by whichever anonymous bookseller had pencilled in a light “$75” on the first page at some point in this book’s lifetime.)
So, I don’t know what I’m going to do with this book. I feel oddly protective of its intact nature, despite there apparently being plenty out there in similar condition. But I can’t keep everything, so probably into my shop it goes, as some price I can live with. Plus a contract to be signed by the buyer promising he’ll never open up that pack of Kleenex.
And I’m sorry to say, magician costume and mustache are not included:
…but you’ve probably got enough tissue around the house to make those, right? There’s black non-Kleenex tissue out there, I looked it up. But beware, the International Cellucotton Products Company will find out.
