Spooky Tricks (1968)

by G. Jack Urso

 

Original 1968 Harper & Row edition. Author’s collection.

Spooky Tricks (1968), by Rose Wyler and Gerald Ames, and pictures by Talivaldis Stubis, published by Harper & Row, later published by Scholastic Book Services beginning with the fifth printing August 1970. The same trio also produced the similarly themed Magic Tricks (1970), also for Scholastic. The book was also republished in 1994 with new illustrations by S.D. Schindler, though the original edition is the focus of this review.

    

                   Harper & Row (1968) edition.        Scholastic Books (1970) edition.

Note size difference of the editions.

In addition to being the Halloween season, my reason for selecting this book is that it is among the very first books I bought for myself through Scholastic Book Services, which provides a children’s book purchase and delivery system to schools. I purchased Spooky Tricks through that service likely during 1971 or early 1972, during a period of my fascination with magic tricks and ventriloquism in second and third grade. At fifty cents ($4.34 in 2026), the volume was costly considering I had no steady employment at seven years old, but was likely financed by birthday money, piggy bank savings, or by doing chores for an allowance.

Like J.T., it was another holiday season-related children’s book I only had vague, foggy memories of before crossing paths with it quite accidently on the internet. While forgetting the title, I never forgot the cover art and some of the tricks, like optical illusions, writing with invisible ink, and making someone appear to levitate — they haunted my memories like ghosts. The rush of endorphins that happens with the light-bulb moment when you discover a lost-lost memory is like finding a long-lost friend. Rediscovering these core childhood memories helps to connect us to our past.

Three of my favorite tricks as a child, optical illusions, invisible ink, and levitation.

Authors Rose Wyler and Gerald Ames, a married couple who together and separately authored over fifty books on magic and science and other topics, reportedly got the idea for the book from the children in the building where they lived in New York City.  Artist Talivaldis Stubis, a Latvian immigrant to the United States, was a frequent collaborator with Wyler and Ames, and was employed by the some of the biggest names in publishing at the time including Harper & Row, Parents Magazine Press, Doubleday, Scholastic, and many others. Stubis also worked on or helped design posters for some of the most iconic films of the 20th century, including A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Sting, The Exorcist, Cool Hand Luke, Lady Sings the Blues, Airplane!, The Elephant Man, Reds, Ordinary People, An Officer and a Gentleman, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Quite a breadth of work considering his whimsical children’s book illustrations.

The original 1968 Harper & Row volume is a hardcover while the 1970 Scholastic edition of the book, which I had, is a paperback. The editions vary, however, in size and use of color. For reference, I refer to the Harper & Row volume as the “purple edition” and the Scholastic volume as the “orange edition.” The reasons are quite clear in the side-by-side images below. The use of purple in the Harper & Row edition pops off the page. The paperback Scholastic edition, which is slightly smaller than the hardcover, replaces the purple with orange, which not only looks drab, but the low-contrast makes the text practically unreadable in the introduction on page 3 (see below).

Pages 3 and 4, purple edition.

Pages 3 and 4, orange edition. Page 3 is practically unreadable.

The paper stock used with the two editions is also different, with the Harper & Row edition using a card stock and the Scholastic Books edition using stock not far removed from newspaper print, which likely led to the page yellowing we don't see in the Harper & Row edition (see below).

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Differences between the Harper & Row “purple” edition 

and the Scholastic “orange” edition (click on images for larger size).

 

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1994 reissue.

I could not find any reviews for the original release, but Scripps Howard News Service referred to the 1994 republished edition as “the perfect Halloween book” for “school-agers who are just beginning to read.”

Spooky Tricks ironically led to my first real existential crisis. At seven-years-old, ghosts were just images I would see on TV and in the comics, no different than say Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny. What I realized with Spooky Tricks, however, is that ghosts were once living human beings who died and went to the ethereal beyond. Little Willie the Ghost in the book was small, like a child, like myself. The concepts of death and non-existence mingled together and left me terrified to go to sleep at night. How could I be sure that that I would wake up in the morning? I couldn’t, and that thought kept me from having a peaceful night’s sleep for years.

Despite that, or maybe because of that, Spooky Tricks has lingered long in the back of my mind for over five decades. In my research, I was delighted to discover that many others also remembered and loved the book. A relic from the Golden Age of Halloween in post-war America, Spooky Tricks, with its whimsical illustrations and easy-to-read short chapters, is a cherished childhood memory. 

No, it’s not Dr. Seuss or A.A. Milne, but that such a slim volume of ephemera has remained so fondly remembered is nothing less than the greatest magic trick of all.

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