Birthday Present
ByFRANCES EISENBERG
NEXT week my nephew has a birthday, so this afternoon when I was passing through the book department of one of the large stores, I stopped to select a volume suitable for a three-year-old.
I stood by the table, looking over the display with a feeling of nostalgia. There among the new titles were a number of old familiar faces. The sight of them filled me with satisfaction. How reassuring, I thought, to know that although the styles in adult fiction change with the season, and last year’s novel is as passé as last, year’s hat, one can always go back to the books one loved as a child and find them exactly the same.
I picked up a copy of Alice in Wonderland. “This is a pop-up book” read a sentence beneath the title.
As I was turning the pages, reading a sentence here and there with a reminiscent smile, I got a real surprise. Right in the middle of Chapter Three, up sprang a paper replica (in color) of all the characters in the caucus race. In spite of the warning on the cover, I was not prepared for their sudden appearance. Somewhat nervously, I laid the pop-up book aside and looked around for something else.
There was Jack and the Beanstalk, an animated book. I opened it cautiously, but nothing popped up. However, on page eight was a picture of Jack in the Giants’ house which actually moved. You pulled a tab which caused the Giant to jerk his head this way and that while he counted ihe piles of gold on the table. There were four animated illustrations in the book, and after putting each of them through its paces, I plunged ahead, prepared now for anything I might encounter.
My next discovery was a rather mild one — a copy of The Three Bears in which the animals were covered with real fur, but did not move. Giving this one only a cursory glance, I moved down the table, noting as I went a tall Mother Goose, an elongated volume about four feet by five inches; the panorama book, which opened out into a jointed picture approximately ten feet long; and various other novelties, among them one in which the characters’ heads and bodies were on different pages, the task of the little reader being to fit the heads to the correct trunks.
There were also books with gadgets attached, such as the police book, with a real whistle, and a story about Mexico with three genuine Mexican jumping beans in a cellophane case on the front cover. I made brief acquaintance with the fold-away books, in which the pages had to be refolded in such a manner as to present a coherent sequence of events; the pullout books, in which the pages pulled out to a length of six yards instead of turning, and the glowing-eye books, which had on the cover a wooden button painted to represent the face of some small animal. The button was so treated chemically, according to the information on the jacket, that if the book was exposed to a bright light and then taken into a darkened room, the eyes of the animal would glow in a lifelike manner.
About this time I was accosted by a smiling saleswoman who inquired if she could help me.
“Yes,” I said gratefully, “ I am looking for a book for a little boy three years old.”
“Oh, yes,” she said brightly. “Now, let’s see. Does he like fire engines? How about The Fire Engine Book?" The Fire Engine Book, which was animated, had a paper fireman’s hat which the reader could assemble and wear while he manipulated the pictures.
“I was thinking of something more in the old tradition,” I said. “ He’s a rather conservative child.”
She looked somewhat perplexed. “How about Mother Goose?” she suggested in a helpful tone. “That’s always good for small children. We have the tall Mother Goose, the pull-out Mother Goose, the surprise Mother Goose, and the animated Mother Goose. Which would you prefer?”
“Do you have a Mother Goose about twelve by nine inches with immovable illustrations?” I asked hopefully.
She shook her head. “ I’m afraid not,” she said with regret. “There isn’t much demand for that, type of book any more.”
I thanked her and went around the corner to a little bookshop which I sometimes frequent. There without any difficulty I bought an old-fashioned Mother Goose in which nothing pops, moves, or whistles. It contains no wool, fur, or feathers. It does not glow in the dark. All the pictured characters have their heads on, and the illustrations are fixed firmly on the tops of the pages with the verses underneath. It is a very ordinary, unexciting book. In fact, you can do practically nothing with it except read it.