For a little fun, check out today's Google doodle, which features Gumby, the green, super-flexible hunk of clay that entertained millions of kids over the years. The doodle marks the 90th birthday of cartoonist-creator Art Clokey (pictured here in 1995).

Gumby cartoons often had a literary theme, as he and Pokey often walked right into books to go start their adventures (a clay version of the Wayback Machine, I guess). Asked whether he was trying to promote literacy, Clokey said: “The books were a gimmick, you might say, for getting out of the toy shop and into another world or another setting. That’s the main reason we used them, not to encourage kids to read. That’s the way they are using these parts of our stories now, which is good. But at that time, it was just a gimmick for getting us out of the toy store and back into the toy store from the book. It turned out to be a beautiful device.”

Nevertheless, Gumby became a spokes-character for the Library of Congress in the 1990s, and was used to promote reading.

Happy birthday, Art!