80s children's fiction anthology; lg white hardcover; possibly boy minstrel on cover

I read this between 1986-1990, and I'm fairly certain it was published within 5 years of that date range.

It was a large white hardcover and the cover possibly featured a boy minstrel (maybe with unruly hair?) in profile.

The title may have had something like "children's stories" or "stories for children" or "collection of stories" in it.

The selections all were excerpts from children's novels--no poetry, short stories, mythology, or folklore.

Two selections were from Carrie's War and the first Flambards book, Flambards. Although these both are by British authors, I don't remember the focus being on the UK only; and, the book was purchased in the US.

ETA: There were full-color illustrations throughout the book. E.g., the Flambards excerpt had an illustration of sickly Will sitting up in bed and pointing his finger. It corresponded to a story description of Will yelling at someone to 'Get out!' I think.

Found it! (I did it again, Myriad.)

I remembered, while skimming options on worldcat.org, that the title contained the word treasury, not collection. I also remembered that the word 'illustrated' was in the title.

The book is The Illustrated Treasury of Modern Literature for Children and it was published originally in the UK in 1986 and then in the US in 1988.

Fantastic! I'd been trying to mull over this one, too, since the summary sounded so interesting. You've given me another title to add to my to-read list.

It might be a TBR for me, too. I found a prior sale of it on ebay, and the contents look great--the table of contents is listed on the link. I had several of the excerpted books, so I'd bet that's why my mom bought it for me--'Read-alikes!' she thought, I'm assuming. I didn't remember that nonfiction was included in the anthology, so that makes it even more intriguing.

There are quite a few copies for sale on amazon. It never ceases to amaze me, even in this age of information overload, that one can find multiple used copies of even obscure titles on the internet.

ETA: Side note, how did Mark Twain end up as a touchstone? This touchstone system has its own information loop sometimes, it seems.

Yes, the touchstone system can be unusual at times. There might be an open topic on the LT Bug Collectors group for this issue:

http://www.librarything.com/groups/bugcollectors

(If there isn't, I (or anyone) can open a Bug topic on the author issue -- I can work on that on Monday.)

We have the discussion over here, and the touchstones over there, and never the Twain shall meet. {grins, ducks, runs}

>6 lturpin42: Sometimes it does seem as if we're all Roughing It out here in touchstone limbo land; things will only converge once we're all Following the Equator. I can't fathom why.

{That was bad. Feel free to throw peanuts from the gallery.}

Funny, I just saw The Illustrated Treasury of Modern Literature for Children at a used book sale this evening.

>8 SylviaC:: I'm pondering purchasing a copy, even though most of the contents are available elsewhere, because it's such a great anthology, and the illustrations are gorgeous. I'd been racking my brain for months before I posted here.