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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 ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
part 1 - fantasy and semi-fantasy
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
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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
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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...
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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...
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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.
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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)
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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...
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I loved Hilda van Stockum's books"
Her books have been republished by Bethlehem books.
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Thank you!
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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
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
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
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...
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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
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I've ended up saving this entry of
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.
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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
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
Re: Shakespeare's Richard III
Re: part 1 - fantasy and semi-fantasy
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!
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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