Last week I was in New York for the ABAA New York Antiquarian Book Fair and also the Manhattan Vintage Book & Ephemera Show. As always, New York offered amazing bookstores and a buzzing city.

I had some spare time, and in keeping with the book theme, decided to visit the main branch of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. For me, this building is the very best of what a library can be; beautiful architecture, unique books and a great children’s book collection.

Walking down Fifth Avenue, my first glimpse of the library was the iconic lions (top left), Patience and Fortitude. The library lions are instantly recognizable and mark the library as a special place. On this visit, there were two Lego replicas of the beloved lions (top right) inside the building – definitely worth a look for Lego lovers!

The NYPL is the second largest library in the US and the third largest in the world, with at least 53 million items. The building was designed by John Merven Carrère and Thomas Hastings between 1897 and 1911 and is stunning example of Beaux-Arts design. At the time of construction, the library was the largest marble structure ever built in the US.

In a corner of the children’s library I discovered an exhibit of the real Winnie the Pooh animals: Eeyore, Piglet, Kanga, Tigger and Pooh. The animals belonged to Christopher Milne, son of the author, A.A. Milne and the books were donated to the New York Public Library in 1987 by the publisher of the Pooh books (aside: if you don’t know the origins of Winnie the Pooh, they are fascinating).

When you look at these animals you can see they were well loved, with worn patches and bits of fur missing, this makes them that much more endearing . Knowing that the stories were based on treasured and well-loved toys makes them even better to read, I can’t wait to rediscover these tales with my daughters.

The real animals of Winnie-the-Pooh: Piglet

Guest post compliments of Maria Hutchison, AbeBooks Account Manager for our rare and collectible segment.

Louis Wain was a British artist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, best known for his whimsical and chaotic drawings of cats. If you’ve come across any of Wain’s art, you know it’s memorable. The cats and kittens are depicted with large, wide eyes, often with crazy, spiky fur, and with psychedelic patterns and backgrounds. The cats are anthropomorphized, wearing clothes, having conversations, playing musical instruments and more. If you are a fan of cats, or unusual children’s art, they are utterly charming.

Wain’s story is rather a sad one, unfortunately, in many regards. He was born into a family with a lot of mental illness, and was the only one of six children in the family ever to marry. His longtime devotion to cats began when he was married in his early twenties. His wife Emily fell ill with breast cancer, and Wain found that their kitten, Peter, lifted his sick wife’s spirits immeasurably. He began to dress the kitten up and teach him to do little tricks to make his wife happy. He also began to sketch Peter, and it was on a promise to Emily that he persevered and published his first drawings.

Wain was a highly productive artist for the following three decades or so, providing work for countless children’s books, as well as advertisements and features in magazines. His love of cats defined his entire oeuvre (though he did branch into dogs, from time to time), and he became chairman of The National Cat Club in 1898, and even had his own Louis Wain’s Annual from 1901-1915.

But Wain’s success did little to secure his financial future – he had a mother and five sisters to support, and was a poor businessman, often selling his work outright with no thought to copyright or royalties, and was taken advantage of frequently.

Around 1907, Wain’s own mental health began to decline rapidly, and the previously affable, good-natured artist became paranoid, suspicious and delusional as schizophrenia began to take hold. He was committed in 1924, to the pauper ward of a mental hospital. When news of his circumstance reached the public, there was outcry from many, including H.G. Wells, who championed Wain’s cause. Wain was, as a result, moved to a much more pleasant hospital with abundant green space (and even cats), and he spent the remaining years of his life there in relative peace.

Some students of Wain’s art have claimed that the deterioration and change in Wain’s mental state can be clearly demonstrated through a study of his drawings and paintings, while others argue that is problematic. The latter claim that Wain’s frenetic, chaotic, psychedelic-patterned cats were experimentation with for, color and style, and that Wain also continued to create more conventional (albeit playing sports and talking) cats well into his later career. It is tough to know whether to lend any credence to the theories, as few if any of Wain’s works were dated, anyway.

Regardless, for a cat lover, an art lover, or a collector of vintage children’s books, Louis Wain is not to be missed.

And if you can’t get enough weird children’s books about cats, be sure to check out Mee-a-ow! Or, Good Advice to Cats and Kittens by R.M. Ballantyne.

Enjoy this selection of Wain’s cats, depicting great variation in his artistic style over the years.

While looking for good fodder for our wacky, fun and ever-growing Weird Book Room, I will often come across a book with a title or premise that seems weird at first, but then after a bit of delving, makes perfect sense. And in some cases, like today’s, the book turns out to be fascinating and beautiful, too.

That’s how I came across this book by Shirley Hibberd, first published in 1872. It’s called The Seaweed Collector: A Handy Guide to the Marine Botanist. Purported to be a great introduction to seaweeds, sponges and other plant and animal life under the sea, the book contains numerous black and white illustrations as well as eight tissue-guarded glorious color woodcut plates. It helps identify different varietals by many factors, as well as helping collectors classify and sort their finds. It used to be more common (though they are still seaweed hobbyists and enthusiasts today, apparently) for sea-visitors to collect and press seaweeds as scientific specimens or even souvenirs. Most commonly, they dried and pressed specimens were kept as objects of beauty, kept under glass or even framed and hung as art.

The Perogy Cat was born in 2003, which makes today his 10th birthday. If you want to be specific, it is the 10th anniversary of the first Perogy Cat drawing by Gareth Gaudin. If you just went: “what?” and enjoy comics, here’s a thing you might like to know about.

Gareth Gaudin arrives at his shop on a sunny Thursday morning to welcome us, and immediately finds that some drunken hooligan has presumably leapt in the air and smacked his wooden sign, which now hangs crookedly by one side only. He reaches to adjust it, then winces and tells us he has thrown his back out by obligingly tossing his three-and-a-half-year-old daughter in the air. Still, despite injury to both back and pride, Gaudin is good-humored, cheerful and game to go after ferreting out some acetaminophen from behind the counter.

The shop, which Gaudin runs with his co-owner Lloyd Chesley, is Legends Comics and Books, found at 633 Johnson Street in the heart of downtown Victoria, BC. The pair have been in business together since 2003 – Gaudin had been at Legends for a decade, was ready to buy, and went into partnership with Chesley.

Gaudin, a long-time Victoria resident and graduate of Oak Bay High School, also draws his own comic strip, The Magic Teeth Dailies, and is the mastermind behind…

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This one was a lot of fun to research, since the dragons in books often differ widely from one another. Some are telepathic, some can breathe or swim underwater, some are fire-breathing, and some can even teleport. There don’t seem to be too many hard and fast rules around dragons. I suppose they’re like vampires in that way (some sparkle in sunlight while others burst into flame, some can fly and some can’t, some drink blood like vicious fanged fiends and some skulk about in shadows, brooding and pouting) – if it’s a fictional, mythical creation, authors really embrace the freedom to apply their own rules, for better or worse.
Literary Dragons

(Also, it says “Published by Penguin books”).

But that’s about all I could find out. There aren’t many Ptarmigan Books available for sale on the site, andf I could find very little information about the Ptarmigan brand, which seems to have been short-lived. From what I could find, the Ptarmigan name appeared in the mid-1940s on penguin books devoted to puzzles, trivia, word games and the like. And almost all of them were written by a man named Hubert Phillips, who was an English economist, journalist and author, as well as an expert on puzzles and games. I love these covers.

We were certainly enchanted by many aspects of Hemingway Home – the beautiful pool with its potted plants and whimsical decorative elephants; the cat-fountain made from a urinal sourced from a bar Hemingway frequented; seeing Hemingway’s writing workshop; the house itself including countless lovely chandeliers and sweet green shutters, and much, much more.

But our favorite part was the cats. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 cats, many claimed to be descended from Hemingway’s own polydactyl (six-toed! Think cats with mittens) kitties roam the grounds, seemingly carefree and happy. There are kitty hideaway houses nestled here, there and everywhere on the estate, many with cats inside. But it was also common to find a cat on a railing, a cat snoozing in a patch of sunny hibiscus, or a cat on the stairs. I had to laugh at Hemingway’s bedroom, whose bed and its beautiful chenille bedspread are off-limits to visitors, but which boasted two sleeping cats. I liked very much the casual approach to the furry felines. They are clearly well fed, well-cared for having their needs met, but otherwise they are largely left to their own devices. Which is where someone took umbrage, according to an article on csmonitor.com:

At some point several years ago, a museum visitor expressed concern about the cats’ care. The visitor took that concern all the way to the US Department of Agriculture and, literally, made a federal case out of it.

Soon USDA inspectors showed up in Key West. They said that if the museum wanted to display cats it needed an exhibitor’s license as required under the federal Animal Welfare Act. (That’s the same law that regulates circuses, zoos, and traveling dog and pony shows.)

Federal officials advised the museum that it also needed to take action to: Confine the cats in individual cages each night, or construct a higher fence around the property, or install an electric wire atop the existing brick wall, or hire a night watchman to keep an eye on the cats.

The museum was ordered to tag each cat for identification, and add additional elevated resting surfaces within the cat’s enclosures.

USDA officials also advised that the museum would face fines for noncompliance.

The case has been appealed and re-appealed and gone back and forth, but as it stands today, it does look as though the people in charge of Hemingway Home will have to make some substantial changes to their approach to the cats there. I very much hope that the story has a happy ending, a mutually satisfactory solution is reached, and the cats can continue going about their cat business while charming visitors to no end.

The whole thing does seem perversely opposite the spirit of Key West, though, where aimless wandering seems encouraged by people and animals alike, and the spirit of be-yourself-and-do-your-thing is alive and well. There are chickens and roosters wandering around the streets haphazardly, and people pay them little mind. There are people sitting in doorways, on street corners, drinking a beer, smoking a cigar, playing an instrument, just enjoying a good sit. It seems ridiculous to the extreme to get one’s knickers in a twist about regulating the cats.

Two of the cats at Ernest Hemingway House. The white one is named Spencer Tracy.

There you go. I’ll bet you feel weirder already (and possibly a little outraged).

David Mason Books has been in business for 40 years and is home to over 60,000 books, including 19th century British and American literature, modern first editions, Canadian literature, science, travel & history from the 18th to 20th century, fine bindings and much more. If you find yourself in Toronto, be sure to stop in for a purr with the cats and your next great read!