Pirates! (Argh etc)

Here's something interesting, from the days before ridiculous Internet-based stuff reduced pirates to nothing more than annoying memes (and by extension, stuff like "National Talk-Like-A-Pirate-Day"). The days when pirates were romantic and exciting and murderous and fascinating all at once, and not something that's given Johnny Depp a career for life. This is a souvenir book from 1968, promoting the new Pirates of the Caribbean ride at California's Disneyland. Amazing what charity shops can be hiding, isn't it?

Filled with historical information, production drawings and photographs, and a guided tour of the ride itself, it's a nice read and a "historical document" of sorts - apparently most of the original animatronics from the ride have been replaced by likenesses of Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush and the rest of them. And of course, in the finest of traditions, Walt Disney's the only one who gets a named credit in the whole book! If anyone can tell me who the artists of any of the drawings in this thing are, I'd appreciate that a lot.

Particularly with the opening/closing pages - a nice big map of the whole thing. Available in wallpaper size! (Double click, obviously):

Here's the rest of the book, after the jump - enjoy!

The Scary Book

Well, as book titles go, you can't get more obvious than that, can you? Published in 1985, and purchased in 1990 (I remember getting the teacher to read it to the class, somehow), it's a book of short poems/verses (there's really no difference - it's only poetry snobs who refer to poems they don't like as verses, apparantly) by Sheila Front, each accompanied by wonderfully smudgy illustrations by Charles Front (either a couple, or siblings, or coincidentally named creative partners - I don't know). 

Before beginning - what a cover! Seems more "sinister" than "scary" - the fate of the pale-faced hat-wearer and his pet owl is never revealed. What that skeleton is beckoning him t'wards, or what the cat is so antsy about, we'll never know... But at least the book's survived long enough for the rest of us to see.

The title page is a good one:

A mad woman with a big nose, possibly naked under that hair, with a handful of snakes and a nice big tarantula. Again, like the miserable thing on the cover, this woman makes no further appearances in the book - which as you'll see covers a huge amount of things that could possibly be the worst nightmare of at least some kids. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED (scary music to listen to whilst looking at it)