Bittercon: "Forgotten Treasures"

[intertext]

What I think of as the "Harry Potter Effect" - a renewed interest in YA or children's fantasy - has resulted in the welcome recent republication of authors who had been well-known in certain circles, like DWJ, or well-known from the past, like Edward Eager. It has also seen the reprinting of some rather more obscure but equally deserving works, like A String in the Harp by Nancy Bond or Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Perilous Gard. I've been thinking for a while of beginning a series of posts on old forgotten treasures from my own collection - not necessarily SF or fantasy, but books I loved that I wondered if anyone else had heard of, that I think deserve a bigger audience and potential reprinting. So, I thought I'd launch that series here, and invite others on my flist or from the bigger bittercon community, to link comments to posts about their own forgotten but deserving treasures.

My first oldy but goody is Ellen Kindt McKenzie's
Drujienna's Harp, which begins on a day in an unnamed city in what seems to be our world - indeed I've always assumed it was San Franciso. It is uncharacteristically hot, and the sky is a strange translucent pink. Tha and her brother Duncan visit a curio shop and pick up a bottle that the shop-owner warns them has a curse on it. They are instantly transported to another world.

Of relevance to one of sartorias's panel topics on world building, this is one of the most distinct and well developed worlds I remember encountering in children's fantasy. It has almost a quality of the surreal, with its pink sky, killing winds, geographic areas spreading out in concentric circles from a mysterious and deadly mound in the center. It is also unusual in children's fantasy for its bleak picture of political totalitarianism. The inhabitants are kept in a kind of controlled state of unknowing; asking too many questions is punishable by imprisonment or death. Yet there are mysterious Histories and a Prophecy, suppressed but not forgotten, that hint of "two" who will come and put the world right - or destroy it. This book deals with many extremely serious and important themes: ignorance, real or feigned, the importance not so much of physical courage but of moral convictions. Tha is a strong and believable heroine and there is a cast of well-drawn supporting characters, from the morose Eshone and even more grim Acheron to the delightful "Know-nothing" Zacapoos.

Like Victoria Walker's equally obscure but not entirely forgotten work, The Winter of Enchantment, this fascinating novel is now listed on ABE with absurdly high prices. I used to borrow it time and again from the library, and managed to snag a copy a few years ago at a less than astronomical price, and I treasure it. Just writing about it now makes me think I should reread it again - I suspect it will not have lost its magic.

So now it's your turn! How many of you have read any of the books I mention, especially this one? What are your own forgotten treasures? And don't forget to write a review of your favourite and link it here.

Comments

[gillo]

This sounds intriguing but is totally new to me.

One I adored when I borrowed it repeatedly from the library as a child was "Merlin's Magic" by Helen Clare (aka Pauline Clarke of "The Twelve and the Genii" fame). It was based on the intriguing idea that a number of gold tokens were spread through time and literary space and a group of children had to recover them. The one that sticks most in my mind is the boy who had to go to Xanadu and recover a token from Kubilai Khan and then escape via Alph the sacred river through the sunless sea. Long before I knew the poem the imagery had a powerful impact on me. I've not been able to find it on Abe even!

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Wow - that sounds interesting, and is - I think - new to me, though the title rings a faint bell. I know Pauline Clarke, but had no idea she wrote under another name!

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I adored that book at Primary School, read and re-read the library copy, and have never been able to recall either author or title (a shameful confession for an ex-librarian.)

[gillo]

Hi Maggie - fancy seeing you here! I was haunted by that book and tried to track down details a few years back - I've never found a copy on sale anywhere, though.

Merlin's Magic

[(Anonymous)]

I tried to borrow this from Essex Library but all they could find was a reference copy at the British Library, St Pancras. It was published twice - once by Bodley Head in 1953 and about 10 years later by Big Reindeer Books. Is it possible it's fallen through the cracks between the two publishers?

[weatherglass.livejournal.com]

I'm fond of Elizabeth Marie Pope's other YA book, The Sherwood Ring. It's not as good as The Perilous Gard, but it has a couple of really marvellous scenes. And I'm a sucker for anything set during the American colonial period.

But the childhood favorite I'd most like to see reprinted is Palmer Brown's Beyond the Pawpaw Trees, about a girl who is sent off to visit an aunt who lives on a mirage in the desert. It has tiny, intricate, tasselly pen and ink illustrations, and bits of odd poetry and songs. It's another one that's unobtainable except at exorbitant prices online.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I think I actually own a copy of that book... somewhere. I believe the "tiny, intricate, tasselly pen and ink illustrations" are by Edward Gorey, which may help account for its exorbitant online prices.

I always loved The Sherwood Ring! It's delightful. I agree that it's not quite as good as The Perilous Gard, but is one of my "old favourite comfort reading" selections :)

[weatherglass.livejournal.com]

I think we may be thinking of different books; Palmer Brown did his own illustrations. Though the image of a Gorey-illustrated Beyond the Pawpaw trees is delightful; the internal logic of the book is as odd as some of Gorey's, though in a different way.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Ah... yes... hmmm. I shall have to go and look and see if I can find whichever book I'm thinking of. Though I've definitely read Pawpaw trees, too.

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

I recently bought both the Sherwood Ring and The Perilous Gard on Amazon. They had a buy-this-book-with deal going. :)

[weatherglass.livejournal.com]

Oh, fantastic! I hadn't thought The Sherwood Ring was in print. I'm pretty sure I only had The Perilous Gard as a child because my mother found it on the Newbury lists, and I had no idea that Pope had written anything else until I stumbled on it at the library a few years ago. Now I have to think of people to buy copies for...

[curtana.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this book is forgotten, per se, since it's still in print and available on Amazon, but I loved The Owlstone Crown (http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-1932425357-0) by X. J. Kennedy when I was a kid. It's also got some quite dark sections, as I recall - one that vividly stood out in my mind was when the two child protagonists are starving and encounter a group of ?peasants who give them a tomato to eat, and they devour it as if it were an apple. I think I was particularly moved/horrified by that because I hated tomatoes so much when I was a kid ;) But anyway! It also has a character named Fardels Bear (har dee har har - I didn't get the joke until much later, of course) and creepy stone owls for the bad guy's army. I believe there's also a sequel, but I don't remember much about it.

I'm also glad that the Harry Potter effect has meant that Joan Aiken's books have nearly all been reissued :)

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think I've read that, once anyway. I remember being creeped by the owls... And I agree about Joan Aiken's books. Have her short story collections been reissued, too? I always thought those were even better than her novels.

[curtana.livejournal.com]

I don't know what's been done about her short story collections - I've just picked them up as I've found them, here and there, so I don't think that there's been any concerted effort to reprint them with, e.g., similar covers or whatever. From a quick look at Amazon, it looks like most or all of them are only available used. Which is too bad, I think her horror-ish stories are amazing, full of images that haunted me as a child: the (is it a hotel?) where the wife was bricked up for talking too much, brr.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

How could they have ever let Joan Aiken's books go out of print?!

*sigh*

Glad they're back out there now :-)

[curtana.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I meant to say, I loved Edward Eager's books when I was younger. They remind me a little bit of Lucy Boston's Green Knowe series, another set of favorites (those, I've purchased in adulthood - again, they've been nicely reissued in the past few years.)

[gillo]

I adored Eager too - especially because he was so respectful about Nesbit. It's surprising that some of her books are not in print either!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I came to E. Nesbit through Eager. Loved all of his, and then loved all of hers, too :-)

[gillo]

I particularly liked the fantasy books she wrote, like "The House of Arden" and "Wet Magic" - very little-known these days.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

:-) ... two that I hadn't found, I'll have to confess. I must have only found the common ones. But this is great-because now I have two more to read. Thanks!

[gillo]

You haven't lived till you've met the Mouldiwarp! Like a Psammead but a British native and even grumpier.

I seem to recall there was also "Harding's Luck" as well as "The House of Arden". She wrote quite a few more fantasies than are known these days, sadly.

But look! I found the two above on the Internet!!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yay! Thank you thank you :-D

[curtana.livejournal.com]

House of Arden was always one of my very favorites - I don't recall Wet Magic, though, I'll have to check it out :)

[gillo]

It involved children going to an undersea world through an aquarium, by means of reciting "Sabrina Fair" from Milton's

Comus

. There was a bit I loved with a passion, in which heroes from their favourite books came to join in the fight.

I think I was very lucky as a child - our local library had a huge stock of elderly battered copies of Nesbit.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

OMG - Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I read many of Lucy Boston's books when I was a child, but had forgotten her name and all of the titles. All I knew was that at least one of them had Green in the title. As soon as I saw this mention, I knew these were the books.

I've tried many times to describe these books, but no one ever recognized them from my garbled descriptions. Oh, I'm so glad to know what to look for now. 8D

[curtana.livejournal.com]

Very glad to have been able to jog your memory :) They're all reprinted and quite affordable, fortunately!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I have to go on a 200 mile round trip slog (that means 123,675,674 miles because of LA traffic) so I don't get to play on the Internet for a while, but mine would be Mary Chase's Loretta Mason Potts. Mary Chase had an interesting career, and I wish she were more well known today--except for the giant rabbit story, her stuff is impossible to find.

This story doesn't have great worldbuilding, what it has is fascinating character, especially on the kids-eye view. Through the closet to a secret world, where kids can pretend at being adults , . . . oh, it's just a wonderful story. I used to check it out over and over again from the library, from age nine on, until their copy wore out and they did not replace it.

I found a used copy only with difficulty, some time back.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I remember you posting about that book once before - and I had read The Wicked Pigeon Ladies in the Garden but not that one. From the comments on Amazon, it looks as if it will be hard to find.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Through the closet to a secret world . . .

My husband has mentioned a book in which two children, a sister and brother, go through a closet into another world in which the stars are all different colors. He doesn't think the book you mention is the one he remembers, but does this ring a bell for anyone?

[the_rck]

I'm thrilled to encounter someone else who read and loved Drujienna's Harp. I read and re-read the copy in my elementary school library and even told the story to my younger sister in fragments as part of our night time not yet ready to sleep but required to have the lights out ritual. I wonder if she remembers it...?

My contribution here is Sheila Moon's trilogy, Knee Deep In Thunder, Hunt Down the Prize and Deepest Roots. They're technically in print, but they're not easy to find. My elementary school library only had Hunt Down the Prize. I read it repeatedly before discovering Knee Deep in Thunder at the public library. (Deepest Roots didn't come out until nearly ten years later.)

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Oh my. Knee Deep in Thunder was one of my favourite, favourite books! And talk about obscure - surely you and I are among the only people who have ever heard of it?? I was bitterly disappointed in the sequel, though, and didn't actually know that there had been a third! I found that there was a change in tone, and some forgotten details - things that disconnected from one book to the next - that bothered me. "I shall stand knee deep in thunder, with my head against the sky" - the epigram - I used to chant to myself! Unless you want to post about it, I'll add Knee Deep to my list of forgotten books to write about in upcoming posts...

[intertext.livejournal.com]

By the way, did you ever read Taash and the Jesters, by McKenzie? I liked it equally with Drujienna, though it is quite different in tone, and its fantasy world is more conventional.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh missed your comment about Taash and the Jesters--so you knew it too :-)

Did you read the prequel?

[the_rck]

I liked Taash and the Jesters quite a bit. I had my step-father check it out from the library at the university where he was attending grad school. I didn't find Kashka, the prequel (which I think was written later) until some time in the 90s.

I didn't like the two books quite as well as Drujienna, but I think that had more to do with when I read them, mid-teens for Taash and twenties or thirties for Kashka as opposed to elementary school for Drujienna.

Drujienna was a formative book for me. The other two were fun to read books that left less of an impression.

[the_rck]

I remember being confused by the disconnect between the two books, but as I read them in the reverse order, Hunt Down the Prize set my standards for the series. I wasn't as fond of Knee Deep in Thunder because I kept finding things that should have been in the second book and weren't and didn't want to be mad at the book that I'd read and enjoyed first.

Please go ahead and post about these. I don't have time to reread them just now, and I'd want to before writing about them because my memory is vague and fragmented.

The third book was published well after the edition of the first two that I originally read, so it's quite possible that it hadn't been published when you first read Knee Deep in Thunder. I don't think that Deepest Roots ever came out in a library edition, just the trade paperback, so it's quite likely that many libraries never added it.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

No, the second book hadn't been published when I first read KDIT - in the early 70s, I think - and I was so excited when it came out, but then very disappointed in it. I remember one thing that annoyed me intensely was that she changed the dog, who had been a terrier mix in KD, to a poodly thing iirc. Such things are of great import to a serious dog person :)

[the_rck]

As I recall, most of my confusion in reading the books out of order came from Jetty.

I didn't notice about the dog at all, but I was never a dog person. I'm also very, very vague on visualization, so I don't notice character descriptions most of the time.

oh yes!

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

"The timid folk beseech me. The wise ones warn me
They say that I shall never grow to stand so high.
But I wander among the halls of cloud
and follow vanished lightning
I shall stand knee deep in thunder,
with my head against the sky."

I remember taking those out of the New York Public Library as a child, and being fascinated by that world. (I still take them out every so often, so that they won't be discarded.)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yay! **lots** of people love Drujienna's Harp, how marvelous!

What a great sounding title: Knee Deep in Thunder.

I'm going to try to get it through interlibrary loan--I like the sound of that chant intertext mentions in her response to your comment!

Oh yes--

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

Oh who's the keenest karf that keefs
In all the castles, towns and fiefs!
It's Bothwell, here! The Best in Mere!
The keefing karf of Tantalere!

She also wrote the Moons of Mere

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh I ***Loved*** Drujienna's Harp! And you're the first person outside my family I've found to share that enthusiasm. When I went off to college, I copied the prophecy/song from that book into a book I kept of poems and (incongruously) recipes.

I loved the *places* in it; they were so vivid: The Shophosian mists, in particular, but also the cracked dry place--what was it called?--before they reached the ocean.

Yes, it was marvelous; completely unlike anything else I've ever read.

She's written some other books which are quite good too: Taash and the Jesters and then a prequel that I liked even more, called Kashka--they are more traditional fantasy stories, but they have the same **humaneness** to them--concern for people more than ideas.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I knew there was a good reason I friended you :) And, yes, I liked Taash and the Jesters a lot, too. I had no idea there was another one set in that world! (scurries off to ABE)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It was one of a number of special books that I absolutely, absolutely felt I had to read to my kids or my job as a parent wouldn't be complete :-)

They loved it as much as I did--my map-oriented son did a map of the world ... which we've now lost, to my great chagrin.

You'll like Kashka a lot :-)

Then she did another story more recently, which I just read, called A Bowl of Mischief which is more like a fable--like a tale that would get told in one of the other stories.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Did you ever read one called The Broken Citadel, by Joyce Ballou Gregorian?

It was hugely long, and it lost steam (at least, so it seemed to me, as a young reader) near the end--or got confusing, or I got confused--but it was very, very vivid. I remember the heroine; I remember her scaring away bandits by grabbing a torch by its burning end, as if it didn't even hurt her--and then later having her hand healed by the tears of a phoenix-like bird.

I can't say it's a favorite of mine, but I remember it made an impression on me.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

No - I've never heard of that one! It sounds rather good...

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Oh yes - I don't think of that as YA particularly, because the later volumes got distinctly less so, but that first volume I suppose is. What I remember is having difficulty in getting into it on my first reading and then suddenly getting whooshed in.

Must re-read it!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

A sequel, eh? Must go reread this one, then, and then try the sequel, just for memory's sake....

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

And, as an afterthought (sorry to be spamming the page, but it's a great topic and I love what everyone is saying...), I've found that The Perilous Gard is a common thread connecting many, many of my story-oriented friends on LJ. I loved it, too--down to memorizing the illustrations in the hardback edition I read (they were by Richard Cuffari. He had a particular way of doing noses and mouths, and a particular pen-and-ink style that made his work instantly recognizable).

I wanted to get instruction on how to walk, just like Kate did.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Yes - isn't that interesting; I remember the Richar Cuffari illustrations, too. And yes - I agree with you that he's one of the most instantly recognizable illustrators. I liked his illustrations for Sylvia Louise Engdahl's The Far Side of Evil (another lesser known fave - I liked it better than Enchantress from the Stars)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes!!! I was going to mention The Far Side of Evil and Enchantress from the Stars too and then didn't because they were more science fiction than fantasy ,but **high fives** Intertext! You and I were reading similar stories in our childhoods! I **loved** those too--the different levels of technological, the anthropological aspect--and then too, just the plots! Very exciting. The Far Side of Evil was where I learned about sensory deprivation :-P

[intertext.livejournal.com]

**high fives** back at you! Yes, we obviously did read all the same books - though there's a whole lot of British influenced ones that I haven't mentioned yet :) I've hardly even _started_ *grin*

Have you read the "revised" edition of The Far Side of Evil? Apparently she's gone back and changed it to bring it into line with advances in technology and - I think- changes in political attitudes... not sure, but I just bought a recent reissue of Enchantress, in which she talks about both of them. I still have my old pb copy of FSoE and would hesitate to read a different version, but it might be interesting.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Wow, she revised it? It's funny, when something is out in print, I sort of think of it as being set in stone. The idea of revising postpublication is strange to me--I guess precisely because then you'll have readers with different versions of the story in their heads, wandering around. If someone who only ever read the revised version meets up with someone who only ever read the original, how strange it would be.

But I totally understand her desire to--at least, regarding the technology.

I liked Enchantress because there were two different levels of alien civilization (not counting the heroine's)--and because of the irony of the one that thought itself advanced not knowing that it had nothing on the heroine's civilization. As a kid, I accepted the hierarchy absolutely; it's only right now, as I write, that I realize I no longer believe that technological advancement necessarily goes hand in hand with more broadminded or perceptive views about humanity overall.

I bet you will end up knowing lots of books that I do not--though i loved British-influenced ones--but I'll love it if we turn out to have a few more in common.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I bet we do have a lot more books in common!
I'm enjoying writing about books I loved as a child, so stay tuned :)

I wish I could remember where I read about the Engdahl revisions - maybe in the forward to Enchantress, maybe on her website - so I could speak more intelligently about it. I vaguely think she said something about downplaying the "cold war" aspects of FS, and even changing the ending...

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

Fantasy books I loved as a youngster:

+ The Great Book Raid by Christopher Leach - A boy named Jim runs into a man who claims to be Long John Silver....and they call up book heroes from the past(Jason, Robin Hood, King Arthur, etc) to save Jim's farm in Cornwall. It was the sort of book that made me want to read the books it referenced.

+ The Dragon Circle (and the other Wynd family books) - a New England family practises wizardry and witchcraft. Each kid has particular talents and their father, a professor, teaches them. Well before the Harry Potter craze. The Dragon Circle is the first one I found but I think there are three or four books total with these characters.

+ The Ordinary Princess by M. M. Kaye. This is a favourite from my childhood. (And along with Patricia Wrede's Dealing With Dragons and Vivian Vande Velde's A Hidden Magic, got me into the feisty princess trope. Amy, the ordinary princess, was probably the most old fashioned of the group though. )

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of either The Great Book Raid or The Dragon Circle! Both of them sound worth checking out. This is great - I'm getting all kinds of new book recommendations :)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I love The Perilous Gard, which I read last year when on a Tam Lin novel binge. As coincidence would have it, The Sherwood Ring turned up from Amazon just yesterday. Based on that precedent, I'm noting down other recommendations from this thread.

I'm not sure counts as a forgotten book, but my favourite "ought to be a household name, but somehow isn't" book is Mistress Masham's Repose, by TH White. I find that even people who are huge fans of his Arthurian books have often never heard of it, and it was out of print over here for years, until reprinted by a specialist publisher dedicated to reprinting classics that should never have gone out of print.

I first read it when I was about ten. This was when I was busy falling passionately in love with D'Artagnan and Edward Beverley and the like, so this book was never a burning love affair with me, but I have always so deeply admired it. Rereading it now makes me feel warm and fuzzy and every time.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I loved Mistress Masham's Repose, and, interestingly enough, my friend lidocafe just bought it for her daughter because it's been reissued in a wonderful New York Times (? I think) series of classic children's books. Another in that series is another wonderful forgotten treasure: The Wind on the Moon, by Eric Linklater.

And speaking of Tam Lin - my still-favourite book on THAT topic is Catherine Storr's Thursday - another obscure but wonderful book.

[elianarus.livejournal.com]

The New York Review, I think.

We first encountered them when I discovered that the Jenny and the Cat club books had been reissued (shouts of ecstasy from my younger kids). In browsing their listings (collection? hmmm.. group of books they've reissued?) we discovered 'The Magic Pudding' which quickly became a new favorite with my younger four. No brilliant plotting, and certainly no character development... but the pace and diction were right on and the zany premise delighted the kids. (Our kids range from 6 to 14, it was the 10 and under crowd which fell for this book.)

My favorite Tam Lin retelling is Pamela Dean's... though I wonder if I would have loved it as much if I'd first encountered it in my late twenties rather than at 18.

I can't completely separate a book from the person I was and the way I saw it when I first read it.

That's not completely true. I read Wuthering Heights at 12 or so and when I read it again a decade or so later, the experience was so different it was as if I'd read a different book.

But for most books the shadow of my former self hovers over the page, or echoes in my inner ear as I read. Generally this is a gift. The disbelieving wonder from Children of Green Knowe, the grief which left me shaken for weeks when Thorin died, the enchantment of Fog Magic, the homey virtues in Eight Cousins, and the sense of homecoming in All of a Kind Family are all still there when I open the books despite the greater distance I now have from the books I read. (In some ways this is good. I could not cope with most modern fiction until I was in my later twenties; I took it all too much to heart.)

This thread has reminded me of old favorites I still need to purchase... how could I have neglected to get Tatsinda or MM's repose for my kids? Eeek...

[oursin.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of Arthur Calder Marshall's The Fair to Middling - I think my association here is simply that this and MMR were published in Penguin's 'Peacock' series - it's about a group of orphans from a home for orphans with various disabilities (one is albino, one colourblind - I forget exactly all the details) who are given a trip out to the fair, except it's a very odd fair...

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

A book that was old when I first read it in my early childhood: The Little Lame Prince. (http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/craik/prince.html) It may seem intolerably preachy and sentimental now, but I loved it, and love it.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Remind me - I know it's familiar, but I think I'm getting it confused with one by Oscar Wilde...

[penmage.livejournal.com]

I've got two. One is The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw, in which Saaski, a changeling child, struggles to understand her nature as she grows up in a medieval Scottish village. It's gorgeous and heartbreaking, and speaks to anyone who has ever felt different.

The other is The Gammage Cup, by Carol Kendall. I loved this book as a kid; as an adult, it is not quite as brilliant as it used to be, but it is still a wonderful read. It's often silly, and sometimes preachy (about being yourself and the dangers of conformity) but mostly it's clever and fun and smart, and the ending still makes me cry, every single damn time I read it.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, both of those are great books. I agree that The Gammage Cup doesn't stand the test of time quite as well, but I love the Eric Blegvad illustrations :)

[elianarus.livejournal.com]

I was amazed to discover this year (via a dear friend) that there is a third book in this series: The Firelings....

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I loved The Moorchild. It made the fairy world so believeable, so real. And the interaction between Saaski and her human parents is just--as you say--heartbreaking. They love her for who she is, in their way, even as they're wishing for a more human-like daughter. And her sense of out-of-placeness in *both* places is so real and so sad, and the way she struggles on is nothing short of heroic. I was glad she found a friend in the end.

part 1 - fantasy and semi-fantasy

[elianarus.livejournal.com]

I vigorously second the Nesbit, and the Gammage Cup, and Eager, LM Boston, Elizabeth Pope, and, oh my yes, Beyond the Pawpaw Trees (and its sequel!) - I loved them when I was young & it has been so much fun watching my kids discover them.

Less well-known favorites:

Eleanor Farjeon - Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field (and in the Apple Orchard) delighted me when I was small - and her Glass Slipper and Silver Curlew were the first modern fairy tale retellings I can remember reading.

Rumer Godden's doll stories - especially Miss Happiness & Miss Flower and its sequel Little Plum.

KM Briggs's Kate Crackernuts was a later discovery than the Farjeon, but equally loved.

I think Nancy Bond's best two books were Another Shore and Voyage Begun. I had to struggle to track these down (back in the years before ABE and Amazon marketplace made it somewhat easier).
AS is a YA time slip, and exquisitely well done. VB is set in a USnA post energy crisis and deals with messy, painful subjects with grace, integrity, and understatement.

Jane Langton's odd Diamond in the window (and, to a lesser extent its sequels) fascinated me (and one part in particular terrified me as a small child, I was astonished at how tame it was when I reread it as an adult!)

I think some of Elizabeth Goudge's books have been republished - I remember my mother getting Linnets and Valerians from a book company in England... the internet makes things much easier, doesn't it? Her adult books (and there are gazillions of them) remain out of print - there were a few which entranced me, and many others which left me cold... I think Castle on the Hill, and Rosemary Tree(Bush?) were hits, but I had them on ILL, and (foolishly) thought I'd remember the titles until I found copies!


Margaret Anderson lived for a time in the same city I did - I remember her kindness in inviting me over to her house, letting me stand on her kitchen table and recite Shakespeare speeches, and my autographed copies of her books are the only autographed copies I have ever valued.... not many authors are so welcoming to a ten (11?) year old - or so willing to spend an hour or two discussing their works with even an adult fan.. at least in the pre-internet days! Searching for Shona and Journey of the Shadow Bairins are fairly straight stories (and two of my favorites), but she has a number of more fantasy stories - In the Keep of Time and To Nowhere and Back.. and her slightly disturbing, and my favorite as a kid: Light in the Mountain

Margaret Storey has some very sweet younger kids' fantasy (Timothy and the Two Witches is the only one we've been able to find affordably so far) and some older kids' straight fiction: Pauline, Family Tree, and Wrong Gear (I think that is the right title), and a few delectable things for much younger kids (I need to have my sister hunt these down for me before her next trip over from the UK...)

Two of my husband's childhood favorites (which we diligently tracked down so our kids could enjoy them too): The Spaceship under the Apple Tree (and sequels) by Slobodkin and Eleanor Cameron's Mushroom planet series. Perhaps kids' sci-fi will be republished as they run out of fantasy titles to resurrect!

..Eliana

Re: part 2 - the rest

[elianarus.livejournal.com]

LJ is clearly not designed for posters such as myself - those who every now and again post ridiculously long spiels (usually disproportionate to the actual topic)...

Someday I might achieve moderation...

I wish there were a revival of kids' non-fantasy books as well...

I loved Hilda van Stockum's books - Winged Watchmen is such a simple, powerful book (WWII Holland); Andries is another simple story, but with small, personal challenges - no Nazis! She has a grouping set in Ireland and another in (I think) the US.


Ransome's Swallows & Amazons books are fabulous, imaginative as all get out, but only two aren't straight real-world stories (and those two were framed as stories created by the kids in the other books). Pigeon Post and Winter Holiday have always been favorites of mine...

For the much younger set: Francis Lattimore's books have always delighted me. Her Little Pear books are very special. I think they have either been or are about to be reissued (hurrah!)

I was even more excited that the Milly Molly Mandy stories (or at least selections) are readily available now... My mother did me an injustice in introducing me to so many British authors without making sure I had my own copies of all of them!

Although I devoured folk and fairy tales, myths and legends, and a very respectable assortment of sci-fi fantasy, my first love as a younger person was for historical fiction - I think because that is where I found the most vivid world building and characterization... whereas adult historical fiction rarely lives up to those standards.

I cannot, even in my wildest fantasies, imagine a kids' historical fiction book becoming an international best seller and inspiring publishers to reissue all the old treasures...

In no particular order, here are some titles/authors which came to mind:

Nobody's Garden

De Angeli's Thee Hannah and related books

Kate Seredy (especially Singing Tree)

Sally Watson (spunky heroines, rose-tinted history, engaging story lines - and vivid characters)

Cynthia Harnett (Caxton's Challenge is a family favorite)

Esther Hautzig (Endless Steppe haunted my dreams as a child - being a young Jewish girl living in relative comfort it resonated strongly)

Madeline Polland (Shattered Summer is bittersweet, and for an older audience than some of the others, Queen Without a Crown is probably her best known.. she has adult hist-fic as well, but it isn't nearly as *alive*.)

Hester Burton (Beyond Weir Bridge made a vivid, permanent impression.. and is the story which prompted me to track down this author and her books as an adult. Thank G-d for a mother who can take a tangled, muddled story description and point me to the right book! In spite of all terror was another very memorable one... I keep hoping I'll find more than the 6 or 8 books I've managed to collect...)

Margot Bernary-Isbert's The Ark (and Rowan Farm). Post WWII Germany... from the perspective a displaced German girl. First rate (RF is less well written, but worth it for the continuation of the story).


I will spare you all my even longer list of hard to impossible to find picture books...

Eliana

Re: part 2 - the rest

[intertext.livejournal.com]

There are some unfamiliar ones amongst these - I'm interested that there is quite a British influence here?

Madeline Polland! Her Deirdre is one of the most beautiful, romantic love stories ever written, but I was absolutely shattered by the ending (of course, it doesn't end well, but I was unfamiliar with the legend the first time I read it...). She also wrote at least one adult novel that I loved, another romance, but I can't remember the title.

I liked Hester Burton a lot, too. My own favourite was Time of Trial

By the way, my mum used to read the Milly Molly Mandy books to me when I was very young, and I STILL HAVE MY COPY!! I'm very fortunate to have had a mum who loved books as much as I do and didn't part with ANY of mine...

Re: part 2 - the rest

[elianarus.livejournal.com]

There are some unfamiliar ones amongst these - I'm interested that there is quite a British influence here?

My mother had three main avenues for discovering new books: The Hornbook (sometimes she'd get a babysitter and go read the really old back issues at the university library), British book catalogs (I think she ordered most frequently from Baker books - we got so many wonderful things that way!), and serendipity (expeditions to used bookstores were a regular part of my childhood).

...and yes there was a very Anglo slant to our literary education! My mother even ordered old A and O level exams for us to do for fun together (we were an eccentric family!). It is only as an adult that I have begun to appreciate American literature - how much of that is innate preference and how much environmental training I'm not sure.

My mother still has most of the books we had as kids, but she hasn't wanted to part with them! Fortunately, I began building my personal book collection at an early age...

Re: part 2 - the rest

[gillo]

What, no Geoffrey Trease? I'm certain I learned as much history from his books as I did from any teacher. Favourites were the pair

The Hills of Varna

and

Crown of Violet

- the first a Renaissance adventure as two young people braved the Ottoman Empire to recover the last manuscript of an Athenian comedy, the second (yes it was written later) a story about the writing of the play in classical Athens.

Re: part 2 - the rest

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Henry, but not Geoffrey.

My historical writer was Rosemary Sutcliff - I think I read every single one of them and loved them all. And Hester Burton, and Barbara Willard.

Re: part 2 - the rest

[elianarus.livejournal.com]

My historical writer was Rosemary Sutcliff - I think I read every single one of them and loved them all.

Oh, yes!! I haven't reread her books in such a very long time (my husband did the rereads to screen them for our kids, so I missed that opportunity... perhaps someone will choose one, or more, as a bedtime story). I remember loving Flame colored tafetta (is that the right title?) and Warrior Scarlet... and being captivated by Tristan and Iseult.

My kids and I used her retelling of the Iliad and Odyssey in our homeschool (fabulous, fabulous books - beautifully done with evocative illustrations. Similarly wonderful is In Search of a Homeland by Penelope Lively (another underappreciated author!

.. how could I have left off Barbara Willard? My older girls have been rereading her recently - and clamoring for us to but more of her Mantlemass chronicles so they don't have to wait for the ILLs to come it)

Re: part 2 - the rest

[gillo]

I loved Sutcliff of course, but somehow I never got into Treece - my first encounter was Horned Helmet and I think I found it just too blokish. I discovered Willard as an adult in teh school library of my last school and ripped through them with great enjoyment.

Re: part 2 - the rest

[elianarus.livejournal.com]

Oh, how splendid! I have placed ILL requests for these - I have never encountered them before.

Perhaps because my earliest exposures to history were through stories, both actual fiction and kids' level biographies, I never understood how anyone could be bored by it. Or how anyone who enjoyed sci-fi/fantasy could fail to be enthralled by history...

Re: part 2 - the rest

[gillo]

Trease was a one-man history machine I think. I loved his way of presenting history through the eyes of young people on the sidelines but spectators to great events.

Re: part 2 - the rest

[c-bibliophagist.livejournal.com]

"I wish there were a revival of kids' non-fantasy books as well...

I loved Hilda van Stockum's books"

Her books have been republished by Bethlehem books.

Re: part 2 - the rest

[elianarus.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow!! I knew Bethlehem had republished Winged Watchman some years back (they did one of Madeline Polland's books too), but I hadn't known they'd done more...

Thank you!

Re: part 2 - the rest

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

Sally Watson's books have recently been reissued in nice trade paperbacks by a small publisher in the U.S.: www.ImageCascade.com. Highly recommended.

Re: part 2 - the rest

[elianarus.livejournal.com]

Isn't that marvelous!! I just wish they had wider circulation so more kids could find these great books... I hate it when libraries ditch all the older stuff to make room for more copies of the latest craze...

Re: part 2 - the rest

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

I remember reading Ransome's Swallows & Amazons books, as well. They had been my mother's and my dad still has her old copies on the bookshelves at home.

Did any of his books have a story in which some children get lost somewhere in/on the North Sea and make pets of a pair of puffins they called Huffin and Puffin?

Re: part 1 - fantasy and semi-fantasy

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I liked those Mushroom planet ones because they made me think I could, myself, build a spaceship.

Can you describe the plot of Light in the Mountain? Title rings a bell...

And the Rumer Godden doll books were lovely. I wanted to make that Japanese house (like wanting to make the spaceship).

Re: part 1 - fantasy and semi-fantasy

[elianarus.livejournal.com]

It's an odd book...

Rana, a crippled girl, is chosen to be sacrificed to the 'god inside the mountain'. She has what she believes to be a mystical experience and is convinced, as part of a power play thing, that she is an instrument of her god.

She leads a group of her people to a new land where she becomes the center of the religious life of the community. The later part of the book traces the impact on the community and a, well whatever they called a novitiate.

It is not an easy or a comfortable book. And it is a strange, strange choice for a young child's favorite book (but then Richard III was my favorite of Shakespeare's plays... I used to be able to recite in its entirety... one of those useful and marketable accomplishments).

I think I was drawn to the exploration of the role of faith, whether based in truth or misperception, and of course how you tell which is which... to the, indirect probing at development of self, of individual desires versus community needs, or perceived needs.

Is that of any help? We're unpacking, but I should be able to find my copy and type in the dust jacket description, if my awkward summary doesn't do the trick.

Re: part 1 - fantasy and semi-fantasy

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes it *is* a help. It tells me both that it isn't the story I thought it might be and that I'd like to read it. Sounds very interesting.

A propos of Richard III, a children's book I really liked was A Sprig of Broom in which R was a good guy. My first introduction to him, so boy was I in for a surprise when I found out what the usual picture of him was...

How'd you come across Shakespeare's Richard the III as a kid? It's not one of the ones that usually gets assigned in school, so you must have found it some other way...

Re: part 1 - fantasy and semi-fantasy

[elianarus.livejournal.com]

It is most certainly interesting...

Shakespeare's Richard was my first input, but I read Kendell's bio very young, and it is very much in the Ricardian camp. (It is a delightful work, and has a nifty appendix analyzing possible suspects for the murders of the princes.) This is one of my dozen or so favorite biographies (I first read it when I was 8 or so, and liked it despite my anti-Richard sentiments, which, given how strongly the young cling to their prejudices, is a powerful recommendation!) It is, I believe, in the Yale English Monarchs series.

Of the slew of hist-fic which touched on RIII, the only titles I can recall offhand are Tudor Rose (which focuses on Richard's niece, Elizabeth), Song of the Thrush (Clarence's kids), and Sprig of Broom... I know there were so many more, but as a kid I never thought to take notes so I could find any of these stories again!

How'd you come across Shakespeare's Richard the III as a kid? It's not one of the ones that usually gets assigned in school, so you must have found it some other way...

Well, I started seeing live Shakespeare plays when I was 6 or so (at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival). We went at least once or twice a year every year thereafter (I missed one year between the first and the year my eldest daughter turned one...).

Although I immersed myself in as much Shakespeare as possible (audio recordings, reading the plays themselves, the BBC televised versions, etc) I had a very strong preference for the historical plays...

The Richard II to RIII cycle was entrancing to me, and I (for what reason I know not) took Margaret of Anjou as my heroine - I can still recite most of her speeches. But despite my loathing for all things Yorkist, Richard fascinated me. He is so evil, but the complexity, the multi-facetedness of his personality are amazing. I think it must be one of the hardest leads to do really well... his vivacity, the way you can know how horrible he is ... and he clearly shows the audience his manipulations, you are still mesmerized by him, and you can see how Anne is drawn to him against her will.

And the language just rolls off the tongue! .. to a child the vivid insults Margaret throws at Richard are so marvelous: "...thou elvish marked abortive rooting hog, thou that wast sealed in thy nativity the slave of nature and the son of hell. Thou slander of thy heavy mother's womb, thou loathed issue of thy father's loins, thou rag of honor..."

Long before I reached high school age I had read all the plays multiple times, and seen most of them at least once (I've avoided Titus Andronicus - and plan to continue doing so!).

[Side note: if anyone lives near Seattle and has any interest at all in Shakespeare, you *must* see at least one production at the Seattle Shakespeare Company. I am passionate about my Shakespeare, and have seen more performances than I can easily tally, but I have never seen anything that matches this caliber...

There, you ask a short, simple question and I give you my life story... can you tell that the bulk of my writing time is spent trimming? :)

Eliana

Re: part 1 - fantasy and semi-fantasy

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Wonderful! Just wonderful. And I love a long story--the longer the better! so thanks for sharing about your childhood. I'm admiration and envy all mixed together :-D

I've ended up saving this entry of intertext's in my Memories so I can come back and follow up on all the good reading.

Must read Richard III, for one thing! I shouldn't confess that I only know it from hearsay, but it's true. But I'm going to rectify that--based on your enthusiasm. Maybe we can read it as a familiy and take parts. Or maybe we should first read it on our own, to get the language and story down.

Re: part 1 - fantasy and semi-fantasy

[elianarus.livejournal.com]

I should warn you, it is a bloody play without a real hero, or rather with an anti-hero.

I'm not sure what it says about either me or my family that I was so entranced by it... or that I've passed it along to my kids. In all other respects they are very sheltered kids - no TV, no video games, no toy guns (even the Playmobils have to hand over their rifles and pistols when they enter the house), we screen the books they read and the (very few) movies they see with great care...

but we have almost unlimited exposure to Shakespeare.... (well, not Othello, and certainly not Titus A., but we went to Pericles last month... all the really heavy stuff went over everyone's heads, but my eldest knew enough to know she was missing things... which led to our first discussion of the concepts of rape and prostitution. Since she is 14.5, that is evidence of the success of our sheltering.)

Let me know what you think after reading Richard. I wish you could have see our local Shakespeare company's production the other year - it brought Richard to life.

Eliana

Shakespeare's Richard III

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Ah, it was a wise decision, the no-video-games rule... (do you hear the regret in my voice?)

I will let you know what I think of it; I'll come to your LJ and let you know--and if it's a year from now, you'll wonder who in the world I am, so I'll remind you of our conversation here :-D

Re: Shakespeare's Richard III

[elianarus.livejournal.com]

Perhaps by then I will have a journal with content - rather than an account which I use to hijack other people's journals... but if not, you can always email me at: eliana@efn.org

I don't think you'll need to remind me who you are! Having someone express an interest in my passions and a generous tolerance for my babbling is always enjoyable and memorable... and you've been exceedingly generous.

Re: Shakespeare's Richard III

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

:-D

Thanks for the address! And as for generous--thank **you** for your generosity toward **me**--this is why I love LJ ♥

Re: part 1 - fantasy and semi-fantasy

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Of course I have to respond to some of these!! (I so much enjoy this game, *grin*)
Eleanor Farjeon - yes! Those slightly romantic stories in Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard are delightful
Rumer Godden - of course!! My own particular favourite was Home is the Sailor, but I always loved the Japanese ones. And Holly and Ivy
Nancy Bond - still like A String in the Harp best. I plan to write about that, so I'll restrain myself now.
Jane Langton - I wonder if it was the jack in the box that creeped you out - I remember hating the illustration because it really scared me (though normally I love Eric Blegvad's illustrations)
Elizabeth Goudge - I think her reprinting is a direct JKRowling effect - she has said somewhere that A Little White Horse is one of her favourite books. It's certainly one of mine - I adore it. I also love Linnets and Valerians I wrote about the rooms in them some fairly long time ago...
Margaret Storey - yes, yes! I loved the Timothy books, and Pauline!

Re: part 1 - fantasy and semi-fantasy

[elianarus.livejournal.com]

Nancy Bond - still like A String in the Harp best. I plan to write about that, so I'll restrain myself now.

I'd like to 'hear' your reasons... SitH is indeed a fabulous book, but the other two resonate much more strongly for me. I used to prefer "Best of Enemies", but it lost some of its magic when I reread it as an adult (and the sequel was disappointing somehow - the third was odd, and didn't really feel as if it were about the same people at all)

Perhaps I read SitH too late? I liked it very much, and at times it almost clicked all the way for me, but I was never drawn as deeply into it as I wanted to be, if that makes any sense.

Jane Langton - I wonder if it was the jack in the box that creeped you out - I remember hating the illustration because it really scared me (though normally I love Eric Blegvad's illustrations)

That was the section which haunted me for a quite a while afterwards... and a bit of that childish terror still lurks in the corners when I reread it.

Elizabeth Goudge - I think her reprinting is a direct JKRowling effect - she has said somewhere that A Little White Horse is one of her favourite books. It's certainly one of mine - I adore it. I also love Linnets and Valerians I wrote about the rooms in them some fairly long time ago...

I haven't read the Potter books (my husband read the first one to preview it for my eldest, and we decided to pass on the series. I was supposed to have been doing it, but gave up after the first few chapters - it didn't work for me at all), but I am so deeply grateful for the ripple effects of their success!

Re: part 1 - fantasy and semi-fantasy

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

I discovered the Mushroom Planet series at my cousins' home and loved it, along with Freddy the Pig. The Freddy the Pig stories were just talking animals and targeted at a much younger audience, but they reminded me of the Uncle Wiggly stories that had been my mom's and which were some of my earliest reading, along with Old Mother Westwind.

[frumiousb.livejournal.com]

Interesting reading, all the comments. I don't have much in common with most of the books published here. Different regions? Different ages?

My own contender for forgotten-YA-fantasy-stuff-that-should-be-remembered is:

The Giant Under the Snow, by John Gordon. I found it really risk-taking, even re-reading it as an adult. I suspect that Gordon is not forgotten in the UK-- in the US, I ever found this one book. Nothing more.

[weatherglass.livejournal.com]

One I'd forgotten: Amy's Eyes, by Richard Kennedy. A deeply odd book, about pirates and nursery rhymes and dolls and scripture and orphans and treasure. I read it a few years ago for the first time since I was ten or eleven, and had almost the same reaction of baffled love that I had when I first read it.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

I did not like the sequels as much when I was younger, but I like them much more now. The world gets more complicated, and people are less clear-cut.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

hmm - I'll maybe have to try them again, if I can ever find a copy.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

I'd add a number of Ruth M. Arthur's books, which are slanted towards 13-year-old girls, I would say: After Candlemas, The Autumn People, Requiem for a Princess, which all tend to have faint time-travel dantasy elements. And Eleanor Cameron's The Court of the Stone Children, which is probably one of my top five YA fantasy novels.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I very much loved Ruth M. Arthur when I was about 13. Requiem for a Princess was a particular favourite! I also really liked A Candle for her Room which was quite creepy.

The first really complete story I ever wrote was incredibly derivative of Requiem - not "fanfic" but the kind of thing young teenagers write when they've just read something else that they love - like Polly's riff on LOR in Fire and Hemlock :) It was about a girl who plays "Greensleeves" on the recorder and goes back in time to the Elizabethan era and meets a little girl who dies of smallpox or the plague or something (my history was only rather vague).

Kashka!

[1crowdedhour.livejournal.com]

There's another book with Kashka in it! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I had no idea!

[danceswithwaves.livejournal.com]

I actually have three definite favorites, listed in order of favoritism, they are,
The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley. I love how Corinna finds her balance between her two worlds. There's a mystery thrown in about her mother and a stillborn child, as well as Corinna's inner strugle to find her place.
The second favorite I read when I was younger, got it from the school library and had a hard time finding it again for a second read since I'd forgotten the title (I tended not to memorize author's names when I was in elementary school). I moved the last year of elementary school and haven't been able to find the book since. :( It's written in diary format, except for the prologue and epilogue, and is about this girl who was raised by dolphins. People find her and try to make her human, but in the end she goes back to live with the dolphins.
My third favorite is Ella Enchanted. I never saw the movie because I heard that the plot was so drastically different. What I loved about the book was the inner struggle of Ella, and how she overcomes the curse with her inner strength. It's tough to show the climax in a movie anyway, but I heard they walloped the plot good, so I stayed away.
Interesting to note is that my favorite books when I was younger (and maybe they still run this theme) have themes that deal with girls who are separate, apart, but manage in the end to find their inner balance and the place that's right for them.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

As I read your introduction, a book came to mind. Then, you went on to discuss that very book. I read Drujienna's Harp as a child and my memory of that book remained with me; there was something that resonated strongly. But, I couldn't remember the book's name or author. Fortunately, an adult friend of mine had also remembered the book, had much the same reaction to it, and remembered the title and author. As a result, I was able to re-read the book. It's very strange going back to an old favorite after so many years. I was particularly struck by how bleak the story was, by Tha's anger, and by the disturbing ending.