Clowns in the New Year?

For the Kids, Holiday Collection

New YearHolidays and Festivals: New Year
Blackwood
1987

Anonymous Submitter: “Every single picture in this book is better than the cover picture. Worse yet, there is no mention of clown skiing anywhere in the text.  Everyone at work let out a little sound of terror when viewing the clowns. I had to turn the cover upside down to write this email.”

Holly: Mary, avert your eyes.  (She has a bit of a clown phobia.  Her new co-worker left a severed clown head on her desk recently, which I LOVE!)  What do these clowns have to do with New Year?  What if someone new to the U.S. picked up this book to find out how Americans celebrate the New Year, and then showed up to a party decked out like a clown?

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  1. This is so awful and what for the love of God does clown skiing have to do with ringing in the new year?

  2. Well, we all know how popular Clown Skiing is on January 1.

    This cover reminds me of the public domain pictures that POD publishers** slap on their books. No relationship to the text what-so-ever. For some deliriously-wrong covers, check out Tutis Publications. (The best one is the bicycle on their cover of Wuthering Heights.)

    1. I don’t want to hijack the thread, but there’s also an airplane on the cover of Henry James’s Travels in France.

      1. Not to further hijack the thred, but Tutis’ version of Darwin’s “Volacanic Islands” seems to have Mt. St. Helens on the cover. More of a ‘mainland island’ I presume.

  15. Clowns don’t scare me, but that picture does. If I saw them on the slopes, I would be skiing for my life! The fact that I’m a terrible skiier would not be a concern.

  16. Aagh-my three biggest fears together- clowns, New Year’s, and skiing! Keep this one away from me.

  18. Wonder what country that clown pic’s from? Must be somewhere in Central Europe …

    I’m usually mellow about clowns, but even I think that pic is full of weird.

  19. …and who doesn’t ski while holding a BALLOON? Is there some inuendo going on with the bulbous red/green balloons attached to the two blue ones? The clown holding it is the only one whos face we can’t see. Some dark hidden message is afoot.

  22. Why on earth are they all on one set of skis?
    I think the second clown has his eyes picked out by a crow. Dear, god it is frightening.

  25. The Mississauga Library System (Ontario, Canada) just withdrew one copy of this, but we still have four in circulation.

    I kept the withdrawn copy. I can attest that there is *nothing* inside the book to link clowns on New Year’s Day to the holiday! I am going to be haunted this New Year’s Eve by braid-wearing skiing clowns!

  26. I am mortified to admit that I thought this cover looked familiar, and upon doing some weeding-argh, there it was. Blergh!

    Needless to say that book was immediately tossed.