Serafina the Giraffe

Cleveland/New York: The World Publishing Company. Near Fine in Fair dj. (c.1961). First Edition. Hardcover. (price-clipped) [a beautiful clean copy, with just a touch of wear at the spine ends; the jacket, unfortunately, has a couple of long irregular tears in the front panel, which a previous owner inexplicably chose to tape-repair externally rather than internally, with predictably unsightly after-effects; it's possible that a talented paper conservator could remove the old tape, do a proper repair, and make the jacket look quite presentable, but no guarantees]. (color illustrations) The first in what was intended to be a series of books about a sweet-tempered and very sociable giraffe, but never really got very far off the ground. (Only two more titles were published after this one.) The author/illustrator was very busy otherwise, however, continuing the "Babar the Elephant" series created by his father, Jean de Brunhoff, after the latter's death in 1937. .