Description
Very good dust jacket illustrated with trick rider and horse on front, clown on back panel. Edge wear, top of spine worn. A mylar dust jacket has been added. The Very Good+ condition salmon colored cloth boards illustrated with circus performers and horse in dark maroon, slight bumping to spine ends. Illustrated end papers, address sticker on front free end paper. Black-and-white illustrations throughout. The binding is tight and pages are clean. The book measures 8.3″ tall x 5.7″ wide.
About the book (from the dust jacket)
The smell animals and sawdust, a red wagon for a home, hard practice and sharp rivalries for the roar of applause this was Joe Lang’s life, the only one he knew. Son of a lion-tamer, and the third generation of a circus family, he was a veteran bareback rider. Then by the time he was fifteen years old suddenly, he was an orphan and nobody cared but Mo Shapely, the clown.
While the law debated whether Mo was a fit guardian for Joe, he was placed in an Industrial school. The circus moves on and clown. Soon, the boy rebels, and runs away to rejoin the circus. But a stormy night and unfamiliar country plunge him into a barbed-wire fence and the midst of the Dawson family. Hurt, fugitive, and distrusting all “gillies” (non-circus people), Joe hides His identity and accepts Pop Dawson’s offer to work on his farm.
A warm and an exciting one, SAWDUST IN HIS SHOES describes the impact of this freedom-loving boy on a quiet farming community. Theories about Joe differ. To bubbling Ann, he is glamor: to her sensitive brother, Henry, a hero: to Shelley, the win: the winning five-year-old, a friend. But to Mom and Pop, he is a boy in trouble. While upsetting everybody’s ideas, Joe learns much about “gillies’ and gains a family. The Dawsons, in turn, contribute to the rise of a star. But until the day when love and loyalty pull him one way and the circus another, Joe has not explored his own heart. This inner struggle and the events that follow provide a gripping climax to a fascinating tale. Boys and girls are sure to like its fast pace, its wide variety of lovable characters and its colorful circus background. Mrs. McGraw captures to perfection the spirit and sparkle of life under the “”big top.’
About the author (from the dust jacket)
ELOISE JARVIS McGRAW was born in Texas but divided her childhood between Oklahoma City and the Oregon country in which this story is laid. In 1937, she received her B.A. from Principia College, Elsah, Ill., afterward studying painting and sculpture at Oklahoma and Colorado Universities.
Although she had been writing since she was eight, she switched all her energies to oil painting after entering college. She has done several murals, numerous portrait commissions, and taught portrait painting for a while at Oklahoma City University. During these same years she studied modern dance took up Children’s Theatre work for the Junior League and became engrossed in both constructing and manipulating string marionettes. When she moved to California four years ago, she discovered ceramics and plunged into the work of glazing and clay-firing with equal enthusiasm.
Her interest in writing revived when she sold an article to Parents’ Magazine and a short story to Jack and Jill. Now with the publication of her first juvenile novel, SAWDUST IN HIS SHOES, she says she has stopped “swerving from one fascinating occupation to another and has adopted writing once and for all.”
