Yesterday I watched a video about the author of a cult-classic children's book (The Lonely Doll, Dare Wright) and that got me digging into some stuff from my childhood, including finding a couple of books that aren't, like, among the Standard Childhood Books and which I couldn't remember the titles of -- Barney Beagle, a book about a puppy in a pet store watching all the other dogs get adopted before him (related vocal tic: "Anyone can see THAT"), and Gordon of Sesame Street Storybook, a Sesame Street book that features zero muppets but does feature a child almost burning to death. That one terrified me as a child and I definitely remember the related splash page of a person standing at the top of some stairs that have been engulfed in a blazing inferno as being much more vivid than it turns out to have actually been. I actually would not be surprised if there as an original printing with different art that scared kids so they re-illustrated it for subsequent editions, every copy I can find online does seem to be from a second printing and there's very little information about it out there in general, but even if that's the case I'm sure my memory of it is embellished from reality. I also didn't remember the plot or the rest of the book particularly well, but I do remember not reading it very much, only being morbidly fascinated with this image that scared me. Like I remember the other stories but not as connected in any way with the fire story, nor with that part of the fire story being connected to the rest of the fire story, if that makes sense.
I also dug up The Secret Island of Dr. Quandry, a game I played on a teacher's computer during lunch in middle school, in which you as the player character are turned into a Kewpie doll and trapped on an island full of puzzles to solve. I never finished it because I never really had time for it, even when I dug it up again as an adult a couple times, but today I played it through and it's pretty alright. Pretty average fare for the time, I think, decent puzzles and terrible controls and corny writing.
Oh man I just went digging for another one I could never remember the title of -- it's about an ink monster that a kid ends up trapping in a bottle, which unfortunately mostly gets you Simon's Book and some other 'ink monster' related results, but not the correct ink monster -- but today I had some luck and have discovered it's The Yucky Monster by Arthur Roth and Tom O'Sullivan. Unfortunately it is not on the internet archive and I'm kind of tempted to grab it for cheap from somewhere. Then I could put it on the internet archive.
Okay I'm getting yelled at because I haven't pilled the cat like I said I was going to, so I'm going to go do that.
