25 January 2011

Insight!

Here’s a little treat for you today – a snippet from the genuine 1940s children’s dictionary that supplies the illustrations for My First Dictionary. As you can see, the original authors weren’t entirely without their own streak of black humour...


13 comments:

Bryan White said...

That's great! If you hadn't told us, I think we would have all thought you wrote that one. Oh, the wonderful jokes about drowning and hypothermia we would have all been making. Good times.

Dr. Phil (Physics) said...

It's A Wonderful Life. (grin)

Dr. Phil

Mary said...

hahaha that is so funny. I wonder if they realized the implications there.

TheBrewsky said...

notice

(n.) The notice says that there is no skating.

(vb.) Little Dick's parents didn't notice their son flailing about in the ice, going into shock.

Anonymous said...

Notice......Not Ice......Genius

Ann said...

What a treat to see this!

Cirrocumulus said...

The notice doesn't say why there's no skating on Mr Big's private moat.
Normally the crocodiles keep trespassers out; it's only when it freezes that the guards get to shoot them.

Nicole Leigh Shaw said...

And here's a rare glimpse of life imitating art.

Anonymous said...

This is great! What is the publication that you have for the original children's dictionary?

FJL said...

It's one thing to 'NOTICE' and wax poetically just as John Gould Fletcher did in his 1886 ode to 'The Skaters':
 
BLACK swallows swooping or gliding
 
In a flurry of entangled loops and curves;
 
The skaters skim over the frozen river.
 
And the grinding click of their skates as they impinge upon the surface,
 
Is like the brushing together of thin wing-tips of silver.


A 'WARNING' of NO SKATING would have made all the difference to poor Dick who unfortunately crossed the River Styx and now sleeps with the fishes.

John Bryson said...

hahahah....I give this a double lol!
-John

p.s. My captcha word = chnobl.....NO JOKE!!! hahaah

Bryan White said...

Oh good, we're making jokes about drowning and hypothermia anyway :)

Ross Horsley said...

The original book was called The Giant Picture Dicionary for Boys and Girls and was published in 1949. So now you know!

Good drowning and hypothermia jokes, btw :-)