Bennett Edith Wilson (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good+. Dust Jacket Condition: Fair dj. Illustrated by Tom Smith Roots (illustrator). First Edition. [light shelfwear to book, top edge of text block a bit dust-soiled, small bookseller's rubber stamp at bottom corner of front pastedown (Bertrand Smith Acres of Books, Long Beach, California); jacket is worn and moderately soiled, with a small ragged chip at right side of top edge, and a large-ish chunk torn out of the rear panel (unfortunately taking quite a bit of the rear-jacket text with it)]. (color drawings) A curious piece of juvenile (I guess) fiction, about a little boy named Billy, who is seven years old when America enters World War I. (At least that's what the jacket blurb says; the book itself doesn't seem to pin him down to a particular age, and in any case the story begins a couple of years earlier than that, after the war has broken out but long before the direct participation of the U.S. Let's just say that the book plays more than a little bit fast and loose with historical chronology; for instance, an entire chapter is devoted to the reaction of Billy and his family to the sinking of the Lusitania, with the clear implication that this event propelled America into the war almost immediately.) Whatever his age, Billy is positively obsessed with the war: he talks about it all the time, has a dream about the "War Giant" coming to ravage America, and is desperate to participate in some way (his mother has given him a soldier suit, so in his mind he's practically enlisted already); this reaches its apotheosis when he actually runs away from home, intending to make his way to France and present himself as a mascot to General Pershing. (He only gets as far as New York before a kindly policeman waylays him and delivers him back home.) He also expresses a lot of concern about the plight of children in war-torn France, but is comforted somewhat by the occasional cheery letter from his father, who actually is Over There (although in exactly what capacity is never made clear) and assures Billy that the children "are being taken care of splendidly." According to the jacket blurb, Billy is "the same lovable boy he was in 'The Little Boy Who Wouldn't Undo His Own Shoes' and other Billy books -- but the "other books" part appears to be a bit of a fib, as the "Shoes" book and this one are the only two titles by this author that I can find any trace of, at least in OCLC. (And even there the traces are faint: just three copies of the present book and only a single copy of its predecessor, published in 1926.) The illustrator, Texas-born Tom Smith Roots, is somewhat less obscure, his work having appeared in Western pulp magazines during the 1930s and Western comic books during the 1960s.