The Remarkable Plant in Apartment 4 by Giulio Maestro - HB First Printing. Bradbury Press, 1973.

Book is excellent. happy birthday inscription on the fly sheet. text block pages are crisp. binding is tight. Dust jacket acceptable but did a great job protecting the cover.   

1973 Press release: Maestro's story is just a frame for his luxuriant pictures of the plant that grows overnight in Michael's room, sending its roots through to the Zelnick's apartment downstairs so that Mr. and Mrs. Zelnick set up tent and campfire in their bedroom, and extending its branches over to Rotondo's next door, inspiring Mr. Rotondo to make all sorts of fantastic furniture from the twisted vines. Back at Michael's, he and his father run electric trains along the branches, his parents exult in the explosion of red and gold flowers, and a whole menagerie of brilliant tropical birds and insects fills out the scene. We have the feeling that Maestro's plant is rooted in precariously shallow ground, but his freewheeling foliage makes the greening of a city block an enticingly euphoric occasion.