I picked up a copy of the film tie in of ‘Hopscotch’ by Brian Garfield although I wasn’t impressed with the cover. What I found interesting was the the ISBN on the back was different from the ISBN inside so it appears PAN just took the 1976 text block and slapped a 1980 cover on it. Now wondering why it needed two ISBNs?

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While searching for ‘Piccolo Explorers’ I hadn’t realised how many times the artwork had been used on other editions of some of the titles and by several publishers. Looking at dates, some proceed the Piccolo editions while other are after them. I have included four examples but I’m sure there must be others. Several are off the net so hopefully whoever posted them won’t mind me including them on the page.

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I do like ‘Books for Keeps’ although copies are not that easy to come across but they do contain some interesting material including the adverts. In the 9th July 1981 magazine there is one for the launch of the ‘Piccolo Factbooks’ for the next day, the 10th and it gives the background to the series. You can see the page HERE plus, like the ‘Explorers’, some copies from other publishers with the same artwork.

Having mentioned a ‘look a like’ with the ‘Child of the Sun’ here is another one with a similar composition to an earlier edition. This time it is for X210 ‘Mister Moses’ by Max Catto with artwork by one of my favourite artists, Glenn Steward. I am wondering if he based his on the Heinemann edition from 1961 with artwork by Renaro Fratini.

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I thought Judy Blume titles were either published as PAN Piccolo/Piper or as PAN Horizons editions but having a better look I have found a couple that were published as straight PANs, I’m sure there must be more but so far it is only ‘Forever’ and ‘Letters to Judy’ The latter title is a PAN while all the others with the same style of cover are Pipers.

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Looking through the large format edition of ‘Everything Your Doctor Would Tell You If He had The Time’ by Claire Rayner I was struck by how familiar the style of a lot of the text illustrations were. I checked the credit list at the back which confirmed that Alan Cracknell was one of the contributors. I do miss my chats with Alan and working as his unofficial agent as he didn’t do email.

Grant Thiessen, Canadian bookdealer, is currently going through my website and letting me know of anything to correct which is mainly incorrect ISBNs as I used a lot of ‘cut and paste’ making the pages. In one of his emails he pointed out that I didn’t appear to have a ‘Danube Edition’ of ‘The Act of Creation’ by Arthur Koestler. I must admit I hadn’t noticed so the error has now been rectified. I’ve also added Koestler’s later title ‘The Ghost in the Machine’ to the page as it was in the same format. PAN published several Koestler titles as Picador which I’ll add later but also two as PANs, ‘The Call-Girls’ and ‘The Case of the Midwife Toad’ with the latter later published as a Picador.

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Random title of the week is for ‘The Boston Strangler’ by Gerold Frank. PAN published three editions that I know of with the first edition being the elusive E13. It took me a while to get a copy but luckily a PAN Fan sent me one. It surprises me how often the second edition with the film tie-in cover but with a SBN and E on the spine is passed off as the first. This is the same as ‘The Life of Ian Fleming’ with a listed first rarely having the magic E12 on the cover and spine.

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Amongst the David Tayler covers were a couple of black and white photos of book covers. It was only when Rog Peyton pointed out they didn’t actually exist as such I had a better look. ‘Cimarron’ was a book by Edna Ferber not James Walter Bellah who didn’t exist but there was a James Warner Bellah who wrote westerns. ‘Stage to Sweetwater’ seemed to just appear as a short story from 1955 in ‘Ranch Romances’ As the covers were in b/w I though I’d put them through KOLARIZE and I’m pretty impressed with the results, a really easy to use program if you skip the tweaking bits but you do have to pay about 50p an image if you don’t want ‘Ks’ all over it. Rog also suggested a possible title for the mystery cover which is on the same page. although not by Tayler but by another PAN stalwart, Roger Hall.

Having picked up what appeared to be an unread copy of ‘Child of the Sun’ by Kyle Onstott and Lance Horner at Baddesley Clinton bookfair recently I looked to see how many other editions PAN published as I knew there was at least one other but it appears it was just the two. I have no idea as to cover artist for the 1977 but I’m wondering if the 1968 edition might be by Hans Helweg as he painted the Onstott covers for ‘Falconhurst Fancy’ and ‘The Tattooed Rood’ in the same year. I also thought it might be by the elusive artist Barbara Walton who painted the hardback cover for W H Allen in 1966 but on looking at them closely there are some minor differences. Did it need to be redone by someone so that all the crown and shoulder could be seen to centralise the figure? I’m also puzzling over why the order of the authors names were swapped over between editions?

I also noticed while looking along the shelves for the titles I needed I saw that the above, at a quick glance, seemed to be the only title with an SBN but no price letter below the logo.

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Having given a quick mention to ‘The Art of Renato Fratini’ I knew Jules Burt would include it in one of his great videos and HERE it is. Nice to see my website gets referenced in the book at the back.

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A while back I was in conversation with the actor Gwilym Lloyd who runs, as another string to his bow, Paprika Prints. He had produced several calendars featuring book covers from different genres but not PAN, well not up to now. I scanned in several covers for him which are included and the 2027 edition is now available from Paprika Prints.