Fadedgiant.net

At Fadedgiant Books

The Charles Addams Mother Goose by Charles Addams (Illustrator)

Amazon.com: New Yorker cartoonist (and creator of the altogether ooky Addams Family characters) Charles Addams tampers with tradition to great effect in The Charles Addams Mother Goose, first published in 1967, and now reissued as a deluxe edition. While Ms. Goose's original nursery rhymes remain unchanged, Addams casts his spell on a selected few poems with new visual twists. A less wholesome, more anemic Mistress Mary has never been seen, and her bare-lightbulb-lit basement garden of mushrooms and heads of "pretty maids all in a row" is quite unsettling. Jack Sprat and his wife are, of course, cannibals. Nine-day-old porridge is disgusting... so naturally a witch is the porridge preparer, and goblins are the only ones who would like it "nine days old." Humpty Dumpty's story, on the other hand, feels a little cheerier than the original: rather than leaving the egg irreparably broken, the illustrator shows a dinosaur hatching! Tee Addams, Charles Addams's wife, writes an insightful introduction for this lovely, oversized edition, and the book closes with a scrapbook of family photos and pictures of Addams's earlier work. Kids familiar with Mother Goose's rhymes will be delighted (and perhaps only slightly terrified) by Addams's playful interpretations. (All ages) --Karin Snelson

MY CROWD by Charles Addams

By "mwreview" - My Crowd is a collection of some 200 cartoons (most of which are full page) by the comically macabre illustrator Charles Addams. About half of these cartoons focus on the ghoulish family who enjoys the things in life many find to be hideous (like lovely poisonous plants and Ebenezer Scrooge "bless his heart"). This family, who was introduced by Addams in the New Yorker in 1932, spawned the T.V. show named after the artist. The cartoons featuring this family are some of the best ones in this books; from the bratty son hanging up "Bridge Out" and "Blasting Ahead" signs he stole for his bedroom to the proud parents reading a letter from the school about their son's "perverse, crafty, and wanton" behavior, to poor "Lurch" being admonished for not picking up an eye of newt at the grocery store. The father is more freaky than the amorous Gomez of the T.V. show. The drawings of the mother (Morticia in the series, the characters were not given names in the cartoon) are the best. Her body language and expressions are great, even if she is just standing with her arms crossed. Other reoccurring characters, like the handyman who's asked to fix a squeak on a trap door and puts in a window so the family has a delightful view of the cemetery lends the family series even more continuity.

The other cartoons are also often ghoulish but also very witty. Some have no text like the drawing of two unicorns watching in the rain as an arc sails away or an actress screaming directly to the camera on the movie screen while everyone in the audience turns around to see what she's screaming at. Then there is the couple driving past a sign that says "Children At Play" and, ahead of them, you see children ready to push a giant boulder into their path. Another one of my favorites are the prince and princess telling the Medieval marriage counselor they are not "living happily ever after." The cartoons were taken from six books by Charles Addams so, it is probably meant to whet one's appetite around the time of the last Addam's Family movie rather than to be an exhaustive chronicle of Addams' work. If you like dark humor (i.e. Edward Gorey) this book is for you.