Bugs Bunny, Inventor

Despite the 1953 copyright, they were still selling this kiddy book as
'new' in stores as late as the middle of '64 when I believe I had mine
at my grandma's house the summer before I started first grade.

I'm not interested in turning this particular blog into a scroll of nothing but publication pages and excerpts, tho' those are great, and I might love to start one one day. Here, instead, are my favorite parts of the book: the cover; inside cover blueprint 'gimmick' (it's the same front and back); and the best interior painting, in my opinion, (lots of objects to make it real). The obvious unique selling points, tho' I really can't remember if I picked the book out or if it was given to me.

The story is light stuff as per usual. The plans, as you can well read,
depict a 'hammock rocker' which Bugs soon applies to Elmer's own,
shredding it to bits and flinging his old nemesis into a tree.

The painting is from the opening when Porky Pig checks out what Bugs is doing in his shop.

Sylvester (minus any overstimulating tweety bird marking him as
dangerous), the very rarely filmed Petunia Pig, and the printbound
Cicero (yet another in the cavalcade of comfortably spawned-out-of-view 'nephews') also runabout thruout and look concerned for Golden Reason.


The clever boots behind it all, unlike with the comic stories of the day,
got to sign this outing. Perhaps the only place I knew his name from.
As buried under a bushel by a corporation as Carl Barks, et alii, he's
as personally unknown to me as any of you. Do a search on him and
you'll know as much about him as I don't.

Ralph Heimdahl self-generated the Bugs Bunny syndicated strip ( I
could only see it rarely in out of town newspapers) for over two
decades, and besides this and likely the four other storybooks
that turn up online, probably branched off often into the comic book
stories. I must have a few examples already.

He gave me and a lot of others lots of pleasure. His take on Bugs and
his peers, tho' of course dictated by mainstream ideas of what a child
audience can bear, (or it's parents), as an almost family of friends instead
of the thrillingly violent, lunatic adversaries we'd been eagerly shaped
to expect by TV's cinematic reruns is still a welcome part of my life
any time I run into his work again.

He had a fine line style I may not unerringly recognize, (for some lack
of comparative exposure), but it's worth some rooting around for
its forty carrots and guessing if its Heimdahl gold or not.

As to the difference in the comics and so on from the cartoons---
it's like the difference in running and relaxing. You don't want to lose
the ability to do either. So, find something by him, kick back into
your cozy rabbit hole, and pretend you're in a world where the disasters
aren't always so huge or fatal. I'll be in the next hutch over.