Customer Reviews

An Alphabet Book for Spoon Collectors and Children: Baby Spoon's New Handle and A Compendium of Souvenir Spoons

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This somewhat whimsical book contains a vast amount of useful information that will be of interest to souvenir spoon and novelty silver collectors. The basis for the book is the authors' collection of 137 souvenir spoons. Their handles, and some bowls, are illustrated in a thematic children's alphabet comprising the first section of the book. The fifty-seven page section is designed to function as a "quality" time point-and-read-together picture books for small children and adults. The illustrations, printed mostly over-life-size on glossy enameled paper, should engage the imagination of most small children, for they depict the wonderfully weird imagery of popular souvernir spoon: from alligators, bears, and cowboys on through the alphabet to a complete set of zodiac sppons. (Some of the "difficult" alpabet letters provide the most fun. I will make you buy the book to discover the "fishy" solution found for X).

The story that string this alphabet together, Mother and Father Spoon taking Baby Spoon to choose a new "grown-up" handle is a bit forced in it spoon jokes, but sweetly gentle, and should cause less wear and tear on the adult reader than does any episode of Barney or the Care Bears.

The second, larger section of the book provides extensive commentary on each of the spoons, which are numbered for easy reference to this text. Full description of the spoons and illustrations of their ornamental bowls are included in the Commentary, with extensive notes on the historical or touristic lore associated with their imagery and on their manufacturers. These notes are in turn heavily footnoted and referenced with a miscellany of additional information, trivia, and suggestions for further research. Manufacturing and distribution dares are included when known. I am thoroughly impressed by the author's determination to include as much information as they can; this work is clearly the product of many years' collecting, study and contemplation. I am happy to commend this unusual and pleasnatly personl book to collectors, historians, a parents alike.

This review can be found in printed format in SILVER MAGAZINE 30.4 (1998) 19