The Curious Cruise of Captain Santa.
Chicago: The Reilly & Lee Co. (1926) early or first printing, grey boards with full pasted-on yellow plate, blue titles, Santa at the helm with Penny and Hugger looking on, plain endpapers, many illustrations in tones of red, brown, and black; 7.25x9.5"; 124 pp. Juvenile hardback.
Santa wants to find a new toys, so Jim, the adopted chimney sweep, Hugger the serious Polar Bear, Penny the motherly penguin, and Santa set off in the good ship Chimneypot to find the island of the Live Toys. Grand adventures as they meet Neptune, find a cannibal island (stereotypical pictures), and sail beneath the sunset to Rocking Island and finally to Doll Island. The dolls long to become Christmas presents, and, though the life goes out of them when they reach the real world, Santa is sure that "they will come alive again if they are loved enough." A wonderful Christmas tale, imaginative and direct, one of a few non-Oz books by this writer and the only Neill/Plumly non-Oz effort.
CONDITION: Good Minus; Sept. 1926 gift inscription on half title; although the cover plate picture is bright, the yellow background and grey cloth are grubby and the corners of the plate are chipped off, extrems slightly bumped and worn through, wrinkled spine; paper cracked at front hinge so shaken but holding, back ok, wrinkled spine, slight 1/16" inch warp; two 3/4" margin tears. pages with intermittent handling soil in margins and light reading wrinkles and a few tiny margin tears on first four chapters, the rest generally unwrinkled and clean. Item #20287
Price: $180.00