{"id":187,"date":"2014-08-04T00:01:04","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T05:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/?p=187"},"modified":"2014-07-23T21:30:48","modified_gmt":"2014-07-24T02:30:48","slug":"the-childrens-book-that-made-readers-dig-england-and-the-hare-brained-scheme-that-followed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/?p=187","title":{"rendered":"The Children\u2019s Book That Made Readers Dig England And The Hare-brained Scheme That Followed"},"content":{"rendered":"

[This is one of a series of posts in which we are sharing stories from our upcoming book (<\/em>Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature) that were cut from the original manuscript.]<\/em><\/p>\n

It had all the elements of a great mystery \u2013 puzzling pictographs, confusing clues, and a buried treasure for the taking! Who would think that a children\u2019s book would lead to such scandal and international disappointment?<\/p>\n

\"2489c27a02a0576bd2265110.L\"<\/a>It all started when a British publisher suggested artist\u00a0Kit\u00a0Williams\u00a0“do something no one has ever done before” in a children\u2019s book. That\u2019s when\u00a0Williams\u00a0came up with\u00a0Masquerade<\/em>, the tale of Jack Hare carrying a valuable treasure from the moon to the sun. Upon his arrival, the hare realizes he has lost the treasure somewhere along the way. Sixteen very detailed paintings accompanied the story and, if the reader could follow the complex clues and resist the red herrings hidden in the artwork, he or she could pinpoint the treasure\u2019s location. What made\u00a0Masquerade<\/em>\u00a0so irresistible to readers was that\u00a0Kit\u00a0Williams\u00a0had buried a real treasure, a gold and jewel-encrusted pendant shaped like a rabbit, somewhere in England. All a reader needed to do was follow the book\u2019s clues, grab a shovel, and dig!<\/p>\n

Shortly after the book\u2019s 1979 publication, England became dotted with holes and hollows as Brits went crazy searching for treasure.<\/p>\n

It took nearly three years, but in March 1982, a man who called himself Ken Thomas submitted a crudely-drawn map by mail, pinpointing the location of the buried treasure in Ampthill, Bedfordshire. Williams\u00a0confirmed that Thomas had discovered the right spot and told him to start digging. Six more years would pass before a newspaper revealed that \u201cKen Thomas\u201d was really a man named Dugald Thompson — and he had cheated to win the prize.<\/p>\n

You see, Thompson\u2019s business partner was the boyfriend of a woman named Veronica Robertson \u2013 and Robertson was a former girlfriend of\u00a0Kit\u00a0Williams. Veronica had learned the general location of the buried treasure during the years she lived with\u00a0Williams. She had revealed the location not out of greed, but because the two other men led her to believe they\u2019d donate the valuable prize to animal rights charities. Needless to say, no fluffy bunnies—or animals of any kind—benefited from the discovery of the buried treasure.<\/p>\n

\"masqueradehare\"The great irony about the\u00a0Masquerade<\/em>\u00a0scandal was that, even with Veronica Robertson\u2019s assistance, Dugald Thompson never did locate the\u00a0exact<\/em>\u00a0burial spot of the treasure. Two high school physics teachers had legitimately pieced together the clues and discovered where it was buried. Unfortunately, the two didn\u2019t spot the treasure while digging, and actually left it lying among the piles of overturned dirt, where the lurking Thompson plucked it up for himself.<\/p>\n

More than thirty years have passed since the golden hare was unearthed, but used copies of\u00a0Masquerade<\/em>\u00a0continue to sell briskly to daydream believers who have somehow convinced themselves that this treasure still lies buried, waiting for them to discover its hiding place.<\/p>\n

Sources<\/strong><\/p>\n

Penrose, Barry, and John Davison. \u201cUnmasked : The Masquerade \u2018Con.\u2019\u201d \u00a0The London Times. 11 December 1988. \u00a0Web. 2 September 2011. \u00a0<http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/kitwilliams\/faq.html<\/a>>.<\/p>\n

Warman, Matt. \u201cMasquerade : A Treasure Hunt That Ended in a Scandal.\u201d \u00a0The Telegraph. \u00a013 April 2011. \u00a0Web. \u00a02 September 2011. <http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/culture\/books\/booknews\/8448139\/Masquerade-a-treasure-hunt-that-ended-in-a-scandal.html<\/a>>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This is one of a series of posts in which we are sharing stories from our upcoming book (Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature) that were cut from the original manuscript.] It had all the elements of a great mystery \u2013 puzzling pictographs, confusing clues, and a buried …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1013,"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/1013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildthings.blaine.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}