JERRY TODD AND THE TALKING FROG [[vii]]
My sixth book will be JERRY TODD AND THE PURRING EGG. This dodo egg, taken from King Tut’s tomb, was more than three thousand years old. The Tutter newspaper called it the “million-dollar egg.” Could it be rejuvenated? One man said so. The story of what happened when the egg was “rejuvenated” makes mighty good reading for a boy who likes a book packed full of chuckles and mysterious tangles.
Your friend,
Jerry Todd. [[viii]]
OUR CHATTER-BOX
When I started writing books for boys (this is Leo Edwards speaking) I was practically unknown in the story-writing world. Never having heard of me, boys didn’t know whether to buy my books or not. The titles, featuring Whispering Mummies and Purring Eggs, seemed kind of silly to a lot of young readers. But to-day hundreds of thousands of boys look forward to my new titles. If the books are slow in coming, a goodly portion of these hundreds of thousands of “fans” write and tell me about it. Also they jack me up if things aren’t so-so. And, happier for me, they pat me on the back (verbally) if they like my stuff. I never tire of reading these bully good letters. And I was tickled pink when my publisher told me that I could incorporate a few of these letters in a “Chatter-Box.” An experiment, the first “Chatter-Box” appeared in my sixteenth book. And so popular has this department become (it is made up almost wholly of letters, poems and miscellaneous contributions from boys and girls who read my books) that now I have been given the pleasing job of supplying my earlier books with brief “Chatter-Boxes.” Writers of accepted poems, built around the characters in my books, or featuring some boyish interest, win prizes. And, of course, it is pleasing to other boys to see their letters in print. If you have written me a letter I may have used it in another “Chatter-Box.” Or if you are contemplating a letter, why not write it to-day? It may be just the letter I need for one of the big “Chatter-Boxes” in my new books. It may even give me an idea, for my books, which will bring millions of added laughs into the world.
LETTERS
“I have read every book you published, including the Trigger Berg books,” writes Philip Horsting of Brooklyn, N. Y., “and I like them all. [[ix]]Trigger Berg can get into mischief faster than any boy I know. I think that the ‘Chatter-Box’ is a very good idea and while I’m writing this letter my aunt is reading the latest ‘Chatter-Box’ right now.”
“I just read Andy Blake’s Secret Service,” writes Bill Hopwood of Primos, Pa., “and there’s something in the book I don’t understand. When Eddie Garry’s uncle, with whom Eddie was living, told Andy that the latter’s father was his younger brother, and Eddie’s father’s twin, how come that Andy’s name is Blake and Eddie’s name is Garry? Did Andy’s father go under a false name?”