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!

[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.

[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]

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 :)

[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]

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.)

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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!

[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]

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.

[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]

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.

[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 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.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

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

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

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

Did you read the prequel?

[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!

[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]

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.

[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]

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

*sigh*

Glad they're back out there now :-)

[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.