Impulse buying at the bargain bookstore has gotten me a lot of books I have no earthly use for (as you probably know), but I like buying them anyway (as you probably also know).

This is another one of those books — Famous Faces by Norman Messenger (#174 for 2009).  I found among the stacks of children’s books at my favorite bargain bookstore, and it was a bit more than I’d normally spend at the store (well, fine, it was P120 — a little over US$2) because it was a bad day and I needed some cheering up (haha!).

Famous Faces (#174 for 2009) is a novelty book featuring celebrity faces such as  Groucho Marx, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Charlie Chaplin, Elvis, and even Prince Charles and Princess Diana (before they separated).

(Incidentally, I found out this book has been a collector’s item after Diana’s death!)

Each face is divided into four flaps – hair, eyes, nose and mouth, and clothes. You can mix and match these celebrity features to create new faces — e.g. Chaplin’s hat, Marilyn Monroe’s eyes, Diana’s smile, and Margaret Thatcher’s clothes — and get absolutely hilarious results!

Here are some of the real celebrity faces:

Chaplin

Elvis

Charles and Di

Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe

You can mix and match features by flipping the flaps, like so:

And then the fun begins! Here are some mashups:

It’s pretty hard to keep a straight face while “reading” this book!

***

My copy: hardcover with internal spring binding

My rating: 4/5 stars

Tags: celebrities, charlie chaplin, elvis, faces, famous faces, funny faces, groucho marx, margaret thatcher, mix and match, norman messenger, novelty books, prince charles, princess diana, ronald reagan

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 29th, 2009 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Bargain Books, Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.