R.I.P. Ben Shecter, 89, in Feb., illustrated "The Mother Market" (1966)

He died on Feb. 28th. He was also a designer for theatre, opera, ballet
and TV.
Originally, Nancy Brelis' book was titled "The Mummy Market."
From the New York Times, in 1966:
"Three children search for an ideal mother in this fantasy..."
It's not exactly sci-fi, but the book DID get listed at the ISFDB.
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2408330
"The Mother Market" was the title used in 1975, almost a decade after it
was published.
(Which raises the question - since I'm pretty sure the author was
American, when did calling your mother "Mummy" become so much less
common, in the U.S.? I'm kind of surprised the author used the original
title as late as 1966, given the likelihood of reader confusion!)
The following is from the thread I started - yes, Shecter's obituary is
included, plus a note from writer Fran Manushkin.
https://news.novabbs.org/interests/article-flat.php?id=26159&group=alt.obituaries#26159
On Sun, 4 May 2025 18:34:20 +0000, Lenona wrote:

I first knew him for his illustrations for Nancy Brelis' incredible
story "The Mother Market" (1966, aka "The Mummy Market"). That book was
filmed as "Trading Mom" in 1994, starring...Sissy Spacek.
>

And that book deserves further mention.
(It's important to realize that in the book - unlike the movie - the
kids want to get rid of their nasty HOUSEKEEPER, who is the only adult
in the house.)
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/nancy-brelis/the-mummy-market/
 (an unusually positive review, for Kirkus, but there's a spoiler
included)
This is from 2013 and is pretty short.
https://thingsifinished.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-mummy-market.html
To my surprise, the book's author's daughter directed the movie!
And this one is much longer and raises a good point about how
step-families became far more common in later decades. However, it's not
as though it's all that common for the KIDS to take the initiative in
that direction!
https://collectingchildrensbooks.blogspot.com/2008/01/whats-matter-with-kids-today.html
And this one mentions the Daddy Market, which also exists in the book.
https://mydustyshelves.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-mother-market-formerly-mummy-market.html
An article from 1994 about the making of the movie, with Tia Brelis:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-05-07-ca-54731-story.html
Excerpt:
“My mom got to see several drafts of the script before she died (of
lymphoma cancer),” she says. “I just wish she could be here to celebrate
it today. You know, it was her first book and she sat down and wrote it
in three weeks.
“It had always been this great thing I loved. The story came about
because we used to tease her and say we would trade her in at the mommy
market. But I was upset by it when I read it as a mother, because in her
book it was about children who had no mother at all, which I changed. My
mom said I corrected the flaw in the story, but any change I made I
always felt it was almost sacrilegious.”
And finally:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197330.The_Mummy_Market
 (26 reader reviews)
From Shannon Kirk, who also writes about how she's trying to get the
book back into print:
"I read an article from the author's daughter from around the time they
made the movie of The Mummy Market (starring Sissy Spacek, titled
Trading Mom). More on that below. As I recall, the daughter said her
mother wrote The Mummy Market in three weeks, flat. From conception to
completion. And that fascinates me, because the whole thing is just
filled with so much raw beauty, poetic lines. And the resolution to the
story is beautifully jagged and somewhat haunting, to the point that the
resolution has stuck with me as a philosophical question I've been
trying to puzzle out since I was ten. This, to me, is just plain genius
writing. It means it is a raw story straight from the author's brain
(much like a Dickinson poem) and it was not overly manufactured to make
for literal and clean, linear reading (which is what they did with the
film adaption (Trading Mom) by making certain changes that were
infuriating)..."