Tuesday, April 9, 2019

Book cover: "Kemlo and the Sky Horse"


  • Title: Kemlo and the Sky Horse
  • Author: E.C. Eliott, which was one of the many, many pen names of Reginald Alec Martin (1908-1971)
  • Illustrator: A. Bruce Cornwell (1920-2012). There's an excellent post about Cornwell on the Bear Alley blog.
  • Series: This is book #3 of 15 in the Kemlo series, which was published between 1954 and 1963. Some of the other titles are amazing:
    • Kemlo and the Crazy Planet (1954)
    • Kemlo and the Zones of Silence (1954)
    • Kemlo and the Martian Ghosts (1955)
    • Kemlo and the Space Lanes (1955)
    • Kemlo and the Craters of the Moon (1955)
    • Kemlo and the Star Men (1955)
    • Kemlo and the Gravity Rays (1956)
    • Kemlo and the End of Time (1957)
    • Kemlo and the Purple Dawn (1957)
    • Kemlo and the Zombie Men (1958)
    • Kemlo and the Space Men (1959)
    • Kemlo and the Satellite Builders (1960)
    • Kemlo and the Space Invaders (1961)
    • Kemlo and the Masters of Space (1963)
  • Publisher: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd.
  • Publication year: 1954
  • Pages: 189
  • Format: Hardcover
  • Dust jacket excerpt: "Kemlo, captain of Space Scouts, and his young friend Krillie receive a visit from two Earth children, Dane and Lesa, Krillie's cousins. Lesa is quite prepared to be thrilled by all she sees on Satellite Belt K, but Dane sneers at everything — especially at the mechanical horse in the games-room. He boasts of his own prowess with real horses, and is overheard by their science engineering master from Earth, who determines to teach him a lesson and at the same time to evolve, with the help of Kemlo and the other troop leaders, a new mechanical wonder, a New World Pegasus, a horse that can gallop in Space. ..."
  • Provenance: See below.
  • First sentence: 'Well, aren't you excited about them coming?' Krinsetta asked crossly.
  • Last sentence: Perhaps it wasn't so silly after all.
  • Random sentence from the middle #1: We can have fun in a space scooter being bounced about on the spumewaves of a space ship on its way to one of the planets.
  • Spumewaves? Don't look at me.
  • Random sentence from the middle #2: Two more days passed before the next passenger ship arrived, bringing the first supplies of cowboy suits.
  • Goodreads rating: 4.40 stars (out of 5.0)
  • Review: I can't find any reviews of Kemlo and the Sky Horse online. I can't even find much about the Kemlo series in general. But there were plenty of fans, of course, for a series to run through 15 books. Writing of the first book in the series, Tim stated the following on Goodreads last year: "I recall pulling out every one of the Kemlo books from our local library in Lincoln. I must have enjoyed it — I kept coming back for more. I can't remember anything about it, but it certainly held the attention of one fifteen year-old some 55 years ago." Meanwhile, you can see the vibrant covers of all 15 books in the series on Austin Tate's Blog.

But wait, there's more

This copy of Kemlo and the Sky Horse was once a Methodist Sunday School "third prize" awarded to someone whose name appears to be Len Wishart.

And here's Cornwell's dandy frontispiece for this book...

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