Two Down! One to Go.
Back when my blog was an itty bitty little thing, just puttering away on Blogger, I made a little sidebar called BRING IT BACK! Out-of-Print Crimes Against Humanity! (I’m often going for the touchdown in the hyperbole). I must’ve put it up in 2007 or so, and you can look at it now if you like. I decided to limit my scream of pain to three books. They were:
The Day the Cow Sneezed by James Flora (are you not pleased, Ward?)
The Noisy Counting Book by Susan Schade
The Winged Girl of Knossos by Erick Berry
Now we are in 2010. The economy has crashed. Folks are less likely to take chances on new books, let alone old reprints of almost forgotten gems. Yet looking at the list, note the following.
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The Day the Cow Sneezed by Jame Flora – To be published September 1, 2010 by Enchanted Lion Books
The Noisy Counting Book by Susan Schade – Printed in board book form June 22, 2010 by Random House Books
I don’t think a defunct blog from 2007 had a bit to do with this, but it does mean one thing.
Winged Girl of Knossos . . . Your time is due!!!
Consider the following.
I’m not the only one saying this. Peter at Collecting Children’s Books had a fantastic post on the very same topic back in February 2008 where he not only lauded the book but found an actual honest-to-god letter written by Erick Berry (a.k.a. Mrs. Herbert Best) as well. Here was my review of it in two parts (here and here).
Obviously you’d need a new cover for it. This is the old one.
It’s out of date but notice, if only for a moment, that this is a kick-ass image of a girl hang-gliding and it’s a book from 1928. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
I’ll be changing my BRING IT BACK list on the old blog soon. I’ll probably put in The Changeover by Margaret Mahy and a picture book of some sort (probably Ultra-Violet Catastrophe by . . . oh shoot. That’s also Margaret Mahy) as well. Maybe The Girl With the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts. But for now, I’m pleased as punch at the way things have turned out. Now to sit back and hope a little more for a new Winged Girl to appear somewhere, someday.
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About Betsy Bird
Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Kirkus, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on BlueSky at: @fuse8.bsky.social
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You do realize The Changeover is what Twilight wishes it were? (Other than, you know, in print and wildly popular.)
Rams is so right! Changeover blows all those other paranormals out of the water!
My own picks are fantasy: Taash and the Jesters by Ellen Kindt McKenzie, The Wicked Enchantment by Margo Benary-Isbert, and The Silver Curlew by Eleanor Farjeon.
YES to the Wicked Enchantment!
Please get on the horn about bringing back in print Virginia Walter’s “Hi, Pizza Man!” It’s a storytime staple! Thank you!
What about Mortal Engines (and the rest of that series)? Seriously, you’d think that with a prequel just out, they’d start printing his other books again.
I thought you had delusions of grandeur when you vowed that you would get The Noisy Counting Book back in print. But you did it!
Well done, Betsy. Jennifer V, I’m totally with you. Please, oh, please work your Fuse 8 magic on Hi, Pizza Man!!! That is one of the best and most underrated storytime books ever. Ga! I cannot begin to fully express my love for Hi, Pizza Man. Ga!
The Winged Girl has one great cover! And you know which book is the first one I’d choose to come back into print. Actually, there’s a few of mine I can think of 🙂
“Prince Bertram the Bad” by Arnold Lobel, please! It’s a favorite of my daughter’s and mine.
Please plead for “The Sea is All Around” with the original illustrations by Elizabeth Enright. Our single battered library copy needs a replacement or a least a shelfmate.
The Wedding Procession of the Rag Doll and the Broom Handle and Who Was in It, by Carl Sandburg (pictures by Harriet Pincus but some wonderful new artist could do fantastic things). A book I don’t mind reading aloud over and over and over.
Oh man. Annette, that may be the most brilliant idea I’ve ever heard. And talk about a good subject for a future post!
Add me to the Hi Pizza Man contingent I love using that for storytime.
I was recently asked by a friend to recommend a few good fantasy titles….when doing a quick search to see if I could add links to sites where new copies could be purchased, I found two were quite shockingly out of print: The Changeover by Margaret Mahy (a Carnegie winner) and The Court of the Stone Children by Eleanor Cameron (a National Book Award winner). Arrggh!
I’d love to have The Sea is All Around by Elizabeth Enright and The Court of the Stone Children by Eleanor Cameron. Those are great picks! I’ll very glad that so many of my childhood favorites are being reissued, but I wish they’d keep the same illustrations. I was disappointed to buy The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge in paperback and it had NO illustrations at all!