The Grasshopper and the Ants

Abstract

This booklet-plus-record from Valencia Street in San Francisco is tantalizingly similar to one already in the collection, found at Old Bank Antiques in Hastings nineteen years ago. Let me catalogue the differences. The cover's LLP 331 has become just 331. The copyright year on the front cover has changed from Roman to Arabic numerals. The verso of the front-cover has changed background colors from blue to tan and has again changed the copyright numerals. The format of the back-cover's record flap has changed, and many members of the series have been added. The last is now not 338 but 382. For some reason, the numbers from 370 to 380 are not used. The back cover is identical except that, instead of Copyright©1969 Walt Disney Productions Printed in the U.S.A., all of which had already been communicated on the front cover, there is now only Disneyland Records, Glendale, California. The booklet itself is in good condition, although the last page's black-and-white design has received some smudgy coloring. This marks the fourth different version of the booklet, including a 1968 version found at Pageturners in 1991 and the reworded 1971/77 version done to accompany a tape, not to mention three other presentations, all from the text of Margaret Wise Brown, of the same story. Those presentations, unlike these, do not feature Bubba the menacing vulture: Little Pig's Picnic (1939), Walt Disney's Story Land (1962), and The Grasshopper and the Ants (1993).