I am an instant fan of late 19th century illustrator Peter Newell whose work was funny, explosive, and full of hilarious details that made my husband exclaim, “He must have been on drugs.” Hahaha…well, not sure about that last bit, but he is wonderful. Above is one of Alice in Wonderland illustrations — fighting hedgehogs!
And here is a perfect example in one his children’s books simply called “The Rocket” — which we never actually see — only the fiery tail, as it shoots from the basement through the floors of different rooms of what must be a multi-floored house. And in each room, the rocket has managed to explode through the most central activity in the room, until captured at last in an ice cream maker. You can see more of it at BibliOdyssey, but here are a few of my favorite images:
An exploding typewriter — yes, I can see that, but the walrus taxidermy was really inspired madness!
I agree, the typewriter suits you. Did you find the words that go with the hedgehogs? I’m not super familiar with Alice, but this is a scene I know I’ve never heard of…
Yes! It is the scene where she plays croquet with the Red Queen — the mallets are flamingos and the balls are rolled up hedgehogs. But Newell has entirely invented the line, and I am sure because he fancied the visual image of two hedgehogs fighting! This the line:
“The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting ‘Off with his head!’ or ‘Off with her head!’ about once in a minute.”
I think Newell was like many illustrators, more interested in creating illustrations that might have happened in the story, but were never actually written about in any depth. Wyeth did it all the time — selecting often to paint scenes that were hinted at but never described by the author — giving the edition another layer of story telling.