Oh My, What Have They Done?! Republished Ant and Bee Books Have New Pictures and Rewritten Text!

Following up on their reappearance, I just got my first views of the three Ant and Bee books being republished by Egmont Books. I could understand that there would be new covers, and I won't really fault these stripey things:

No, the real problem comes with some sneak previews you can get by registering at http://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/ and reading about the books. The first hint that something is amiss when you read: "This classic from the 1950's has been lovingly re-illustrated by the author Angela Banner to provide a fun, contempory story"(emphasis added) and "Original author and creator Angela Banner has re-illustrated the book". What, the elusive, now almost 90-year old Angela Banner has done new drawings?! And for More and More Ant and Bee, it says "Ant and Bee are back in this brand new story!" How is a book that first came out in 1961 a "brand new story?!

Washington Baseball (Nationals and Senators), Arch McDonald, and Robert Ruark

Before today's game between the Washington Nationals and New York Mets (a veritable rout, it turned out), we were walking the concourse of Nationals Park and were walking by the Washington baseball history exhibit area (roughly behind home plate--interestingly, the internet wandering I have done has turned up no discussion of this exhibit area!). I have looked at this before, although maybe not with any intensity. Anyway, today I was struck by one photograph in particular.

While I am not sure what the caption of the photograph at the exhibit was, the caption on the picture to the left is roughly the same: "Bringing the Game to the Fans: Washington Senators radio broadcaster Arch McDonald is shown calling a Senators game during the late 1930s."

This got me wondering, in particular about the chimes that McDonald seems to be about to strike, which in turn led to this internet wandering exercise. [Note: unlike other exercises in this blog, I am not going in order of my exploration, because, for example, I could not even find this photo on first or second try.]

Thanks to the Detroit Tigers broadcaster Mario Impemba for posting this photo fairly recently on his Twitter feed. I don't know Impemba, but was happy (especially after my other explorations) to know that someone still recalls McDonald.

A Book of Many Colors: Colored Sweaters in Book Titles

This is probably the silliest wandering I have done, but I got stuck on it after having finished reading The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust's Shadow and then seeing a recommendation for The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World So, I had to find out how many color sweaters exist in English book titles that have nothing to do with knitting or making sweaters. The answer is: too many:

Ant and Bee Big Buy Bag

Wonderful news, Ant & Bee fans. I have found a copy of the Ant & Bee Big Buy Bag, via Interlibrary Loan and have take some pictures. Once you see it you realize why there may be none around--several pages are made to be cut up and others colored or played with. The overall "bag" measures 11 1/2" square and the interior pages are somewhat smaller.

There is almost no information about this, but you can see all the pages in this Google Photos album (click on slide show if you like).