Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Book cover: "Honey Bunch: Her First Trip on the Ocean"


  • Title: Honey Bunch: Her First Trip on the Ocean
  • Author: Helen Louise Thorndyke — a pseudonym for Josephine Lawrence (1889–1978)
  • Illustrator: Walter S. Rogers
  • Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap, New York
  • Year: 1927
  • Pages: 184
  • Format: Hardcover
  • First sentence: "I'm a little upset," said Honey Bunch sorrowfully.
  • Last sentence: "And here you are," said Mrs. Miller, smiling. "We'll have to call this our lucky day, Honey Bunch."
  • Character names: Honey Bunch, Mrs. Miller, Lady Clare, Mrs. Maltese, Norman Clark, Ida Camp, Elmer Gray, Anna Martin, Mary and Fannie Graham, Grace Winters, Kitty and Cora Williams ... and those are just some of the characters from the first 10 pages! There's also a China doll named Dot.
  • Notes: There were more than 30 books in the Honey Bunch series, which started in 1923 and went on for several decades. The series was produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate (see this 2011 Papergreat post). ... Josephine Lawrence, a novelist and journalist, wrote the first 16 or 17, including Honey Bunch: Her First Trip on the Ocean, which is No. 8 in the series. ... According to Deidre Johnson, writing on readseries.com:
    "Lawrence's fiction for the Stratemeyer Syndicate generally dealt with children leading comfortable, often privileged, lives. ... In an analysis of Honey Bunch, Bobbie Ann Mason observes that the stories 'celebrate materialistic values ... in Honey Bunch's luxurious world, the thrills of travel, mystery, and novelty are the pleasures of a comfortable superior order.'"
    ... A page near the back of this book contains a message to readers about the importance of the dust jacket (calling it the wrapper):
    "On the reverse side of the wrapper which comes with this book, you will find a wonderful list of stories which you can buy at the same store where you got this book.
    Don't throw away the Wrapper
    Use it as a handy catalog of the books you want some day to have. But in case you do mislay it, write to the Publishers for a complete catalog."
    Alas, this copy of Honey Bunch: Her First Trip on the Ocean that I'm holding in my hands no longer has its wrapper. ... If you're interested, copies of this 1927 book can be bought for $4-$6 on Amazon.

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