coffee for the apocalypse

This book is really cute but I’m also finding it a little mysterious. It was first published in 1966. The edition I have seems to be a rare cover. There are many copies of this book for sale around Amazon and Ebay but I haven’t found any pictures of one with this particular cover. Most of them have a blue cover with a picture of Gus the Ghost.

My guess is that it has something to do with it being a “Weekly Reader’s Book Club Edition” as printed on the copyright page. Whatever the reason, it’s a lovely cover and it has held up well over the last 50+ years.

Seymour Fleishman’s illustrations are so cute. Gus the ghost is a really simple figure with the most basic of faces but he just seems sweet the way he is drawn. It’s a bit of a bummer that this is an ex library book because it has some writing on this front illustration page (top right drawing) and some staining on the bottom corners of two pages. Other than that it is in pristine condition.

Jane Thayer was Catherine Woolley’s pen name for children’s books. She was so prolific that it was suggested she take a pen name for some of the books she published. She used her grandmother’s name on books for the younger audience and published teen and adult fiction under her real name.

What’s a Ghost Going to Do? follows a friendly ghost named Gus who is afraid that new people are going to destroy his home. It is a sweet story and my kids love it.

This book came to us at my daughter’s school. There is a book case in the front office filled with donated and cast off books. You can read them while you wait or you can take one and bring another later. The moment my youngest son brought me this book to read to him, I knew it was ours.

This sticker is on the inside of the cover. It’s for a private school here in town and how it got from one school’s library to a totally different school’s enjoy/take/donate shelf will forever remain a mystery but I’m glad it did.