Scholastic book cover: "Ginnie and the Mystery Doll"

• Title: Ginnie and the Mystery Doll
• Author: Catherine Woolley (1904-2005)
• Illustrator: Bob Magnusen
• Publisher: Scholastic Book Services (TX 397)
• Cover price: 35 cents
• Year: First printing, September 1962 (originally published in 1960)
• Pages: 156
• Format: Paperback
• Provenance: This copy once belonged to Betsy Horn, whose name is written in cursive on the inside front cover.
• Back-cover excerpt: What begins for Ginnie as just a pleasant summer at Cape Cod ends up with an exciting mystery to solve.
• First sentence: On the Mid-Cape Highway the cloudless July sky had arched, blue and dazzling gold, over lakes and woods.
• Last sentence: It was Ginnie who jumped up, to cross the room and kiss Miss Wade gently on the cheek.
• Random excerpt from middle: There were the periwinkle blue mussels, intertwined so toughly with the line of seaweed left by the tides. Ginnie loved the many-shaded greens and blues of the stones on the shore. Why was the sand sand-colored, she wondered, when the rocks were blue?
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.72 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review excerpt #1: In 2013, Allyson wrote: "I bought this book for a dime at my school's Halloween carnival in 1971. I was 7 or 8 and it was one of the first chapter books I read. It was a favorite growing up and I passed it on to my cousins child when she was about the age I was when I first read it. Children's lit has changed a lot since 1960 when this book was published. For the better? Perhaps — but the sweet innocence of the Ginnie and Geneva stories can't harm and may even make a nice change from cynicism."
• Goodreads review excerpt #2: In 2017, Mumbler wrote: "The writing is just lovely. The depiction of the seashore, seen by a child coming to know and love it, is really exquisite."
• Rating on Amazon: 4.7 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2011, FQH wrote: "I'd love to know what today's young girls think about this book. I wonder if the lazy days of summer story telling style would appeal to their busy senses."
• Notes: The doll on the cover is a bit uncanny, but isn't nearly as spooky as the one in Tale of the Witch Doll. ... This is book #8 in Woolley's ten-book "Ginnie and Geneva Series." ... Prolific author Woolley, who also used the pen name Jane Thayer (her grandmother's name), died just a few weeks short of her 101st birthday. She was the daughter of a newspaperman, and she often drew on her experiences and world travels in her writings, according to her Associated Press obituary. She wrote on a Remington typewriter and never used a computer. ... Woolley's characters appear in 1980s ABC animated specials (and then a series) that started with The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy. You can read more about Woolley on her Find A Grave page.