International Children’s Book Day with Wally the Wordworm
Wally the Wordworm is a wonderful friend to have on this International Children’s Book Day, April 2.
The Macmillan Company published Wally the Wordworm by Clifton Fadiman with drawings by Arnold Roth in 1964. The book proclaims Mr. Fadiman “one of the most popular wordworms in America today” and that “Mr. Roth’s vivid imagination and fluid line make the slithering, slathering antics of Wally the Wordworm most engaging.”
The images and Wally’s penchant for the “sesquipedalian” word spark the imagination, and so does this title’s publishing history.
The book must have remained popular enough for an audio version, with music, to be released twenty years later in 1984. I wonder what tune the lyrics of “Wally’s Wordsong” are sung to on that audio cassette released in 1984: “I know my A’ses and I know my Z’ses, and I can pronounce all kinds of diseases.”
The Library of Congress holds correspondence between Clifton Fadiman and the Macmillan Company about Wally the Wordworm and its drafts. I wonder what big, funny, stretchy words Fadiman may have been talked out of by the editors at Macmillan.
Most of all I wonder: Why did Wally only eat the last syllable of somersault?
- Charlotte, Special Collections Graduate Intern
