bowling trophy

The Brad Forrest Adventure Series No. 6 - Yucatan Adventure

The dog ate my homework.

Really.

Okay, I haven’t read the book. I got to chapter 3 then I fell asleep. It’s keen and everything, I was just tired.

So anyway, here’s what happened so far: Brad’s in a frat with this mestizo (which is like half Spanish, half Mayan) named Jose Hernandez. Brad and Jose are also on the university hockey team together (who knew Mexicans played hockey, but whatever). After the big game Jose gets a telephone call saying his father (who is some bigshot plantation owner in the Mexican jungle) has broken his leg and and Jose has to come home right away. So Brad and Jose fly from Toronto to Mexico where they’re met by this plantation foreman or something called Blair Bishop. He tells them that Señor Hernandez fell off his horse and broke his leg because he was shot at by banditos (which is gangsters) and maybe it was the bandito called “El Peso” (isn’t that like a Mexican coin?). Brad meets Señor Hernandez and then they get a message that banditos raided the Hernandez chicle plantation and the workers all ran away. So Señor Hernandez sends Blair Bishop to investigate and Jose and Brad go with him and Brad gets to fly the airplane on the way there (he has a pilot’s license even though he’s like 18 or something). And that’s when I fell asleep.

Brad’s a pretty cool guy. He never swears, the worst he’ll ever say is “golly” (Jose says golly too and “Holy Moses” - you’d think he’d talk in Mexican when he was excited). Brad’s rich because his dad owns newspapers all over the world, but he’s not stuck up, he has to have summer jobs to get money just like a regular guy.

I plan to finish reading this book when I’m not so sleepy.

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The Brad Forrest Adventure Series was written by Hugh Maitland - the pseudonym of two staff writers for the Hamilton Spectator newspaper. The first eight titles were published by Longmans Canada in 1964-65. Another eight titles were announced on the back cover of the books (”and eight per year thereafter”) but I’ve never seen any evidence that any beyond the first eight were ever published. I’m still looking for numbers 2 (Los Angeles Adventure), 3 (Madagascar Adventure) and 4 (Calgary Adventure) to round out my collection.

More juvenile book series here.

“How to Draw” Books

I’m not a visual artist, but I’m really drawn (sorry) to the Walter Foster “How to Draw” books. They’re large and beautiful and the pages are crammed with luscious color illustrations, black and white sketches…

…and a bare minimum of helpful instructional text to make me believe that with a few lines and circles and a little bit of shading, I too can draw a horse/leaping buck/tastefully disrobed woman.

I’m not sure when they were published because they’re not dated, but my guess would be late 50s or early 60s. The earlier ones (I presume) have a cover price of $1.00 (”Not more than $1.25 in any foreign country”) and later ones are priced $2.00. I bought How to Draw Horses last week for 69¢.

My sentimental favourite is Animation by Preston Blair. I loved it as a lad and was delighted to find it again recently. My career as a “cartoonist” never happened, but I wonder how many animators were spawned by this book.