I love The Perilous Gard too! And I also quite enjoyed The Sherwood Ring.
They were all reprinted a couple of years ago. A couple of years before that, I somehow found myself at a library talk during which the speaker did nothing but sing the praises of Freddy for 45 minutes. It was a little bizarre, actually.
Andy Buckram’s Tin Men has an odd resonance for me to this day. I must have read it when I was about 7 or 8, about 16 times over the course of a year, but it marked my transition from pictures books to reading “real books”. Judging from the Amazon reviews, I’m not the only one who remembers this sadly out-of-print book.
Hee, yes! The Chinese one, I think, was actually Japanese - The Tongue-Cut Sparrow. I remember that story because as a child, I had no idea what this “starch” was that the sparrow had eaten. Also, the big scary monsters popping out of the box - in all my life, if ever I was given a choice between a big gift or a small gift, you can be certain I always chose a small one, with many polite refusals first! There was another one in that book… about ghosts, a man who moved in with ghosts, and his brothers thought he was crazy. And the one from the US - Soap, Soap, Soap! - I make glycerin soap as supplemental income right now, and you’ll often hear me puttering around my melting pot: “One’s out, get the other’n out!” (Don’t know why. That line just stayed with me over the years.)
I think the kids with the lemonade was called… The Yellow Shop? And Kiki, that name came up just the other day, when my friend Julian told me about his good friend named Kiki… the first thing out of my mouth was “Is she a ballerina?”
…sigh. I think I’ll grab one of those books before I go to bed tonight. 
Wow! Three of my favorites in this thread. I enjoyed The Shy Stegosaurus, but I really loved Understood Betsy and The Sherwood Ring.
Betsy made me feel brave and confident.
I actually bought The Sherwood Ring from one of my kids’ book orders when they were in school. Enjoyed it almost as much as an adult.
The Teddy Bear Habit by James Lincoln Collier, the story of a 12 year old boy in the Village who aspires to be a rock star, gets involved in a diamond heist, and has a dad who draws comic strips. I think I read it three or four times when I was in the fifth grade.
I was going to list a few others but in searching for the names of the authors I discovered that they aren’t as obscure as I thought they were. It turns out that I’m just old and nobody remembers:
The Great Brain series by John D. Fitzgerald
The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key, and
Sue Barton, Student Nurse by Helen Bore Doylston (okay, so I’m really not old enough to have read the Sue Barton series when they came out, and by 1973 they were pretty outdated…which could be why I can’t find anyone under the age of 45 who remembers them.)
I certainly remember Sue Barton – I preferred the Mary Ellis books, by Hope Newell. Talk about dated – they were written in the early '50s about a young black woman (Mary Ellis Stebbins) who becomes one of the first black students (the book actually uses the terms ‘colored’ or ‘Negro’) at a newly-integrated School of Nursing. Very good books, but a real education to read with modern eyes.
We didn’t own a lot of books when I was a kid – I used the library, mostly. At home, we had a '40ish set of the World Book Encyclopedia that I read just about cover-to-cover. The beginnings of my fascination with history and trivia, I think. I also read the parenting books my mother had (Dr. Spock and another one with case studies about dealing with ‘problem’ kids) multiple times. I read her cookbooks, too…
But for my own books, I didn’t have very many. We had a few Happy Hollister books Mom had picked up from somewhere, and a series of mail-order books which were all 2-books in one – Swiss Family Robinson & Robinson Crusoe or Wizard of Oz & The Jungle Book. And we had a set of books similar to the Collier series upthread – they were red and white and each one had stories about something different – Sports or History or Whatever.
And I had some of those paperbacks you could buy at the yearly Weekly Reader book drives at school. Two I remember in particular are obscure enough I haven’t been able to find them again – not on Google, not at Loganberry. The first was Best Friend or Best Friends about a young girl in New York City (very exotic to suburban California me) whose best friend has abandoned her for another girl. The kids in the books put on a puppet show of Alice and Wonderland, I remember. I thought the author’s name was Simon or Simone, but I’ve had no luck tracking it down. I would love to read it again.
The other was set in another country (Germany, maybe? or a Scandinavian country) and I think the title was Gillan. Again, I’ve had no luck finding it. It was about a little girl being raised by a single mother and worrying that her mother would marry the man she was dating. The girl stole a glass elephant as a gift for her mother – I don’t remember how it all turned out. I’d like to reread that one too.
I read those! I think I actually have The Forgotten Door, and my daughter loves the Great Brain.
Oddly, my library still has them. I’ve never read them, but they’re in the children’s section, moldering away–I suppose they don’t weed much, since there’s little money in the budget for new books anyway.
The junior sci-fi books of Hugh Walters: Blast Off At Woomera et al
The Flying Doctor books by Micheal Noonan
Lots of flying books along with Biggles - including one I can’t find anywhere, about the survivors of a plane crash somewhere in the north - not Hatchet, but very similar - a teen and an injured pilot.
Si
Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back by Shel Silverstein Link
Richard Halliburton’s books were among my favorites as a child. They weren’t specifically for children, but one of the elementary classrooms had a bunch of old copies. When the other kids were reviewing stuff I’d mastered, the teacher let me read through them.
Halliburton was an adventurer who traveled the world in the 1930’s & disappeared while crossing the Pacific in a junk in 1939. He wrote bestsellers & gave lectures about his travels.
There are quite accurate criticisms of his work–from a post-Colonialist, less racist viewpoint. (If he’d lived long enough, he may well have matured.) But reading about the Taj Mahal in moonlight, the lost city of Petra & diving into a Mayan cenote opened the mind of this bored kid in a little Texas town.
I loved The Perilous Gard when I was growing up, and I read about 20 years after it was published. It was reprinted sometime in the mid-90s, and I think it’s been reprinted a couple times since then. Apparently it’s the best kept secret of young adult historical fiction or something.
My nomination is for the children’s book “What-a-mess” by Frank Muir, about an Afghan hound who does not feel comfortable as an Afghan hound – perhaps he is a bee or a deer. Apparently it was made into a cartoon by Disney and was a Reading Rainbow book, but no one I know has ever heard of the book, or at least doesn’t remember it like I do. My family still quotes from it. It’s a completely adorable book.
…which reminds me of another book that no one has mentioned, making it (sort of) obscure – The Perilous Road by William O. Steele. Set in the mountains of Tennesee during the Civil War, it follows a boy who has to try to save his brother’s life. Great book, another Newberry winner.
Wow, lotta memories in this thread, not only of things I read as a kid but also favorites from when my kids were growing up!
Zilpha Keatley Snyder was one of my favorite writers, but of all her books I think I loved Black and Blue Magic best–flying is one of my fantasies and it was set in San Francisco–I lived in Marin County as a child so it was thrilling for me to know exactly where things happened in the book.
The Time Garden by Edward Eager was fun–I read other works by him and liked them as well, such as ** Seven Day Magic ** and ** Half Magic**.
The Melendy Quartet by Elizabeth Enright was not only a favorite of mine but my daughter liked it as well–our tastes in reading weren’t totally congruent and it was nice to find things we both enjoyed.
I really liked the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books, written by Betty McDonald, when I was around first-second grade–haven’t seen these books for a while.
But my all time favorite and most obscure favorite kid book was ** Summer At Buckhorn** by Anna Rose Wright. It’s been out of print for donkey’s years and I would dearly love to find a copy of it.
The Ghost Squad series by Edmund Wallace Hildick
The Luck of Zap and Zoe by Lord.
12-year-old greek immigrant Zach and his little sister Zoe grow up in NY during the 40s.
Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones
After being framed for a crime he didn’t commit, Sirus is sentenced to serve a term as a real dog on earth. That has it own set of problems, but someone isn’t content with his sentence…
I came here to post this one! I will never forget the crocodiles sucking lollipops or the lions chewing gum. Such a great book!
I got “What-a-mess” for my kids - heaps of fun. You are not the only who has read it. But I was a huge Frank Muir fan from a childhood listening to My Word and My Music.
Si
We had “The Fall of Freddie the Leaf” when I was a kid. I loved the beautiful photos and the poignancy of the message.
Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag. One of my mother’s favorites.
[QUOTE=But my all time favorite and most obscure favorite kid book was ** Summer At Buckhorn** by Anna Rose Wright. It’s been out of print for donkey’s years and I would dearly love to find a copy of it.[/QUOTE]
Good luck. Abe lists 5 copies for sale. The cheapest is $250, the most expensive is $1500. Apparently it hasn’t been reprinted since 1943.
The Big Green Book by Robert Graves, illustrated by Maurice Sendak is another great children’s book that is out of print.