Very Special People

1973, 1976 Bantam edition
Frederick Drimmer
Very Special People: The Struggles, Loves and Triumphs of Human Oddities
Probably bought new for $1.95
Very worn paperback with split spine
B-

In Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!, the title character, who is a young "fat lady," likes to read about bizarre people, like the Elephant Man.  She would enjoy this book, although Drimmer emphasizes the humanity within those that were sometimes called "freaks" and "monsters."  From those of unusual size (weight and/or height) to those born with more or less than normal (Siamese twins, people with extra or fewer limbs, or more hair, etc.) to those harder to classify ("hermaphrodites" and, yes, John Merrick), he describes many unusual lives, in a page or maybe a chapter.  (Two chapters for Tom Thumb and his bride Lavinia.)  In fact, that's one of the weaknesses of the book, that Drimmer tries to cover too much.  Some of the people he mentions deserve whole books in themselves, and Drimmer in fact wrote a 1985 book called The Elephant Man.  I also would've liked it if the 32 pages of photos were in the order that the figures appear in the book.

This edition seems to have been updated a bit, since Drimmer includes the additional information a reader sent about the surprising lives and deaths of the two bearded wives of a showman named Lent, with one wife's mummy still on display in 1975. The book is aimed at a junior high level or above (VL7, IL 7-adult), with a fairly simple vocabulary for an adult book but with some mature content.  As a preteen (or younger) I found it not too challenging a read, even if I didn't know what a "vulva" or an "anus" was in the section on conjoined twins.  Speaking of such twins, Drimmer discusses how Mark Twain gave a satiric twist to the lives of two famous 19th-century sets in Those Extraordinary Twins.