Junior Fun in Bed: Making a Holiday of Convalescence
(Here is a book you have been waiting for -- a three ring ...)
Here is a book you have been waiting for -- a three ring circus and a first-aid kit rolled into one. While it is specially planned for those days when you aren't feeling well and must stay home in bed, you'll find it to be every bit as much fun when you're up and about. You'll discover that the authors have crammed the pages with pleasant ways of passing the time. There are dozens and dozens of magic stunts, puzzles, riddles, mazes, and indoor games, most of which you've never played before. There are limericks and cartoons and question-and-answer tests. There is a whole section devoted specially to hobbies and to the really useful things you can make indoors when you find time lying heavy on your hands. But perhaps the best feature of this book is its short stories. Stories that will make you laugh, stories that will thrill and delight you, stories that will make you feel so gay that you will want to get right back on your feet again. And among your favorite authors who have helped to make this book possible for you to enjoy are Robert (Believe It Or Not) Ripley, Frank Buck, Ellis Parker Butler, Laurie Erskine, Winston Norman, Edwin Hamilton and many more. In other words, Junior Fun in Bed is a book you are going to want to read over and over again, just as you are going to want to try out its puzzles and feats of magic on every one of your friends.
Virginia Kirkus was an American literary critic and author. She held a series of writing and editorial jobs at various periodicals including Pictorial Review, McCall's magazine and worked for Harper Brothers publishing firm.
Background
Virgina Kirkus was born on December 07, 1893 in Meadville, Pennsylvania, United States, the daughter of Frederick Maurice Kirkus, an Episcopal clergyman, and Isabella Clark. Kirkus spent her early childhood in Wilmington, Delaware, where her father was for twenty-five years rector of Trinity Church.
Education
Kirkus attended the Missus Hebbs School in Wilmington and the Hannah More Academy in Reisterstown, Maryland. In 1916 she graduated from Vassar College, where she majored in English, and in 1917 she took education courses at Teachers College of Columbia University.
Career
Kirkus's first employment was teaching English and history for three years at the Greenhill School in Wilmington. In 1920 she returned to New York City to become assistant fashion editor for Pictorial Review, then edited the "back of the book" section of McCall's magazine and wrote her first book, Everywoman's Guide to Health and Personal Beauty (1922). In 1923 she edited Robert Bacon, Life and Letters. Around 1925, Kirkus became head of the children's books department of Harper and Brothers, where she continued until 1932, when the Great Depression forced Harper's to discontinue publishing children's books. The firm gave Kirkus six months to look for another position; she spent two months visiting her family in Europe, where her father was temporarily assigned to the American Church in Munich.
During her homeward voyage, Kirkus decided that instead of taking another editorial job she would start a new service for booksellers, providing them with prepublication reviews of books, as guides to their ordering and promotion. By January 1933, Kirkus had persuaded twenty publishers to let her review advance proofs of their new books, and the Virginia Kirkus Bookshop Service began sending review bulletins to her first ten bookseller subscribers, who paid $10 per month for the service. After three months she established a sliding scale for subscriptions, ranging from $2. 50 per month for small shops to $15 for the largest.
During the first year she reviewed almost a thousand books, and established a reputation that rapidly increased the size of her clientele and encouraged publishers to provide her with galley proofs. In 1935, Kirkus was persuaded by Joseph Wheeler, director of the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore, to offer her service to libraries. By the mid-1950's her rates for library subscriptions ranged from $19 to $32, depending on the size of their book budgets. Kirkus also added book clubs, literary agents, radio and television stations, and even publishers to her list of clients. By 1950 she had over 1, 500 subscribers and four assistants, and she was reviewing more than 4, 000 books per year. In 1935, with Frank Scully, Kirkus wrote two children's books of games, Fun in Bed for Children and Junior Fun in Bed.
In 1943 the Virginia Kirkus Bookshop Service was located at 38 Bank Street, in Greenwich Village, where she and her husband had an apartment above the ground-floor office space of her business. They also had a country house in Redding Ridge, Connecticut. It was the subject of Kirkus's book A House for the Weekends (1940), in which she described the joys of restful rural weekends and gave advice on acquiring, restoring, and maintaining a weekend cottage in the country. Another book derived from the house in Redding Ridge was The First Book of Gardening (1956). Kirkus was also a frequent contributor to the Saturday Review.
Kirkus retired in 1962 and moved her permanent residence from New York City to Redding Ridge. In 1971 she sold her business to the New York Review of Books. At that time she judged that her evaluations of the books she reviewed, had been right about 85 percent of the time. She admitted, for example, underestimating Hervey Allen's Anthony Adverse, which she thought was too long, and Thomas Wolfe's Of Time and the River, which she thought "would have only snob appeal. "
During World War II she served on the selection board for Armed Services Editions and on the Book-sellers Authority, in Washington, D. C. She was president of the Mark Twain Library in 1953 and 1954 and was a member of the Governor's Commission on Rural Libraries in Connecticut from 1961 to 1964.
Kirkus was a member of the Cosmopolitan Club of New York, P. E. N. , the American Library Association, and the League of Women Voters.
Interests
Virginia's principal recreational interests were horseback riding and dancing.
Connections
On June 4, 1936, Kirkus married Frank Glick, personnel director of a New York City department store. They had no children. The ceremony was performed by her father and Rabbi Samuel H. Goldman.