Description
Very Good dust jacket with wrap around dust jacket showing kids in the street, red and white lettering, white lettering on spine. Slight edge rub wear, a 3/4″ tear at top edge on front, a mylar dust jacket has been added. Very Good+ condition binding is dark blue cloth over boards with black illustration on front, silver lettering on spine. Several black and white illustrations within. The binding is tight and pages are clean. The book measures 9.2″ tall x 6.8″ wide.
About the book (from the dust jacket)
Amidst the noise, fumes and soot of New York’s 2and Street, some tiny green living thing is somehow poking its way up through a crack of grimy pavement. Unaware, passerby might trample it, but Hannibal Xavier Serendipity would notice and care.
Mr. Serendipity-seventy-five, longtime janitor of a twin-tenement inhabited mostly by black and Puerto Rican tenants _is to be evicted with his companion, Agamemnon, a Serbian mountain goat. His mug basement refuge has been marked X for demolition along with the already sagging building.
A sleepless night sends Mr. S. wandering the block when he comes upon Hezakiah Clinton Mackelgum-eighty six, bent, weathered and black, and “ready for whatever comes along.” The black man points the way to a new job and home, Life is peaceful again. . . until a beer can comes crashing onto his roof.
Suddenly, Mr. S. is confronted by the kids-Willie, Otis, Alma, Louic-Louic and Pequita, members of a tight band always on the prowl for action. These cocky, street-shrewd kids form an unlikely alliance with the “old weirdo.” Together they share a far-out idea sustained 433-2089by nine stories of a strikebound steel framework, river-silt, and some seeds. And in the wake of a summer storm, the circle between the very wise old and the very hip young is completed
About the author (from the dust jacket)
HERBERT DANSKE has had a highly successful career as graphic artist, illustrator and film-maker. In addition to one-man shows of paintings, he has received numerous awards from the Society of Illustrators, the Art Directors Club, and the American Institute Graphic Arts. His film The Gift, which he wrote and directed, won awards at the Venice, Vancouver, and Edinburgh festivals. In addition to many documentaries, he has made two feature films, the newest of which. Right On, is currently on exhibition around the country. As a children’s book illustrator, Me. Danska has to his credit, among others, The Selfish Giant, Rory The Red, Queen Without A crown, Real Book of American all Tales and Over The Blue Mountain (for Knopf). A native New Yorker. Me. Danske at tended the High School of Music and Art, and Pratt Institute here. He is the father of two teenagers, and resides on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
