Forgotten Vintage Children's Lit We Want Republished! discussion

Hello all you lovely people with great taste in fiction! :)

I'm starting a thread here as a placeholder. I've got no concrete plans for anything 'social' to happen here, but I thought that others less introverted than myself might be interested in coordinating something of the sort.

So if anyone wants to declare an "Author of the Month" challenge, or suggest a book to read together, etc., I'd be willing to help you make that happen.

This is the thread for all collective endeavours.

I'll just quickly advertise Louise's Mabel Esther Allan group here. :)

If you have another group you'd like to promote, here's a good place for that as well. (Blogs can go in the Resources Folder - feel free to recommend your own or those of others which may interest fellow group members).

Happy Friday to all in the meantime! :)

(I'm a member of Kadi's Middle Grade Madness Group, which has fun challenges and group events. It's time to prep for "Mytho May" over there, which sounds so appealing...!)

I would definitely be interested in reading some vintage children's stories with friends. Of course, availability is the question. If an author has works archived on openlibrary, that would help.

I'm also a co-mod in the Children's Books group. We read a fair number of older books as well as newer ones. New members are always welcome. I'm host of the Newbery Club there. https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/....

Oh that's perfect! Thanks for that recommendation - we don't need to start something new here then if we can join on there. :) Wonderful!

Children's Books

If any of you join Children's Books and want something specific to happen there, let me know and I'll set it up!

Capn wrote: "Oh that's perfect! Thanks for that recommendation - we don't need to start something new here then if we can join on there. :) Wonderful!

Children's Books"
Doing something here wouldn't go amiss if anyone gets the urge to organise it.

Cheryl wrote: "If any of you join Children's Books and want something specific to happen there, let me know and I'll set it up!"

Perfect! Thanks very much! :)

Sem wrote: "Capn wrote: "Oh that's perfect! Thanks for that recommendation - we don't need to start something new here then if we can join on there. :) Wonderful!
Children's Books"
Doing something here wouldn..."

That's just it - I'm dry in re: ideas anyway. Just thought I'd open the door.

I have ONE idea, and it's about as involved as I'm able/willing to organize. Chris gave me it, mentioning that the centenary of Joan Aiken's birth is 2024.

I thought we could do an Aiken read-a-long and/or an Aiken challenge ((re)read as many Aikens as you can this year).

Erm, one note: MOST of her stuff is still in print. :S Which is a good thing. But seeing as the focus of this group are her books which are NOT in print, I suppose we could showcase those in particular?

And an important point to clarify, if I can: does Aiken rhyme with achin', or is is pronounced more like Eye-ken? Or neither? :S Really hoping I can use "achin' for Aiken". Ha ha! (Hikin' the Aiken Mtn.?! Likin' the Aiken?! XD Oh dear.)


placeholders, for the moment. :) I've got until January to get something better together. ;)

My idea so far would be to declare her Author of the Year, and then have a 'challenge' for each interested individual to read/reread as many Aiken works as they can within 2024 (no prizes except bragging rights).

And then, secondary to that, participants can organize read-a-longs or focus groups, if desired. For example, I have the Bridle the Wind trilogy to read (which I was planning to get to prior to 2024), and then the The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories, which might lend itself well to a sub-discussion, idk.

Feedback/ideas welcome! :) Let me know! In its infancy. ;)

But it might be nice to have a featured author of the year each year! :) Any important centenaries or anniversaries in 2023 or 2025? And I suppose recent Obits might be good to keep track of, as well.

The more I think about it, there are probably better choices than Joan Aiken to highlight in a group about forgotten/lost books - she's hardly been forgotten! :) (Ditto my beloved Penelope Lively & Susan Cooper, and also Diana Wynne Jones)

But she's so beloved, it's hard to steer away...

I'd be interested in hearing some nominees for Author of the Year (we could also do Featured Authors by quarters/months, I suppose, though I find a month is quite tight).

I have a few I'd like to see promoted, but no convenient anniversaries or anything:

Meta Mayne Reid - a largeish body of work, a portion of which is on OpenLibrary/Archive.com. Used books are not cheap, but still affordable (my definition of 'affordable' is about $20 and under - so not much more than a new bestseller).

Geoffrey Trease & Henry Treece - we could lump these homonyms together? Trease v. Treece? (Any one have a credible third sound-alike? Thrice Trease/Treece/_____?) XD

I quite like Nina Beachcroft, and a good chunk of her stuff is available to borrow on Open Library / Archive.org

Antipodean authors, next? Anyone from the southern hemisphere? (I'm looking at you particularly, AUS/NZ! You and your books that hardly make it above the equator! But also RSA, southern Asia, South America...!)

and then maybe a One Hit Wonder month/quarter for great books like Miss Quarterberry and the Juniper Tree and . . . I'll have to think of some others! ;) But that might be nice, as those books are then VERY easily lost and forgotten...

Capn wrote: "The more I think about it, there are probably better choices than Joan Aiken to highlight in a group about forgotten/lost books - she's hardly been forgotten! :) (Ditto my beloved [a..."
I take your point about not featuring a writer who isn't forgotten or neglected but the more forgotten they are, the harder it would be for interested members to find their books. And that would be the case even if we chose out-of-print Aiken (there's a ton of it). Perhaps someone like John Gordon whose work is mostly out-of-print but is coming back into print. That's not a recommendation because I'm achin' for Aiken even though I binged on her last year.

Hm. Now that I think of it... Helen Creswell. Very well known, obvious stuff (Moondial, some of the Bagthorpes books) in print, but mostly out-of-print which is a damn shame.

Sem wrote: "Hm. Now that I think of it... Helen Creswell. Very well known, obvious stuff (Moondial, some of the Bagthorpes books) in print, but mostly out-of-print which is a damn shame."

Oh, good thinking! I read Moondial last year.

Yes, this is the trouble, isn't it? I would still like to feature Aiken - maybe she can be an example, perhaps, of an author who wasn't forgotten and is still very popular. I'm all for arguing that we have authors and stories of or near her calibre that have been forgotten (but should not have been).

Capn wrote: "Sem wrote: "Hm. Now that I think of it... Helen Creswell. Very well known, obvious stuff (Moondial, some of the Bagthorpes books) in print, but mostly out-of-print which is a damn shame."

Oh, good..."

There are forgotten authors - altogether forgotten - and there are forgotten books by well-known authors. There aren't many well-known MG authors whose entire oeuvre is in print. I'm not saying that it should be/deserves to be/is realistic that it would be but sometimes what isn't in print is as good as or better than what is. There's a certain randomness to it. Also, if I was ten years old and loved an author but most of her books were unavailable I'd be frustrated as hell. Hence the usefulness of OL and IA. So, yeah, I think this is as much of a problem as the forgotten author.

Helen Cresswell is very interesting. I've been meaning to do a complete read/reread. Lots on OL and copies to buy at reasonable prices.

Alternatively one could do a themed read (topic to be decided on) and include more or less well-known authors. Maybe this belongs on the other group but I'm not a member of that group so...

That's a good idea, too. We could help generate themed lists for Cheryl's group, in the even they were of interest. :)

I didn't actually like Moondial as much as I hoped I would - I'll have to give Helen Cresswell another go!

Capn wrote: "That's a good idea, too. We could help generate themed lists for Cheryl's group, in the even they were of interest. :)

I didn't actually like Moondial as much as I hoped I would - I'l..."

I wasn't wild about it either. The 80s TV series kept it in print, I expect.

One writer I'd like to mention is Eilís Dillon. I don't think many of her children's books are still in print. Titles such as The Cruise of the Santa Maria, The Island of Ghosts, The Island of Horses, The Singing Cave. There are lots to choose from.

Oh right - I've only seen her mentioned in "other books by this publisher" (and freqently on the backs of Meta Mayne Reid - probably not a coincidence seeing as she's Irish 'n' all)

(Was replying as a reply to Len, but GR is glitching again and making my whole reply italicized in spite of functional html code above...)

Another bonus about Eilís Dillon is that some MANY of her books are free to read on OpenLibrary:

The Cruise of the Santa Maria
The Island of Ghosts
The Island of Horses
A Family of Foxes
The Lion Cub
The Sea Wall
The Singing Cave
The Wild Little House... and more, I'll just put the OL link to her page here!
https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL263...

Capn wrote: "Another bonus about Eilís Dillon is that some MANY of her books are free to read on OpenLibrary:"

This reminds me. I've been meaning to post here, to mention the recent Internet Archive lawsuit, in which four publishers have taken them to court for copyright violations. The judge recently found in favor of the publishers, and while the Internet Archive has vowed to appeal, it's quite possible that many of the not-in-public-domain books on their site will disappear in the not-too-distant future. As Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive, I suspect the same will be true there.

I myself have recently upped my reading of a long list of witchy titles (a pet project of mine) available on the Internet Archive, in case they are no longer available to me. If any of you have similar projects you've been putting off, I would advise getting to it.

(Apologies if this is in the wrong place. Perhaps we should make a separate thread?)

It's an important point, and thanks for the reminder. :) It certainly warrants a thread of its own. Thanks, Abigail - I really hope that doesn't mean that the existing books would become unavailable, but yes, now might be the time to read what you can, just in case! :O

I remember Napster... :,(

Abigail wrote: "Capn wrote: "Another bonus about Eilís Dillon is that some MANY of her books are free to read on OpenLibrary:"

This reminds me. I've been meaning to post here, to mention the recen..."

Copyright applies to not just the author, but the lifetime of the artists who created cover art and illustrations. This could be a trip-up for people just keen to distribute the text.

Just to advertise on behalf of Kadi, the : Middle Grade Madness! team reading challenge is open for sign up until the 20th of July.

"A month-long, team-based reading challenge involving ONLY middle-grade books."

It begins 1. August (your time), and goes right through the month. Participants are randomly assigned to teams, and the competition is purely for fun.

A note for fans of the out-of-print titles - usually to have a book qualify, it has to be rated as MG or MG+ (or MY, MY+) on the ARbookfind US (or UK) sites, unless you wish to ask for an exception (i.e. it's by known a publisher for 'children' of that age group and most likely would be labelled as MG today). It gets a bit murky, and I find the distinction too arbitrary to feel comfortable with anyway.... but IF you happen to enjoy reading middle grade books, and you've got sufficient titles (reading output is up to you - you pledge a target number or minimum number of books at sign up), it can be quite fun.

I participated last year. Our team came last, I think, in spite of me reading more books than I thought possible in a month. :) There are subchallenges within the competition - you don't know which type of books (categories, themes, titles, covers, etc.) will score your group bonus points going into it, and the point (if there is one?) is to work together to strategize reading priorities for maximum team points.

There's no prize. ;) It's simply for fun.

Since I'm not participating this year (but might again next August!) I thought I might advertise on Kadi's behalf. It's a very good way to blast through unread MG/MG+ titles languishing on your physical or virtual shelves, and I surprised myself at my efficiency when I knew others were depending on me (you can do nearly a book a day with MG titles, if you have the time!). ;)

Anyway, IF you're interested, the group event link is above. If you have to be a member of the group to view that link, then the group's mainpage is here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

I had Bailey's in my morning coffee. That's the caveat for what could be a hair-brained idea.

Christmas Book Swap? Was just thinking about Charlotte's lovely endeavour State-side ( https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... ), and thinking maybe we could expand it for a one-off trade/gift exchange?

Tis the season, almost, to give (and receive)!

Perhaps if anyone is interested in sending a sole paperback (or lightweight hardcover) trans-atlantic, we can start looking for in-store thrift store finds on behalf of each other?

Again... Bailey's...

I just picked up a hardcover The Cuckoo Clock from our local Antiques Centre for a pittance. They've got quite a lot rammed in there - I'd be happy to look for a copy of something for someone else.

Could also do a 'Secret Santa' like thing, but, again, Bailey's, and that's as far as I've considered.

Anyway, IF this is an idea that anyone is interested in, seeing as it's Rememberance/Armistice/Memorial (Veteran's?) Day (11 Nov), we'd have a week or two to have a look 'round.

Let me know if anyone's interested in something like this. :)

(I just realised that there's an anonymity issue at play here, so, again, sorry - Bailey's. Post Office Boxes?) :)

Or we could start now for Christmas 2024. XD

Interesting idea. Out-of-country shipping is beyond my budget atm, and I just gave away most of my vintage books. Let's talk about it now, but for sometime later.

Capn wrote: "(I just realised that there's an anonymity issue at play here, so, again, sorry - Bailey's. Post Office Boxes?) :)"

I'm not bothered about anonymity but I don't have easy access to shops. Otoh, if someone had a 'want' that I could supply it might be different, or would be if I could loosen my hold on duplicate copies.