The things I rediscover

I’m working through the “juvenile” bookcase in M’s room, which also contains some juvies L and I loved as kids, and some of L’s illustrator collection.  And while I was working through it . . .

I found this.

That is the half-title page of L’s copy of The Hobbit, illustrated by Michael Hague.  And that is not only a signature, but a full-page original sketch of Gandalf in ballpoint by Hague.  He did a signing many years ago at Toad Hall, a now-defunct children’s bookstore in Austin, and L took several of his illustrated books already in her collection to be signed.  I don’t remember what she said to him about it, but obviously he must have been pleased to have gone to the trouble of making an original sketch.