ERIC KINCAID'S BIG BOOK OF NURSERY RHYMES AND FAIRY TALES by Eric Kincaid

PUBLISHER: Brimax Books, 1989
GENRE: Children's Fiction
PURCHASE: link

AUTHOR SITE: link

MY PHOTOS: link
MY GRADE: A

MY THOUGHTS: From the photos I've been able to find online, this book appears to be a compilation of his 1977 book "Eric and Lucy Kincaid's Omnibus of Nursery Rhymes", later retitled "Eric Kincaid's Nursery Rhymes", and his 1978 book "Book of Classic Fairy Tales." There are several other compilation editions too, some containing rhymes/fairy tales not in this edition. I knew by the looks of some of the illustrations that they were from the late 1960s/1970s so wasn't surprised to find they were actually from the late 1970s.

Every single page of this book is in full color and filled with illustrations. Every color you can think of is used though I didn't really give a good representation of that. I don't like that we're not told the orgin of each story/rhyme, like who authored it and when. Eric is the illustrator and I guess his wife retold the tales but it doesn't say inside the book. Most of the rhymes don't make a lick of sense and are just plain odd, like this one called "bow wow wow", "Bow wow wow, whose dog art thou? Little Tom Tinker's dog, bow wow wow." What on earth?

My two favorite stories in here are The White Dove and Jorinda and Joringel. Both contain either a witch or witch-like villian. I'd never heard of The White Dove so I looked into it. It's not the same tale as the Dutch one by that same name nor the French one, which is very different than the Dutch one. This one is about a a girl who flees her coach as it's about to be robbed. She ends up in the woods and a white dove gives her keys which unlocks doors in a tree that contains food and a bed. Later she has to go deep into the woods into the cottage of an old woman to retrieve a gold ring that will turn the dove back into a prince. He's been turned into a tree but because he's a prince, the witch lets him transform into a dove and is allowed to fly for two hours per day. Upon further research I see this is the same story as The Old Woman in the Wood by the Brothers Grimm. Jorinda and Joringel is a Brothers Grimm story too and I knew that one.

I'll leave you with the best photo of all:

IF THE REAPER RIDE by Elizabeth Norman

PUBLISHER: Avon, 1/1978
GENRE: Fiction/Historical Mystery

SETTING: Somerset, England, 1856
MY GRADE: B

SYNOPSIS: Her heart filled with dread. There was no place left on earth for her to go.

From the moment Suzanne came to Warton Hall she dared not imagine what tortuous fate awaited her in the dark embrace of the twisted men and passions that swirled around her on the rose-strewn heaths...or in the arms of the hypnotic Colonel Mark Lawson.

All she knew was the terror in her heart. And that she would need every last bit of courage to survive the approach of doom...

MY THOUGHTS:  Suzanne is seventeen. A physical descripion wasn't given but based on the cover, we can see what she looks like. Not long after arriving at her mother, Lillian, and stepfather, Fitz, Lord Trevenbury's, home, someone's out to killer her. We don't find out why until almost 300 pages in. I didn't guess who it was but shouldn't have been surprised, looking back on it.

Suzanne has no relationship with her mother at all and has only met her a couple times. She's been in boarding shool her whole life. Unless I'm misunderstanding what Lillian said/implied on the last page, she's a very evil woman.

Her stepfather, Fitz, is a bald 4 1/2 foot tall dwarf with a deformed, baby-sized left arm and tiny hand with only three fingers. One of those arms moves uncontrollaby often. He can be seen on the back cover of the novel along with the butler, Apsley. Fitz is a raving, controling lunatic. 

The timespan is only a few months, if that. The mystery was interesting and suspenseful but the book was very slow. It should have been at least 30 pages shorter, mostly due to uninteresting, pointless dialogue during dinners/get-togethers dragging out the story. There were too many characters, most of which had nothing to do with the plotline. The cover leads you to believe there's a romance in here but there's not despite there being a marriage proposal right at the end. I don't know why that was even put into the story and seemed out of place. Mark Lawson's character is almost pointless.