Saturday, October 31, 2009

spooky doings

Perhaps the kid dropped his bag of trick-or-treat candy (and shed his costume) sprinting for safety. Illustration from introductory chapter of A Red Skel(e)ton in Your Closet, a 1965 anthology of "ghost stories gay and grim" selected for young readers by popular film & TV comedian Red Skelton. The book contains 21 interior illustrations which are uncredited, but Flora's trademarks are unmistakable. The artist was under contract to Harcourt, Brace at the time, and in all probability was prohibited from artist attribution for illustrations in children's books issued by other publishers (this volume was a Grosset & Dunlap title). The best of the Skel(e)ton illustrations were reproduced in our recent book, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora.

1 comment:

Irwin Chusid said...

We recently discovered a copy of this book with the original dust jacket. The inside back flap contains an illustrator credit for "J. Flora."