Elizabeth Taylor's Nibbles and Me

By Elizabeth Taylor

In 1946, Elizabeth Taylor -- then fourteen and a major star at MGM -- published a book about her pet chipmunk, Nibbles. With wit, charm, and remarkable skill, she related the adventures and mishaps of her high-spirited friend. She and Nibbles were virtually inseparable during the shooting of National Velvet and other films; in fact the chipmunk almost got to appear in Courage of Lassie -- but he was so well behaved that he didn't look real, and his scene was cut! Recounted here are such stories as the happiest birthday of her life, when she was given King Charles, the horse who was called The Pi in National Velvet, because only Elizabeth could ride him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
• Release date: May 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781442442306

Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor's acting career has spanned six decades. Since her film debut at the age of nine, she has received two Oscar Awards and five Best Actress nominations as well as a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, the French Legion of Honor, and she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2001. As a young actress she was best known for her roles in Lassie Come Home and National Velvet. Highlights of her later career include Father of the Bride; Raintree County; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Suddenly, Last Summer; BUtterfield 8; Cleopatra; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; and The Taming of the Shrew. Elizabeth Taylor wrote and illustrated Nibbles and Me while a teenager, and it was published when she was fourteen.

Book preview

SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright © 1946, copyright renewed 1974 by Elizabeth Taylor

First published in 1946 by Duell, Sloan and Pearce, Inc.

First Simon & Schuster edition, 2002

Introduction and additional illustrations copyright © 2002 by Elizabeth Taylor

Photographs on pages viii, xiii, 9, 49, 62, and 71 are from Courage of Lassie, © 1946

Turner Entertainment Co., an AOL Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

Photographs on pages vi, 24, 26, and 50 are from Photofest. Photograph on page ii

is from Everett/Photofest. Photograph on page 55 is from Kobal/Photofest.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction

in whole or in part in any form.

SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster.

Book design by Anne Scatto/ PIXEL PRESS

The text for this book is set in Horley Old Style MT.

Printed in the United States of America

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Taylor, Elizabeth, 1932-

Elizabeth Taylor’s Nibbles and me / written and illustrated by Elizabeth Taylor.

p. cm.

Originally published: Nibbles and me. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1946.

ISBN 0-689-85334-3

eISBN-13: 978-1-44244-230-6

1. Taylor, Elizabeth, 1932--Juvenile literature. 2. Chipmunks as pets—

Juvenile literature. I. Title: Nibbles and me. II. Title.

PN2287.T18 A3 2002

636.936’4—dc21

2002066985

Dedicated to

Mummie, Daddy, and Howard,

who love Nibbles almost as

much as I do.

Elizabeth and Lassie sign fan mail.

A Note to the New Edition

Publisher’s Note

    I:     Before Nibbles

    II:     Introduction to Nibbles

   III:     Nibbles as He Was—and Is

   IV:     How Nibbles Came to Have His First Bubble Bath

    V:     Into a Nest of Snakes

  VI:      I Do a Trapeze Act out My Window

 VII:     His First and Last Appearance in Pictures

VIII:     Concerning His First Train Journey

  IX:     Concerning Christmas

   X:      Concerning, Among Other Things, My Most Wonderful Birthday

  XI:      How We Journey Forth into One of Nibbles’s Scariest Adventures

 XII:     Of Our Arrival and What Was Almost a Sorry End

XIII:     I Make a Heartbreaking Decision and Nibbles Makes His Choice

XIV:     V-J Day in Chicago

 XV:     The Climax

XVI:     The End

Nibbles feels perfectly happy sitting on Elizabeth’s head.

Not so very long ago, somebody asked to see the drawings in Nibbles and Me, and I had to rummage around in my library to find a copy, as the book was published more than fifty years ago! This same somebody sat down with my book, said she was charmed with my little story, and wondered whether I would consider reprinting it. Well, I thought about it and decided that it couldn’t do anybody any harm—after all, no animals are mistreated and no one is especially wicked or even a little awful. What it has are the growing-up observations of a thirteen-year-old girl, perhaps leaving childhood behind, but never, never forsaking her love of animals and the countryside. My hope for any of you young readers is that my little story, and the drawings I made, will make you smile and believe in the magic that a friendship with animals can bring, no matter how old you are. Over the years, animals have remained my sweetest and most cherished friends.

—Elizabeth Taylor

October 2002

Nibbles and Me came to us written in a school copybook in the pencilled handwriting of a thirteen-year-old girl. The young girl is Elizabeth Taylor, a charming and unusual actress, who has already been starred in