Goodnight Moon, Goodbye Cigarette

It seems that the cigarette has sparked controversy in matters of censorship. Goodnight Moon, the children's classic by Margaret Wise Brown, is undergoing a change.

According to the New York Times, HarperCollins Children's Books has reconsidered the use of a photograph bearing a cigarette-smoking illustrator, Clement Hurd. In fact, the cigarette was digitally removed from the photograph in a recent printing.

The publisher said it printed 20,000 hardcover and 50,000 paperback books with the altered photograph. No photo runs in the popular board-book format, for younger readers, which accounts for three-quarters of the 800,000 copies of "Goodnight Moon" HarperCollins said it sells annually.

The originating article by Edward Wyatt, is here.

Eliot Letters Auctioned

In the New York Times today:

A collection of largely unpublished letters from T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) to the Faber publishing family, and inscribed first editions of Eliot's work were sold for �242,652 ($436,725) yesterday at an auction at Bonhams in London. One set of letters, some of them illustrated and including poems, from Eliot to Tom Faber, his godson, sold for about $82,000); and a second set, from Eliot to Enid Faber...

Read more here.