Two More Short Stories!

After accidentally finding "Cinder and Inky Again" in an old issue of Child Life through a random ebay search, I had a hunch there was probably at least one other Youmans story published in the periodical.

When I attempted to locate older editions of Child Life through Interlibrary Loan, I learned just how rare this serial is.  Many facilities retain current editions, but only one library in the U.S. has copies available during the years Youmans would have been publishing.  Lucky for me, it is the Minneapolis Central branch of Hennepin County Library, a forty-minute drive from my in-laws'.  The trip was worth it, because among the dusty pages there were two more stories by Youmans: "Cinder" (1931) and "Cinder and Inky" (1932).  Unlike "Cinder and Inky Again" (1933), these two stories are taken directly from the published version of the novel Cinder (1933).

My husband wasn't exactly psyched about being dragged  into downtown Minneapolis to flip through old children's magazines by my side, but with his help, the hunt took little more than an hour, and he was the one to find both stories.  (I don't know why I'm surprised; when my contact lens fell out on our lawn earlier this year, he was the was the one to find the tiny shard of plastic embedded amongst hundreds of stems of grass long after I'd given up!)



Click on the page images to enlarge:


"Cinder." Child Life 10.6 (June 1931): 270-271. Illustrated by Ruth Eger.

"Cinder and Inky." Child Life 11.9 (Sept. 1932): 426-427. Illustrated by Ruth Eger.

Cinder and Inky Again

Several sources mention that Youmans wrote short stories, but other than her first "real" publication—"The Man Who Wanted a Dog That Would Kill," appearing in the October 1921 issue of American Magazine—I hadn't found any of them. So, I was thrilled to stumble across the August 1933 issue of Child Life, which contains "Cinder and Inky Again," a short story with colorized illustrations by Ruth Eger. 1933 is also the publication year of Cinder, about the black-and-tan toy terrier of the same name, with supporting characters Ida (a little girl), Inky (Ida's black kitten), and Queenie (Cinder's mother). I suspect this short story was probably edited out of the full-length Cinder, since both texts appear in the same year and the short story references events that take place in the longer work.

It's a cute story—about Inky attempting to look into a nest of baby Robbins, only to learn a very painful lesson about protective bird parenting. I always wonder if artists really read the stories they illustrate (or in this case colorize). The text is very clearly about Robbins, and yet the birds in the drawings are white with bluish shading. The pastel hews of the end result make for a pretty spring palette nonetheless.


Click on the thumbnails below for larger images: