Fun With Patents

I was in a bookstore the other day, perusing what there was to peruse, and I came across the two recently republished Peter Newell books The Slant Book and Topsys & Turvys. They're so delightful. I think we may even have some originals in Donnell. If you've never seen these titles, do yourself a favor and find one immediately. They are lovely examples of a man pushing the envelope on kidlit before they'd invented an envelope to push.

Apparently Newell was not unaware of how cool his radical books were either. In 1910 he patented his designs. I recently discovered A Blog of Bosh, the site that posts such information, and I like it very much. I can't for the life of me figure out who the author is, but it seems to have some connection to nonsenselit.org, which is also rather interesting.