National Figure

SKIPPY--A Novel--Percy Crosby--Putnam ($2.50).

Knowing about Skippy is, to people who do know about him, like belonging to a special, almost secret society in which there are only two members, Skippy and the person who knows about him. Of course, each member realizes there are lots of other members, because the comic-strip Skippy lives in and is syndicated in 85 daily and 40 Sunday newspapers throughout the U. S. But being a Skippy person is different from liking Mutt and Jeff or the Gumps. Skippy goes it alone, for one thing, although he is much younger than most comic-strip characters. Furthermore, there is something about Skippy that makes you feel he does not care whether you are amused or not. Skippy is real to himself.

Cartoonist Percy Crosby, who is Skippy's medium, risked a good deal putting the young man into a novel. And from the nature of the writing, it looks as if Mr. Crosby means to risk more yet and have a cinema Skippy. The result so far, however, is only added testimony to Skippy's greatness. In spite of a Plot and a Social Thesis, which Mr. Crosby has introduced because most novels have them, Skippy stays about the same. He does not get selfconscious, as proved by the fact that in 335 pages he only utters once the phrase for which he is most famed, "Always belittlin'."

For the sake of the novel, Skippy s friends and relatives had to be given last names. So his mother is Mrs. Skinner and some of the others are collar buttons, Hecky (personification of juvenile persistence), Sooky (pathetic phlegm), Carol Sharon (Skippy's girl), Milkman Lovering. The place they live in is called Morrisville. The plot is Skippy's show, BULL RUN (admission by collar buttons), his troubles at school, his baseball team, his blood-curdling threats and how he loves Carol Sharon.

Author Crosby's social thesis is a protest against the urbanizing of Morrisville. Milkman Lovering is his spokesman about the beat of the hammers building new subdivisions, changing the plan of Morrisville from an H to a symbol from some oppressive foreign alphabet. Milkman Lovering gets supplanted by the milk trust. A department store replaces Mrs. Barkenteens, where Skippy bought the "chawklets." Mr. Prince, a city man, gives Skippy's ball team uniforms--emblazoned to advertise real estate.

Skippy cries bitterly at the end of the book. More cheerful to contemplate are Skippyisms from the early, ragamuffin chapters. Samples:

"If this house ever catched on fire, the first one I'd rush in and save is you, Ma. . . . Ma, can I have a dime?"

(To his teacher, to get sympathy): "You don't know my father. He'll beat me with an iron chain, yes, sir! an iron chain, 'n after all I'm only a little boy."

(At the birthday party) : "Look at that rinsed-out toad countin' his presents again! Just disgustful, that's what it is!"

Author Crosby is not specially fond of little boys, nor has he one of his own. Skippy is mostly himself as he remembers himself, and as he still is. Born in Brooklyn 36 years ago, he started out to do serious painting. He cartooned at the front during the War, began Skippy in Life in 1923.