The Treasure Hunter: The Story of Robert Louis Stevenson (1939, illustrator only)

Dad did wonderful black-and-white illustrations for this 206-page young-adults book written by Isabel Proudfit. Good friends, Don & Barbara Elleman, are going on a trip to the island of Apia, and it was fun to read about it in this biography of Stevenson, who made on this South Seas island a replica of an English manor house and property.

Skwee-Gee (1940, illustrator only)

The story of a "most un-ordinary teddy bear" who is left by his owner in the mountains and finds a way to get back home. The picture book was written by Darwin and Hildegarde Teilhet, and my father's original illustrations reside in the New York Public Library collection.

Creeper's Jeep (1948)

The first book Dad wrote after we moved to Westport, CT, in 1946, it was based on a real farm family across the street from us, Gertie and Louie Gampfer. Of course the way the son’s shiny jeep came alive and did all his chores for him came from Dad’s imagination, but it’s a great story of how the jeep redeemed himself.

Homer and the Circus Train (1957)

This book demonstrated for me how clever Dad was with puns and word games, because this darling caboose who “sees the world backwards” from the end of the train had a new way of looking at things. He read the sign “Stop, Look & Listen” as “Netsil & Kool Pots”! And when Dad wrote about Homer being scared when a tall trestle bridge began to shake, he was remembering his own experience as a young boy in Dallas, TX. When he was seven, he had to go over a trestle bridge and far out of town to get fresh milk for his father sick with tuberculosis.

Nikos and the Sea God (1963)

My parents went over to Greece to see old friends who used to live in Connecticut, and they fell in love with Greece. This was one of Dad’s favorite books because he had always loved Greek myths and wanted to share them with American children. Meet Nikos and his Aunt Mara and his pelican, Icarus.

Little Toot on the Grand Canal (1968)

On a trip to Venice, Dad and Mom loved seeing the Bridge of Sighs and imagined how Little Toot would love the bubbles the glassblowers blew. My favorite illustration in this book is page 19, where Little Toot is watching enthusiastically the huge candystick canes he thought looked delicious.

Little Toot on the Mississippi (1973)

My parents traveled in the United States as well, and they loved the bayous of this wonderful river, but when it begins to flood, Little Toot sets out on a daring rescue! Everyone loves the personification of the old steamboats and paddle wheelers who floated down the river.

Little Toot and the Loch Ness Monster (1989)

When my father died in 1979, one of the last things he did creatively was to ask me if I knew dictation so that I could "take down the final version of the Loch Ness book" that he had been lying there thinking about. So Mom and I knew how important that book was to Dad. After he died and we showed the manuscript sketches to Putnam, editor and president of Young Reader Books, Margaret Frith, said that "Hardie's sketches are more finished than some illustrators' final art" and we decided to one day try to finish the book. My mother added a couple of illustrations (she was a published artist herself) and I edited all the manuscripts into a final book. The reviews were good, and character actress and producer Shelley Duvall turned the book into an animated feature of her Bedtime Stories show on Showtime. The show even got an Emmy nomination, so we felt that Dad would have been happy with the results.