Teaser Tuesday 264: The Gnomobile

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by Jenn of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current book or recent read.
* Share a few "teaser" sentences from somewhere in the book.
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away. You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title and author so that other participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser!


This week I am teasing a classic children’s book, The Gnomobile by Upton Sinclair. I remember seeing this movie when I was six years old, but never knew it was based on a book until I stumbled across a copy at a library used book sale. Reading it made me want to see the movie again, though I know it is nothing like the book. This is from the beginning:

A little girl was walking in a California forest. It was a forest containing some of the biggest trees in the world, and the little girl had never seen anything like it. She was wandering on, in a sort of daze, hardly able to believe her eyes.

They had been talking in the car about the “big trees,” the “giant redwoods.” But the words had not meant much to the child. They had been rolling along the highway, twisting and turning on mountain grades, in bright sunlight of a spring day. Suddenly the sunlight was gone, there was twilight and a solemn hush, and a forest made of the largest of living things.

(First two paragraphs, Chapter 1)

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Gnomes are rare these days—which is one of the reasons so few people ever see them.

But Elizabeth and her young uncle did come upon two forlorn little people, the last of their tribe of California Redwood gnomes. And when they heard Glogo’s sad story they set off immediately to search for another tribe of gnomes and a wife for young Bobo.

In his shiny little car (the Gnomobile, naturally) Uncle Rodney secretes Bobo and grandfather Glogo in a basket to protect them from curiosity seekers. But secrecy only redoubles curiosity.

One problem follows another until something terrible happens. Bobo and Glogo are gnome-gnaped!

~*~*~*~

To amuse his granddaughter, Pulitzer-prize-author Upton Sinclair wrote this story—a satisfying, smile-provoking tale that might almost, really, have been.