Mickey In A Merryweather

This gorgeous, large-format, full-color hardcover book reprints three "classic stories from the 1930s, Walt Disney's Donald Duck (1935), Walt Disney's Clock Cleaners (1938), and The Mickey Mouse Fire Brigade (1936)." All three stories are based on cartoons, but some strange liberties and notable revisions are made.

Walt Disney's Donald Duck was the first book to feature the Duck, who thus appears here in his long-billed incarnation. The original (Whitman #978) was printed on linen, which would seem to indicate it was intended for the youngest possible audience. Inexplicable, then is the one-joke premise: Mickey's nephews "show Donald the difference between soft and HARD water" by tricking him into diving into a shallow spot.

Walt Disney's Clock Cleaners was another "linen-like" book designed for kids who could be counted upon to treat it badly. "Scarce in Near Mint, common in lower grades" is Ted Hake's comment on the linen-like books in The Official Price Guide to Disney Collectibles. Having even less linen-like pages to work with than Walt Disney's Donald Duck (12 rather than 16), the original story is literally scaled down from the cartoon's giant clock atop a skyscraper... to a cuckoo clock in an attic.

The third story, The Mickey Mouse Fire Brigade, is very faithful to the Mickey's Fire Brigade cartoon, and the illustrations are excellent. Just one thing - Mickey's fire helmet. Designed for a British audience that might not recognize the "backwards-baseball-hat" helmet design usually seen in the U.S., Mickey wears a Merryweather pattern brass fire helmet throughout.

If you read this one to your kids, I suggest giving Mickey a Yorkshire accent. If you need practice, the BBC is willing to help. I was going to give an Amazon link, but they don't carry the book, show the the wrong cover picture, and spell Mickey "Micky." Try Barnes and Noble.