National Velvet (Junior Deluxe Editions)

288 pp. "...the story of a 14-year-old girl named Velvet Brown, who rides her horse to victory in the Grand National steeplechase. The novel focuses on the ability of ordinary persons, particularly women, to accomplish great things. Velvet is a teenager in the late 1920s, living in a small English coastal village in Sussex, dreaming of one day owning many horses. She is a high-strung, shy, nervous child with a delicate stomach. The novel was made into a highly successful film version in 1944, starring twelve-year-old Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney, with Donald Crisp, Anne Revere and a young Angela Lansbury. In 2008 the film was voted the ninth best American film in the sports genre. This Junior Deluxe Edition book was illustrated by Earle B. Winslow (1884-1969), an American artist who studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1921, Winslow created the "Bingville Bugle" comic strip at the Invisible Ink Studios of Woodstock, New York. It was from this popular publication that singer Bing Crosby took his nickname. He did illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, Women's Home Companion, Liberty, and Outdoor Life."