Four Little Pages

At the local library book sale, I sometimes check out ten-to-a-pack baggies of loose illustrations. These have been removed from miscellaneous materials, but most are from damaged books.

I always have mixed feelings about buying these. There's the sad fact that books are being destroyed. It's also frustrating to find an interesting illustration out of its published context: artist and source material are usually unknown and not likely to be identifiable.

Even when the reverse of a picture has some text, that is rarely specific enough to identify an author, illustrator, or title.

But among my last purchases at this sale was a pack of dog illustrations that included:



Poses, props, and overall Depression-era look of the photos had to be the work of Harry Whittier Frees.

Reverse sides had bits of the story, and among the characters' names were, "Wags and Tags and Rags and Obadiah."

That led the way to a Frees book: Four Little Puppies.

According to this database, the book was last reprinted in 1983, and first published by Rand McNally in 1935.

The original publisher recycled this book in the '50s and '60s, under the "Elf" imprint. These pages must come from an edition like this example.

My pages have some story fragments—

After that, Wags practiced his banjo lesson.
He practiced all his scales.
He practiced his one-paw exercises.
And he practiced his new piece, "Bone, Sweet Bone."

Another page—

But Fido and Fritz did not answer. They were taking a drive in their new dog cart.

Too bad the illustration is missing. Though one can probably get the general idea from the cat cart in this 1937 Life article about Frees.

Frees' work, from the 1930s and earlier, just keeps getting recycled, in print and elsewhere.

I first learned Frees' name way back when sister J. sent me this image: an updated-for-the-1980s post card—