IONESCO NUMBER 99

Today is the 99th birthday of Roumanian and French playwright and dramatist Eugene Ionesco. Known for his plays about insignificance (and outsignificance) such as Rhinoceros, Ionesco also wrote for his daughter a series of childrens books entitled Story Number 1, Story Number 2, etc. This is Etienne Delessert's (again?) illustration from Story Number 1, an absurd tale about a little girl named Josette, who has a nanny named Jacqueline and meets another little girl, named Jacqueline, who has a doll named Jacqueline, and an aunt named Jacqueline, well you get the picture. This book is "for children under three years of age," but I think it is for children under 103 years of age. It is long out of print and I'm not giving up my copy not even for 99 dollars.