The Rooster Club

New York: Viking Press, 1944. 8vo. 220 x 150mm., [8 1/2 x 6 inches]. 150pp. Exceptionally handsome block-prints at chapter-openings and  throughout, several in double-spreads.  Publisher's terracotta cloth with gold stamping on spine; blind-stamped rooster on front board; illustrated unclipped jacket in primary colors. Book Fine: pristine textblock, minimal dulling to gold stamping on spine. Jacket Fine: very slight color abrasions at edges.

First Edition. Valenti Angelo (1897-1982), whose work is highly prized in the world of the graphic arts, was born in Massarossa, in Tuscany, and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 8. After a period in New York City, he settled in California where he became a leading engraver and printer, specializing in the linocut as a medium, and in evocative Southwestern night and desert scenes as subjects. In San Francisco he worked with the celebrated Grabhorn Press. Nino, his first book for children, received the Newbery Honor in 1939.

In The Rooster Club, Angelo describes the adventures of a young Italo-American with his Boy Scout peers in California—adventures as disparate as encounters with a bear and learning the hard way that boiling beans at high altitudes is difficult.

.