About this Item
A very scarce signed copy of this photo-illustrated children's book written by Dr. Seuss's wife, Helen Marion Palmer Geisel. Palmer, a key executive over the Beginner Books imprint, collaborated on several picture books that explore the possibilities of using staged photographs as illustrations. The book is filled with the imagined, exaggerated exploits of a young boy, played by Rawli Davis, a kid the San Diego-based author and photographer discovered at an elementary school near their homes. Many young boys have fantasies about guns and shoot-outs but these are rarely indulged in modern childrens books. In this book, however, written as the Viet Nam War ramped up and the ranks of soldiers swelled at military training bases in Southern California, the protagonist hangs out with soldiers on a firing range and even takes part in a military parade (which required a little guerrilla action, with Rawli leaping in front of a parade without permission and posing just long enough for Fayman to take a shot). Helen Palmer was married to Dr. Seuss (Theodor "Ted" Geisel) for forty years. She, too, wrote children's books, often using the plausibly masculine name H. Marion Palmer as with her series based on Walt Disney films in the 1940s. She won an Academy Award with her husband for the documentary Design for Death in 1947. She co-founded the Beginner Books company in the 1950s and was one of three partners in the business. Beginner Books "wouldn't have flourished without Helen Palmer Geisel" (Paul V. Allen, I Can Read It All By Myself, p. 29). Palmer has been largely forgotten, eclipsed by the second Mrs. Geisel, Audrey Stone Dimond, a close friend of the Geisels with whom Ted began having an affair about the time Helen became seriously ill in the mid-1960s. Helen committed suicide in 1967. In her suicide note she asked her husband, "What has happened to us?" and then continued, "Your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed. Sometimes, think of the fun we had thru the years." Not long after Helen's death, Ted wrote in a letter, "My best friend is being divorced and I'm going to Reno to comfort his wife." As soon as Mrs. Dimond established residency in Nevada (the fastest way to get end a marriage in the 1960s), she filed for divorce and married Ted. First edition (earliest identifiable printing, priced 195/195 with 33 titles on the rear of the jacket). A very good copy with shelfwear to the bottom edge, in a very good dust jacket with wear to the spine ends. This copy is inscribed by the author and is very scarce thus?Helen Palmer signed few books?"To my dear Irish friends from Helen Palmer." NB: Beginner Books do not identify different printings. Many and perhaps most titles were reprinted with no changes. Over time, as additional books were published in the series, the dust jackets changed. The jacket on this title was revised to list 35 books (with part of the list in two columns, which is a way to tell the second printing without counting) on the back panel. See Zielinski, Beginner Books: First Edition Guide (2024).
Seller Inventory # 366078
Contact seller
Report this item
