The Great Geppy

The Great Geppy
William Pène du Bois
© 1940, by the author
The Viking Press, Inc

When I was looking for a copy of Peter Graves, this book turned up as a result of one of my searches. I purchased a copy because I thought it was another du Bois book that I read during childhood. I now think my memories of that other book pertain to The Horse in the Camel Suit.

A fairly bizarre “young readers” book. It’s harder than first or second grade readers could manage, so probably targeted at third or fourth graders. The story features a lot of fantastic things, like a horse striped cadmium red and ivory white. The stripes are uniform width and run vertically, not randomly like a zebra’s stripes. That striped horse is both the main character, and the titular Great Geppy. The writing seems very formal by today’s standards. Du Bois has characters saying “shall” correctly, and manners implicitly seem very important.

The story is set in October of 1938, the book is copyright © 1940. Most of the action takes place in a traveling 3-ring circus, which seems strange in these latter days. Spoiler alert! Geppy the horse joins the circus!

Like Peter Graves, The Great Geppy is floridly illustrated by the author. Du Bois has a good grasp of horse anatomy, which is good for this book, and does decent human figures in a vast variety of poses.

I got my copy used, via Amazon. My copy’s front matter claims that du Bois renewed the copyright in 1968, so this is a later printing.

This book is marked as a “West Elementary School Library” book, from Osceola Arkansas. There’s a Code 39 barcode for “12989” on the back cover.

The pages of the book aren’t at all worn. No scribbles, no food stains, very good condition. The cover does have some wear. Given the bar code, I’ll bet my copy spent most of its library life on the shelves of an elementary school library. It was recently culled because nobody checked it out.