Fox Collection: Special Cases

The collection includes some books with moveable parts. Mother Goose Melodies with Magical Changes (3.1.7), 1879, has surprises revealed behind folds: the three wise men of Gotham are attacked by gulls and nightmarish fish. In a Sleeping Beauty Pantomime Toy Book (4.6.3), a pit orchestra plays accompaniment to a masque taking place on the stage above them. A Harlequin and Punchinello frame a clown reading a small book inserted in the middle. The Enchanted Tablet (7.1.1) is a flipbook of cut-up faces. Picture-Puzzle Toy Books (13.4.3) have blanks in the pictures with pages of the missing objects in the front and back meant to be cut and pasted. There are a few accordions, Sinbad the Sailor in Marcus Ward's Japanese Picture Stories series (12.1.3) being one. Flowers from Story Land (3.2.12) has a picture of a boy being given a long accordion called a mile-end or pull-out: "As these showy little books were first made in London and as they stretch out a long way like the road to Mile-End they were named after that far off place."

Some of the coloring books have printed color on one side and outlines on the other (Nursery Picture Gallery, 12.2.2); others—Exercises in Coloring Familiar Objects (16.1.9) and New Studies for Coloring (16.2.6)—seem to be showpieces for the printers.

A number of books have physical oddities: there is a bound-in request for a repayment of a debt in an 1818 catechism (1.2.4); the cover of Rosamond (5.5.4), 1821, is marbled over a scrap sheet of bankruptcy text; and a Little Folks supplement (6.1.1) is used as a proof sheet for a book on golf published in New York.

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