"Twinkle The Star That Came Down From Heaven" by Jay Williams and Mazin

"Twinkle The Star That Came Down From Heaven" by Jay Williams was a regular feature that appeared in Humpty Dumpty's Magazine for Little Children. The name on the art was "Mazin." Copyright its respective copyright holders.

My grandmother would bring up to a dozen of these little magazines. They would be packed in her luggage when she visited during Christmas in the 1960s. She worked for my great uncle, a doctor, in California. Since she usually brought a year's worth at a time, I believe these were pulled from the waiting room. 

Anyway, I had not seen them before or since -- until I ran into a copy at a thrift shop a few weeks ago. There were a couple of different magazines: Humpty Dumpty's and Children's Digest. The Digest had Tintin reprints. That I remember. 

Everyone knows about Tintin.

But Twinkle -- Twinkle has been forgotten. A six page Twinkle story was in most issues of HD, back in the day. Here's my earliest copy, from November 1957, that I bought from eBay. Twinkle alternately intrigued me and terrified me when I was a tot. I mean, look at those trees: leafless, bare of most branches. The woodcut approach was none too cuddly in my little kid eyes. 

And the star of the strip was literally an anthropomorphic fallen star. So weird. 

There is little on the web about this feature, which ran from the 1950s to the 1960s I believe. The table of contents would sometimes (sometimes not) credit Twinkle as by Jay Williams, a prolific children's book illustrator. I don't know if Mazin and Mr. Williams were one and the same. 

Now that I'm older, I like the style ... but I still think it's weird that a star is friends with forest animals.
 

-- Edited from a blog entry that originally appeared on September 25. 2013.