Obscure book: "Gabby's Magic Brooms" take on U.S. car culture

Happy Halloween! Here's one final treat for spooky season. Gabby's Magic Brooms, written and illustrated by Marietta Caldwell Schumacher and published in 1968, was really difficult to track down. Fortunately, when I did find a copy it was very inexpensive, due to the fact that it's a library-bound edition in poor condition, with stains and multiple tears. 

That suits me just fine. This is a beautifully illustrated, fascinating and somewhat depressing (more on that in a bit) children's book, and I'm thrilled to be able to document it here. I'm almost certain it was the only published book by Schumacher, who lived from 1925 to 2012. It's a shame she didn't have more books published, though it seems she worked consistently as an artist and had numerous gallery showings.

This hardcover copy measures 7.5 inches by 10 inches, is 48 pages (almost every one illustrated), was published by Little, Brown and Company, and had an original price of $3.50. It is a stated first edition and was once in circulation in the King County Library System in Washington state, which is prseumably where it got all of its wear and tear.

The book's dedication reads "For the father of Shirin, David, Paul and John." That would be Marietta's husband, Paul John Fortuyn Schumacher (1924-1995) and those are their four children. Paul was the chief of archaeological investigations for the Western Service Center under the aegis of the National Park Service from 1956 until 1972.

Here's my summation of the plot of Gabby's Magic Brooms: A witch named Gabadale (her friends call her "Gabby") lives with a bunch of ghosts in a big old house in the middle of nowhere. One day, they learn that the house is standing in the way of a new eight-lane freeway and will be demolished. In a deal to save her home, Gabby uses magic to turn all cars into flying brooms. No cars, you see, means no need for freeways. It goes great at first. People love the freedom and convenience of traveling by broom instead of by car. But not everyone is happy. Schumacher writes: "Meanwhile, in a town named Detroit, men who make automobiles took notice." Alas, the witch has run afoul of automakers, road builders and, perhaps worst of all, "the oil men down in Texas." The supernatural is no match for Big Oil and the auto industry. So Gabby reverses the spell and turns all of the magic brooms into little red cars. Then she makes the only deal she can: She promises to never again use her magic to turn cars into brooms, if the builders promise never to bulldoze her home. The final illustration shows car-filled freeways winding all around Gabby's house. 

A bit dystopian, no?

I'd also note that it was published three years before The Lorax. 

In a July 1968 review for The Fresno Bee, Patricia Miles Martin wrote: "Gabby's ingenuity in saving her house makes a delightful story, in which one learns in this laugh-aloud book that even the least of us have inalienable rights. The is the author-artist's first book for children, and may we see many more."

The Oakland Tribune noted in August 1968: "This is the literary venture of Marietta Caldwell Schumacher, an artist and portrait painter. She views her books as emphasizing 'the precious right of the individual to maintain his identity in an increasingly complex society.'"

The only recent review I came across was by "Abigail." Here's an excerpt from her review on Goodreads that was posted in 2021: "While I'm not sure just how I feel about the resolution of the central dilemma here — the idea of living in a house surrounded on all sides by a busy freeway fills me with horror — I liked pretty much everything else, from Gabby's can-do attitude, to her creative solution to the problem. ... The depiction of Gabby herself, with her extremely tall hat (bent at the top), her ruffled dress with its poofs, and her buzzard-like companion, was the best part! She somehow managed to be both cute and just a bit spooky."

I'm going to close by posting numerous images of the book's pages (way more than I usually do) for posterity, as this is a very difficult book to track down and there's not much about it or Marietta Caldwell Schumacher on the internet.