8vo (9 3/4 x 6 3/4 inches; 248 x 170 mm). With a gutta-percha "head", with glass eyes, attached to the image on the final page which also acts as the rear pastedown, the "head" protrudes through a cut-out space in the other seven pages. These are preceded by 2pp. advertisements on front endpapers.  As issued, without a title-page and with the imprint on the front cover (Dean & Son, 65, Ludgate Hill, London). Original cloth-backed colored pictorial boards reproducing the book's fifth image, with a space cut-out through which the head appears. Crease and tear to lower side of cover, wear and discoloration to face, areas of staining and toning, wear around edges, overall a good copy of this very uncommon book. 

This volume from Dean & Son's innovative Flexible-Faced Story Books series offers a marvelous testimony to their ingenuity and acknowledged status as the great masters of early novelty books. These playful "toy" books were understandably very popular with children, and as they are also quite delicate and ephemeral, copies rarely survive.

Each book in the series featured 16 pages and 8 oil-colored illustrations, paired with a sculpted flexible head originally designed to animate various expressions when matched to the scenes. The faces, made of gutta-percha, have since hardened over time but remain a marvel of early book engineering. This is the fifth and final volume of the series. 

An advertisement for Dean & Son’s Flexible-Faced Story Books was found in Sunday Employment: Short Tales for Sunday Reading by Frances Upcher Cousens (1870, pp. 137–138). The ad promotes the publisher’s “New Series of Flexible-Faced Story Books,” described as containing "a fund of amusement to both old and young." The text explains that “the head in the Picture can be made to assume various shapes, causing much merriment,” with a price of two shillings for “coloured pictures, half-bound, board, illuminated cover.”