Bambino the Clown

It's kind of a strange story. It's a pretty matter-of-fact story about a small Italian man who is a clown. It doesn't really say where it takes place, but it's somewhere in America based on the flags later in the book. So this Italian man lives somewhere in America, and is a clown for a living. He's walking around one day and comes across a sad little boy who lost his hat. The man loves to make people happy, so he takes the little boy to his house, which apparently a bunch of other kids have been to. Of course, this is not the kind of thing that would happen nowadays-- it wouldn't be acceptable in our society for an adult to take home a child without okaying it with their parents. At any rate, the little boy gets to see how Bambino lives, and his pet sea lion, and he gets a new hat and a ticket to his show. At the show, he goes backstage and gets to see how the clown makeup and costume is applied. And then it depicts the clown on stage and the performance of his act. At the end of the act, the book ends as well.

Like I said, it's a realistic depiction of, at least, what a clown did at the time. Although I'm not really sure if a clown would just have had his own show back then, without being part of a circus or anything. It's very wordy, as are many children's books of the time. The images look like watercolor and ink pen, almost like watercolor wash, very smeary and without detail except for the parts with the ink pen. It's interesting, but definitely not a modern-style kids book. It's not a bad message and wouldn't upset a child, but it's too long. And it's not popular nowadays to like clowns.