Above: Grimm's Fairy Tales (1 9 1 4 ) was Johnny Gruelle’s first major book-illustrat ing contract. Right: Gruelle's Orphant An nie Story Book (1921) honored Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley with a spe cially prepared set of illustrated children’s
tales. Patricia Hall collection
another volume of short, original fairy stories. The next flying machine to the other side of the moon (hence the year Gruelle created Raggedy Ann’s brother, Raggedy destination, “Noom”). There, they enjoy magical adven Andy, who made a literary debut in his own volume, tures and meet strange animals, magicians, and a real Raggedy Andy Stories. Raggedy Andy soon joined Rag princess. Johnny Gruelle filled The Magical Land of gedy Ann as a commercially available Volland-made Noom with traditional folktale motifs and gave his char doll. acters the gift of expert yarn-spinning. During the early 1920s Johnny Gruelle was ap These first books essentially launched Johnny proached by the Indianapolis-based Bobbs-Merrill Gruelle’s career as a children’s author and illustrator. Company about doing a children’s book that would Throughout the 1920s, in addition to continuing with honor one of the company’s premier poets, the late his many newspaper and magazine commissions, James Whitcomb Riley. Gruelle was delighted, and the Gruelle wrote and illustrated at least one— and some result was the Orphant Annie Story Book (1921). times several—Raggedy Ann and Andy books per year. Gruelle also produced a second book for Bobbs-Merrill, By the late 1920s Johnny and Myrtle Gruelle were Johnny Mouse and the Wishing Stick (1922), based on migrating regularly from their home in Connecticut to a series of magazine stories Gruelle had done for Wom the warmth of south Florida. Having grown increas an’s World. Each of these books, in its own way, show ingly fond of the climate and relaxed life-style, they cases Johnny Gruelle’s storytelling abilities. And, relocated permanently to Miami Beach in 1932. It was Gruelle would forever cherish his brief, but close, as here, in a gracious home on the waterway, that Johnny sociation with the “Hoosier House.” (Much later, in 1961, Gruelle, with assistance from his son, Worth, worked the Bobbs-Merrill Company would become the autho on his later Raggedy Ann and Andy books, among rized publisher and licensor for all Raggedy Ann them, one of his most beautiful: Raggedy Ann and the literary material.) Golden Meadow (1935). During these Florida years, In 1922 Johnny wrote and illustrated, for the P. F. Johnny also continued producing his satirical bird’s- Volland Company, his most ambitious and lengthy book eye-view cartoons for local newspapers and national for children, The Magical Land of Noom. Supposedly humor magazines, cartoons he filled with funny little dictated in only several days, this forty thousand-word geezers and sunbonneted ladies, many named for his tale charts the adventures of Janey, Johnny, and their friends and acquaintances, some of them prominent grandparents as they fly in a homemade apple-crate Floridians.
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