Curious George and Richard Scarry Pipes in Books

[snagstangl]

I have been reading "Curious George 5 Minute Stories" and "Richard Scarry's Best Little Golden Books, Ever" to my son 2 and 1/2 years old. I am just a little excited each time I see a pipe in a story. The majority of the stories have characters that smoke pipes at different times. So not everything has been sanitized. While pipe smoking isn't common I love that the books show how it was at one point in history.

 

[deepspringfarm]

I read to my older kids every evening as I can. My wife scours the literary world for good books for them (which usually means older books) It is amazing how often pipes are mentioned and fairly frequently. Right now we are reading Fellowship of the Ring, which has obvious pipe smoking references. I just a documentary that was aired on PBS on Bing Crosby. I'd say that in 3/4 of the videos/pictures of him he has a pipe in his mouth. He was a mammoth in the entertainment industry. I wonder how much he influenced the average joe to pick up a pipe in the old days and just to generate a culture of pipe smoking being "cool".

 

[deepspringfarm]

I've read them the first Little Britches book, my boys sure loved it.

 

[huntertrw]

 

[huntertrw]

 

[ericthered]

Huntertrw, I had that book in my collection as a child! When I was at my parents' house over the holidays I was looking through/reminiscing over some of the books I loved as a child. Two that stood out were "London Bridge Is Falling Down!" & "The Erie Canal" both illustrated by Peter Spier. The illustrations are amazingly detailed, and on just about every page of each book, at least one person can be found with a clay pipe in their mouth. In "London Bridge Is Falling Down!" There are the following verses:
Set a man to watch all night,

Watch all night, watch all night,

Set a man to watch all night,

My fair lady.
Suppose the man should fall asleep,

Fall asleep, fall asleep,

Suppose the man should fall asleep?

My fair lady.
Give him a pipe to smoke all night,

Smoke all night, smoke all night,

Give him a pipe to smoke all night,

My fair lady.
Coinciding with the "Give him a pipe.." verse, there is a two-page drawing of the inside of a 19th (18th?) century tobacconist's shop full of barrels of tobacco from the States and various patrons looking at a variety of clay pipes. I've scoured the internet for a scan of the pages, but to no avail. I'm kicking myself for not taking pics while I was at my parents' house. The books are still available through Amazon and E-bay, so once I've bought and received them I'll post up some pictures. These are what I could borrow off the internet.

 

[derfatdutchman]

I was surprised when I first read Curious George to my son and it showed The Man In The Yellow. Hat and George smoking a pipe. He also loves Mike Mullagan and His Steam Shovel that shows Mike Mullagan smoking a pipe.

 

[mortonbriar]

What i like about the older picture books is that the illustrator seemed to be familiar with pipes, which makes sense if they were doing their art when pipe smoking was a social norm. Corn cobs, churchwarden clays, full bent briars, the aesthetically appropriate pipe gets applied to the papa bunny/bear/dog etc according to size, working class etc, that always makes me happy.
isaac

 

[huntertrw]

Here's a Scarry lion smoking a corncob pipe!

 

[fmgee]

I do like the old kids books and illustrations. Late last year I finally found a copy of my avatar "Mister Dog" by Margaret Wise Brown (author of Goodnight Moon).

 

[huntertrw]

Even Babar smokes a pipe!

 

[snagstangl]

I also have Richard Scarry's Big Word Book and What People Do. Some of the things are outdated because they were published in the 50's or 60's I want to be able to explain to my son what some the no longer used items are.

 

[fishingandpipes]

Loved reading Richard Scarry. Classics: