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

[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.