The Mystery of the Marble Angel

The Mystery of the Marble Angel by John and Nancy Rambeau (1962). The second book of The Morgan Bay Mysteries series (notable because my first ever book report was another book from this series—The Musical Ghost—around Second Grade). It’s one of those books with “Exercises” in back, and vocab words—the mystery isn’t much—but then the word count is 7500 with only 312 different words. The thing about this book (and the series), though, is the art—which is a major inspiration—by illustrator Joseph Maniscalco. First, there’s the cover—the picture extends onto the back—and shows one of the kids at a creepy guy’s door in a long hallway in a rundown hotel. The weird thing is, the same picture (almost) is in the middle of the book, but it’s the reverse angle! It kind of blows your mind! These illustrations are all full page (some two page!), brown and white, movie-like, stills—they look like paintings. Lot of movement and expression, odd angles, inventive, surprising viewpoints on the action. You could take pretty much any one of them, put it in a frame, and hang it in a museum. But then you’d have to destroy the book—which is worth collecting—why? —because of the pictures! And best yet, each of the books, I’ve seen, features some kind of map in front, by the contents—and this one has what looks like a satellite image—from above—of Morgan Bay (of course!)—you can see the blocks and individual houses—and a few of the crucial locations are pointed out. You don’t need this for the story, not at all, but it really gets you in the mood for the book. It’s really excellent. So, I got to thinking, since the story is kind of a letdown—I’d like to take these illustrations and then write my own story, just following the pictures. Great idea! But I can’t figure out how to do that without destroying the book—and I don’t want to, since it’s in my collection!

10.8.25