Books 02 Feb 2008 09:18 am

Steig’s Bdsplr

- William Steig’s first big children’s book was CDB published in 1968. This book was an enormous success. It used letters to communicate ideas. The cover tells it all. C D B (see the bee – get it?).
Below are a couple of other pages illustrated to demonstrate further how he took the idea forward.

The book was enough of a success that there was a sequel – C D C published in 1984.

Most people, I think, are familiar with these two books but do not know the original sequel (published before CDC.) That book is The Bad Speller, published in 1970.

I thought I’d post a couple of images from this book. They’re pretty amusing, and I think the drawings border the work Steig was doing for The New Yorker and mixing it with his children’s illustrations. Several of the images definitely predate some of the books he would eventually write.

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One Response to “Steig’s Bdsplr”

  1. on 04 Feb 2008 at 3:18 pm 1.Henry Lowengard said …

    I really like these “invented spellings” (as we refer to them in our house). Somehow, they fit really well with Steig’s slightly blotty ink lines. They also seem to be the distant ancestors of the “lol cats” Internet jokes.
    Thanks so much for posting them!

    Fans of the alphabet may like to listen to the old Jack Paar show theme song “IM4U” that I posted in the 365 days project last year:
    http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/07/365-days-208—.html

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