Book of Short Stories, By Fifth Grade Pupils

Images - Book Photos & Graphics

Bookplate - Boy with Book

"Harry W" Bookplate

fig. 1 bookplate bearing "Harry W", 1931's Keyser Söze?

Being a bit obsessed with bookplates (how can ya not?) here's a cleaned version of the one found in this book for you to print and now use in your books. The original measures 2 3/4 inches by 3 1/2 inches (see figure 1).

bookplate boy with book

Interior Pages 42-43: "Spring", "In The Valley", "Toby Tyler", and "Pretending"

The header of each page has, on even pages, "By Fifth Grade Pupils", and on the right or odd-numbered pages, "A Book of Short Stories". Read "Pretending".

Book's tattered page edges

fig. 2 Unfortunately the pages are quite brittle which prevented using a flatbed scanner and OCR-ing the text. Even shooting with the camera, converting to grayscale, and sharpening -- even that failed (at least with Adobe Acrobat Pro's OCR). On the upside, every page is really beautifully patina'ed.

pages 42-43 photo, Spring, In The Valley, Toby Tyler, and Pretending

Book Cover

Judged solely by its cover this looks to be a small, pocket accounting or shopkeeper's ledger.

"Book of Short Stories" cover

Bookplate, inside Cover

bookplate sketch detail: boy with book

fig. 3 No reason to have included this again -- except it's a great image, with a Winsor McCay-esque tuft of hair protruding over the book's cover.

"Harry W" taunts, a mystery like none other since "Keyser Söze" or Deep Throat's identity, or that utterance "Rosebud", or perhaps I'm overthinking this a bit. Regardless, it's a nice bookplate, eh?

inside cover: bookplate "Harry W"

Title Page

Ornament Detail, Title Page

fig. 4 Though the cover is unadorned they did add this great ornament to the Title Page (another bonus: having cleaned and retraced this in Illustrator I'm sure I'll reuse this somewhere.)

The title page bears a second lost world, throw-away tease: "printed and bound under supervision of K.E. Killeen, Director of Handiwork"! Ummmm, hey, yo... I want that job!? Please??!

title page: "Book of Short Stories"

Introduction: "Your Little Friend..."

The tone of this introduction pleases me no end! The paper's about as smooth as a weekly's newsprint, which, combined with the yellowing, has thwarted OCR efforts.

Your Little Friend The Fifth Grade Book Photo

Image Copyright Info

My photos of the book are made available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. See my copyright statemtent here.