Vintage YA & Other Vintage Books -- Restart for 2016

Vintage readers let's get this group revived and renewed with new discussions of vintage reading material. I am about to finish a book from 1934 named The Windmill Mystery. The language and story line is appropriate for young adults and adults alike. I am thoroughly enjoying the language of the day and the story. The book itself is of course a small hardback from England. I love the size of the book and the print style. I think I am really going to love reading vintage materials, whether they're books, paper or hardback, graphic books ie. comics, magazines etc. It is interesting seeing the types of stories for young people from the early 20th century. Please everyone, hopefully we can get this group going again!

Just acquired 10 Bobbsey Twins volumes at an antique store. Wish I'd had access to them when I was in elementary school

I've been going through my catalog one collection at a time and re-ordering/inventorying/culling. Next up is the vintage kids/ya! They outgrew their shelving awhile back, so it's badly needed.

I will probably end up doing a lot of combining/ck as I go, if it ends up anything like the cookbook collection.

I also read The Bobbsey Twins On The Sun-Moon Cruise last weekend, for reasons. ;)

My mom still has a handful of Bobbsey Twins books from her childhood, quite brown with age -- The Bobbsey Twins in the Country has paper that just about crumbles at a touch. I remember them all fondly from reading them as I was growing up. My favorite was always The Bobbsey Twins at the Ice Carnival, and I was able to get a copy of it in a similar style/edition for myself as an adult.

Has anyone ever lived in a place that had an ice carnival? I lived in North Dakota for 3 years, but didn't hear of any such thing there.

amysisson, the first three Bobbsey Twins books were pirated by publishers other than Grosset & Dunlap when the official publisher failed o renew the copyrights. Thus, it is common for The Bobbsey Twins, The Bobbsey Twins in the Country, and The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore to be seen from other publishers like Goldsmith, Saalfield, Mary Perks, etc., etc. These dime store editions often had pulp paper. When this paper is exposed to heat and sunlight, it it commonly becomes brown and brittle like you describe.

Grosset & Dunlap did use pulp paper on the Bobbsey Twins between 1942 and 1948 because of the restrictions on paper and other essential materials that were rationed and restricted during World War II.

James

melannen, there are a couple other series books with eclipse scenes.

One is The Bobbsey Twins on the Pony Trail (1944). In it, a group of gypsies are being cheated out of their land. A speculator claims he will remove their vision if they don't sell. He knows about the upcoming total eclipse in the area where the story was set. Mr. Bobbsey helps to prevent the injustice.

Another series book is in the Ted Scott series called Following the Sun Shadow (1932). Ted Scott is a Charles Lindbergh clone who flies the path of a total solar eclipse.

Likely there are other juvenile series books in which eclipses play a role.

The Bobbsey Twins and the Sun-Moon Cruise (1975) is an interesting example. The head of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, and her assistant, Nancy S. Axelrad, took a 1973 eclipse cruise off the coast of Dakar, Africa. On board were many important guest speakers to talk about the oceans and the heavens, including Isaac Asimov, Scott Carpenter, and Neil Armstrong. Harriet organized an impromptu reception for the speakers and I have some original snapshots and the guest register from it.

Harriet and Nancy expected to follow the kids programs around to gather material for a revised version of the Nancy Drew story, The Mystery of the Brass-Bound Trunk. However, before they could get to that, the publisher wanted a Bobbsey Twins volume so Sun-Moon Cruise became Nancy Axelrad's first writing for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, even though she had been with them since about 1965. My copy of this book has Nancy's signature as well as her rendition of the "Laura Lee Hope" signature. The Syndicate had official signature styles that the staff practiced to sign books and letters as occasion called for it.

James

>6 Keeline: I did not know there was an eclipse in Pony Trail! I'll have to read that one next. (That's another one I own but hadn't read - I've been buying faster than I've been reading, the last few years.)

I did know some of the story behind Sun-Moon Cruise but I was fairly disappointed by the eclipse scene - it was almost literally blink-and-you'll-miss it and didn't capture any of the experience of a total eclipse. (When we had just managed to spend three hours watching a much shorter eclipse!) The unnecessary scene with the "native village" was disappointing, too - I'd remembered the '70s era ones as being a little bit better on the racism; that almost felt like it was out of the '30s or '40s.

Do you know if Tom Swift ever met an eclipse? It seems like it would have been right in his wheelhouse but I can't think of any.

>3 melannen: I inherited a pile of Bobbsey Twins books from older cousins who inherited them from a previous generation, and have been adding to it ever since. They're most of what got me started on vintage kids' novels. We had a couple of the green-cover 1940s ones in that original set, and you can still find the pages where I had a lot of fun cutting shapes out of the soft, brittle paper with my fingernails as I read.

I've never seen an ice carnival! In my personal experience Winter Carnival is a thing that only happens in kids' series.

I looked into the texts of the Tom Swift and Tom Swift Jr. series at the time. None refer to the astronomical phenomenon.

One Tom Swift Sr. book uses the word "eclipse" to mean "surpass."

Tom Swift and the Race to the Moon has a reference to ancient Chinese astronomers who had the ability to predict eclipses.

Tom Jr. did have a story involved a comet, Tom Swift and the Mystery Comet, and they consulted with a comet expert, Dr. Fred L. Whipple. I have a copy of Tom Swift and His Outpost in Space that the Stratemeyer Syndicate gave to Whipple as thanks that was signed by "Victor Appleton II."

James