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

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!