Hi anniephans. I recently purchased two of the Little Orphan Annie books. I chose the ones from 1937 to 1940 because they contain the Shanghai Lil story. I didn’t get to it yet, but I’ve read that it is widely considered to be the best of the strip, from the Harold Gray years anyway. I had read a Better Little Book about our heroine when I was a child, but our newspaper did not carry the strip, so I didn’t know too much about it. It took me a while to get into the story because the first storyline in the book consisted largely of expounding Gray’s philosophy. But it got much better and now I am really interested. Wikipedia said that no other writer really caught the spirit of Annie, including Leonard Starr, although in the writer’s opinion, he came closest. I do like Mr. Maeder’s vision. The strip had to be updated and I think that he and his illustrators did a great job.
Hi anniephans. I recently purchased two of the Little Orphan Annie books. I chose the ones from 1937 to 1940 because they contain the Shanghai Lil story. I didn’t get to it yet, but I’ve read that it is widely considered to be the best of the strip, from the Harold Gray years anyway. I had read a Better Little Book about our heroine when I was a child, but our newspaper did not carry the strip, so I didn’t know too much about it. It took me a while to get into the story because the first storyline in the book consisted largely of expounding Gray’s philosophy. But it got much better and now I am really interested. Wikipedia said that no other writer really caught the spirit of Annie, including Leonard Starr, although in the writer’s opinion, he came closest. I do like Mr. Maeder’s vision. The strip had to be updated and I think that he and his illustrators did a great job.