Mio, My Son by Lindgren, Astrid - 1956

New York: The Viking Press, 1956. First American edition. 8vo, 179pp. Illustrations by Ilon Wikland. Publisher's light blue cloth stamped in blue, top edge of page block stained red, in illustrated jacket. Very good with some toning and rubbing to spine, a couple spots of foxing to foredge of page block and front endpaper. Former owner's inscription ffep and a to pages with some acid offsetting from an old newspaper clipping else clean internally. Jacket with a couple chips along the top edge and some corresponding wrinkling, else nicely preserved. Original price of $2.50 in tact. Early work from Astrid Lindgren, originally published in Sweden in 1954. Lindgren was relatively new on the American scene at this point, Viking having only translated and published Pippi Longstocking in 1950 and subsequently two Bill Bergson detective stories in 1952 and 1954. Mio, My Son is considered Lindgren's first effort in the genre of high fantasy and won a German youth literature award the same year it was published in America.