The Vine: March 16, 2012
There is this book I read in the library at my elementary school, and I have been trying to remember what it was called ever since, because I loved it so much. It was a picture book with weird and strange illustrations and simple sentences underneath each picture to describe them. One picture was a train going off into the distance and one other was a picture of a lump under the carpet of a persons living room. They were cowering in fear of it and the caption read something like ‘it had returned’ or something to that effect.
I am dying to find this book but since I can remember so little of it, it has been next to impossible! Please, help!
Casey
*****
Sars,
There is a book of short stories I read in the spring of 2003. It may have been recently released in paperback at that time, and it may have been British. It may have had “Kisses” or “Kissing” in the title. It had, amongst others, the following stories: a man turns into a cello; a husband and wife have a nightly ritual of her giving him a bath, no matter what; a prince marries a woman, who starts out beautiful with long hair, but through the influence of a bitter old woman becomes fat, ugly, dirty, and eventually cuts her hair.
This book is haunting me. I hope this is enough information for someone to help me find it.
Mary
Tags: Ask The Readers popcult
Casey,
I think you’re talking about The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg. I also loved those pictures. My fifth grade teacher used the pictures as inspirations for us to write our own short stories. I always thought that was a creative project. My favorite was the one where 2 kids were skipping stones, and one of the stones skipped back.
I think the first one is The Mysteries of Harris Burdick – I have it and love it!
That first book is almost definitely The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, written by Chris van Allsburg. A couple of years back there was a short story collection where each story was inspired by one of the pictures in the original.
I am the person trying to find the short stories, and there’s an update. The story about the husband and wife with a nightly bath ritual is from the collection “Kissing in Manhattan,” but the other two stories are not in that book. I did read them in the spring of 2003, and they may have been recently released in paperback and British, but that’s all I know. I know the collection was themed around love, but the word love will obviously get me nowhere trying to find them. Thanks for the help!
The first one is the “Mysteries of Harris Burdick” by Chris Van Allsberg. It’s a mostly wordless book with pictures depicting strange scenes. Coincidentally, this year the “Chronicles of Harris Burdick” came out this year which is a collection of short stories by a variety of authors that were inspired by the original illustrations.
Doh! Why is it you always notice your typos just AFTER you hit submit?
Short stories: Here’s a book that contains Jacob’s Bath as well as others. It’s more than three and I don’t have a way to tell if these are the ones, but it might be worth checking out.
http://www.amazon.com/Bestial-Noise-House-Fiction-Reader/dp/B000HWYUE8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331906049&sr=1-1
The description on Powell’s gives a full list of the stories.
http://www.powells.com/biblio?inkey=2-9781582343341-2
Kissing in Manhattan came to mind for me too, but I can’t remember all of the individual stories. But I loved the book – so strange and interesting!
Obviously the first question has already been answered (and I didn’t have the answer anyway), but the idea of a surprisingly creepy picture book with a thing under the rug reminded me of Dr. Suess’s “There’s a Wocket in my Pocket”–with the Vug under the Rug? Only apparently they re-released that book in 1996 and took out the Vug (and something else I don’t remember).
The Vug always scared me, but in a fun way, I thought. Seems sacriligious to have removed it…
Ha, funny you mention Kissing in Manhattan. I knew I recognized the bath story, but not the others so I didn’t think that was it. Loved that book.
I now really need to get myself a copy of “Mysteries of Harris Burdick”. Sounds awesome!
@Mary-I did some “man turns into cello” Googling, and turned up a short story collection called “Don’t Tell Me The Truth About Love” by Dan Rhodes. Looks promising! Also mentions a story about a beautiful woman turning herself hideous, so even better!
Here’s a link to the Amazon page (which says it was published in 2006, but other sites say 2001…) http://tinyurl.com/6m6gxyv
Don’t Tell Me The Truth About Love sounds promising. I have it and will look through it. The premise is each story is a one-page only tale, each about a different girl the author loves and how it turns out (usually badly.)
I had a set of the original Harris Burdick plates for a while, until I cleared them out in a fit of misguided purging. I will definitely pick up the short story collection!
Whoop! Don’t Tell Me…is definitely it–the first story is Violincello–but the one page stories are actually another book by Dan Rhodes, Anthropologie. Both definitely worth a look.
YES!!! Thank you so much!! You have no idea how happy it makes me to have found the book. Tomato Nation has the best readers.
The book Casey was looking for seems to have been found, but thematically it sounds a bit like Gary Larson’s The Far side, so I thought I’d recommend them anyway :-)