# Custard the Dragon, and the Missing Stanza

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/custard-the-dragon-and-the-missing-stanza/1014429>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Tags:** poetry\
**Created:** [February 17, 2025, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/custard-the-dragon-and-the-missing-stanza/1014429 "2025-02-17T20:08:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/custard-the-dragon-and-the-missing-stanza/1014429/21 "2025-02-21T13:59:28Z")

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Just checked the acknowledgements page in _The Golden Treasury of Poetry_ (published by Golden Press) and it says “The Tale of Custard the Dragon” is from Ogden Nash’s _The Face is Familiar_, with a string of copyright dates ranging from 1931 to 1940.

_The Golden Treasury of Poetry_ is illustrated by Joan Walsh Anglund, and “Custard” wouldn’t have fit on the two page spread in this book with that extra stanza, for what it’s worth.

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**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2025, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/custard-the-dragon-and-the-missing-stanza/1014429/22 "2025-02-21T14:46:54Z")

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> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> …which gets me back to wondering whether some busybody decided they understood Nash’s poem better than Nash did, and deliberately removed a stanza they found awkward or too sharp.

I’m reminded of the scene from _Elf_ where they discover the children’s book was mistakenly printed with a blank page. “Just ship it, who cares if some kid doesn’t know what happened to the puppy.”

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**Author:** ![cheryldeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/54ee81/32.png) [@cheryldeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cheryldeep)\
**Post date:** [January 2, 2026, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/custard-the-dragon-and-the-missing-stanza/1014429/23 "2026-01-02T16:57:39Z")

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I just bought the illustrated Lynn Munsinger version of Custard and saw the “new” stanza in it. This was my favorite poem as a young child – my mother read it to me dozens of times. Our version in the “Family Treasury of Children’s Stories” by Doubleday did not include that stanza. It was published in 1956. I find the stanza awkward and off-putting. Nash could certainly have made the hypocrisy point more elegantly, so I’m suspicious of how it got there.

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