I was also rapt by the image of Big Max at home the man lived in a disturbingly grim room with cracked walls and an old crate for furniture. Big Max was the first mystery I had ever encountered, and I was fascinated by the illustrations: the royal robes of the King of Pooka Pooka Big Max’s bushy mustache the palace rooms overflowing with rubies, emeralds and gold the giant pink cake at the very end. Then I realized that Robert Lopshire, who died in 2002, had illustrated a book that I totally loved as a kid: Big Max by Kin Platt (1965), part of the Harper & Row “I Can Read Mystery” series. (We’ll leave out what we now know about Barnum & Bailey.) But these points aside, it’s a charming rhyming book very much in line with other Beginner Books by P.D. By the end of the book, the two kids he meets convince him that the CIRCUS is actually the place for him because he’s so good at impressing crowds with his tricks.
Put Me in the Zoo is a little problematic to read today, mostly because it makes no sense that this talking creature would be actively lobbying zookeepers to let him live in a cage. This is the same Robert Lopshire who wrote and illustrated the 1960 Beginner Books classic Put Me in the Zoo, about a magical polka dotted creature who, for some reason, wants to live in a zoo. The craft was suggested by a Times reader who fondly remembered learning how to make it from an old children’s book called How to Make Flibbers, etc. A few weeks ago I wrote a piece for the New York Times “At Home” section about a craft project called a “Flibber,” which you make from a few sheets of newspaper.
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