Mel Crawford - Rootie Kazootie
Three Little Golden Books illustrated by Mel Crawford were based on Rootie Kazootie, a Howdy Doody like kid's TV show from the '50s. Rootie Kazootie Detective 1953, Rootie Kazootie Baseball Star 1954 (not shown); and Rootie Kazootie Joins the Circus 1955 complete the LGB series.
Mel Crawford illustrated over 200 children's books
including many Little Golden Books using both cartoony and traditional "realistic" styles, depending on the subject matter. As you can see, I'm a bigger fan of the cartoony stuff which also includes books featuring Yogi Bear and The Flintstones. If you want to see more work by Mel Crawford be sure to visit my flickr page.
from Rootie Kazootie Joins the Circus
from Rootie Kazootie Joins the Circus
from Rootie Kazootie Detective--click on images for larger view
posted by Eric Sturdevant at 3:59 AM
3 Comments:
I'm not familiar with "The Bat Poet" but I think Maurice Sendak is great. I'll have to check that one out.
Glad you like the post!
Man...I'm in love with Mel's work. I think I have just about all his cartoony books outside of Rootie. Those in paticular are expensive to get. Thanks for posting these, Eric!
I believe Mel's still alive and kickin up in Canada.
If you're interested Steve, here's a link to his website. It's dedicated to his "fine art" work and, unfortunately, contains no samples of his children's book illustration. If the info on the site is current, he lives somewhere in New England.
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