Little Eva #8

When Susie Spence falls ill, Little Eva and Nipper Nuggin decide to make her a get-well cake from scratch—but their well-meaning attempt at following a recipe goes hilariously wrong, from using car grease instead of cooking oil to creating a cake so enormous it nearly falls apart. The pair discovers firsthand just how much trouble homemade generosity can cause when they try to taste-test their creation.

When a rainstorm threatens to cancel Little Eva's dancing lesson, she and Nipper Nuggin cook up a scheme to keep her from having to leave the house—but her resourcefulness might just backfire when Little Eva's mother decides to check on the weather herself. A quick and clever tale of a young girl trying to get out of her obligations, with a twist that proves sometimes the simplest excuses don't hold up to scrutiny.

Nipper launches a protective society charging two cents a month to shield kids from the neighborhood bullies—but when he tries to negotiate with The Toughies themselves, his scheme backfires spectacularly and sends him scrambling for his life. Though Nipper ends up worse for wear, his members credit him with somehow convincing the troublemakers to back off, leaving our young entrepreneur to keep his methods under wraps.

Little Eva gets caught up in Nipper's chemistry set experiment when he creates a green soap he plans to sell—but the dye rubs off on her face just before dancing class, leading to a increasingly messy series of mishaps as she tries to cover her tracks. When the green soap ends up staining others and a fashion magazine declares green the latest style, Little Eva finds an unexpected way to turn her embarrassing situation around at the dance.

When boredom strikes and Little Eva tunes into a party line conversation between two gossipy neighbors, she discovers they're actually saying some rather flattering things—about her father, no less. It's a quick, charming peek at small-town life in 1953, where even eavesdropping has its unexpected rewards.

Little Eva and her friend Nipper set out for a pleasant morning stroll through the park, but when Eva gets tangled up with some loose balloons, a series of mishaps sends her floating straight into the zoo—and worse, into a lion's cage! With the big cat napping nearby and Nipper frantically calling for help, Eva and her pal must figure out how to escape before their unwilling host wakes up hungry.

Little Eva decides to turn her toy chest into a hope chest and tries on her mother's wedding dress, convinced that the boys in the neighborhood will be so impressed they'll propose to her on the spot. When Nipper, Hot-Rod, and Ike each respond in decidedly unhelpful ways, Eva's romantic dreams take a humorous tumble in this 1953 humor tale.