“Half Magic” by Edward Eager.
The Danny Dunn and Tom Swift Jr series.
The Silly Book by Stoo Hample. This book was a huge influence on my sibs and me when we were young. It’s a book to read TO your young kids. Decidedly off the wall:
This thing was out of print for decades - when it came back out a few years ago, I bought copies for all three of us “kids” (we’re all in our 40’s now…)
Oh my! I haven’t thought about Ruth Chew in YEARS, but as soon as I read that, it all came flooding back. Even when I was young, I realized her stuff was not perhaps the absolute highest literary quality ever–but I sought out pretty much every single one of her books, nonetheless. And there were a lot of them!
Someone already mentioned “The 21 Balloons,” but I loved that book so much. There is something bizarrely appealing about the whole idea. It didn’t really have much of a plot, from what I can remember, but the pure invention of the whole things was awesome. I loved the neatness of the whole scheme, with the different restaurants and themed houses. It was also a Newberry winner so probably not all that obscure–but it was published in 1948.
Looking at the Newberry winner list, I was surprised by how many of the books I had read. On my own too–not for school or anything. Like a lot of Dopers, I was a voracious reader. One I have particularly strong memories of was “Hitty, Her First Hundred Years,” about a doll’s life. Won the Newberry in 1930! I’m only 22.
How about Sid Fleischmenn? He wrote “The Whipping Boy,” which was pretty famous (again, won the Newberry and I think they made a movie out of it) but I liked him best for his other books–which I think count as obscure. All were very whimsical and often set in the “old west.” I really loved Jingo Django, By the Great Horn Spoon! and Mr. Mysterious and Company.
Margaret Mahy is a pretty well known children’s author, but I really loved some of her more obscure stuff–rather than Changeover, etc. which are well known. For example, “The Greatest Show Off Earth” and “The Blood-and-Thunder Adventure on Hurricane Peak.” Also all very whimsical–an annoying adjective, but the best I can come up with. Weird? Quirky? Something like that.
Another random book I just spent a good half hour tracking down… “The Worldwide Dessert Contest,” by Dan Elish. Man, I loved that crazy book! I can still remember the apple pancake that doubled as a trampoline.
Oh, and how about the Bagthorpes? Not sure how obscure that series was, but it was a bunch of stories about an eccentric British family, written by Helen Cresswell. I remember them as being absolutely hilarious. I’ve wanted to seek them out for a while, and see if they were as awesome as I remember. I can still remember so many details about them–cousin Daisy, Jack and his dog, the “strings to their bow” (a phrase I found absolutely incomprehensible at the time.)
Ok, I will stop now–but I could seriously go on forever! I used to read dozens of books per week–so many less now!
That’s it! I read the “Mrs. Coverlet” books and I’ve been trying to remember the name of them for several months and it was driving me batshit crazy! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Mine will have to be The Mad Scientists’ Club books by Bertrand Brinley
I found the original as a dog-eared paperback in our 5th grade classroom library. There were a number of pages missing but I absolutely devoured the book. For the rest of the year the odds were good that I had the book checked out.
Late in the year I found the The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists’ Club for sale in one of those Scholastic Club sale things they gave to the students. As I remember, our room didn’t meet the minimum order until I begged my mom into getting a few more books. The four-to-six weeks wait until delivery gave me an early glimpse of the meaning of eternity. After the book arrived I was back in heaven.
I moved on and the (original) book stayed in the 5th grade classroom. I searched the town (and a few other) library for anything written by Brinley, to no avail. A few years later I saw a copy of The Mad Scientists’ Club in a secondhand store(in great condition no less). Being too old for that sort of thing I didn’t buy it. [Aside Note to Self: If anything has ever meant that much to you, cough up the dime and buy the thing, work overtime if you have to].
There I thought the story ended: one very dog eared book from an author I knew I loved but couldn’t find anything more about.
But what should ride in on its white horse but the internet [I’m taking this a bit far but I *really* like the book]. An early search revealed nothing (the hoards of people busily populating the web with data hadn’t yet found my beloved author). Then, a couple of years ago on a whim I tried Wikipedia. Success! Not only had he been entered, there was a link to his books and a couple of new books that I had never knew existed (except deep in my heart of hearts).
I now own the complete set (in hardcover) and my wife is contemplating intervention.
In junior high, I read a book about a girl who wakes up one day to find her family is gone and when she sets off to find them she finds a boarding school for indoctinating kids into terrorism. It was like nothing I’d read before or have read since. I long considered starting a thread to find out if anyone had ever read it but I couldn’t remember the name. A month ago, I remembered the girl had a silver crown given to her, and the title was indeed The Silver Crown.
Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm
It was one we loved as kids, but I’ve never run across anyone else who knows it.
I remember my mom doing a similar thing with some Sesame Street books when I was a kid..I wish I knew what happened to those. The stories weren’t terribly great but since I was a huge Sesame Street fan at the time, I loved them to death.
Also…I don’t know if they’re obscure (I haven’t read the entire thread, either) but I seem to remember a series of books my mom bought from a garage sale called “Pickles” something..Dill Pickles? Something with pickles in the name and every book was about an animal getting into some sort of trouble and his friends helping to save him/her.
Help! It was a series of books about a kid who get hold of a old chemistry set, but I can’t remember the name.
I gave my old copy to my now 16 year old niece and she loved it.
As others may have figured out, Edward Eager wrote an entire series of magical kid books. He was inspired by the superb series that E. Nesbit wrote at the turn of the century.
A very good friend of mine gave it to my now 29 year old son when he was little. I love the colorful and comical illustrations, and the down-to-earth attitude. I’m a preschool teacher so the book gets steady usage year in/year out.
This sounds very very familiar to me. Edited to add: Was it The Lemonade Trick?
I loved that book and used to own it.
One place where I have found old favorites of mine (such as The Marvelous Adventures of Tal and the Mad Scientists’ Club) is the Purple House Press. They were very responsive to my inquiries.
Yeah, I remember reading the “____ Trick” series by Scott Corbett when I was a kid.
(Zombie warning.)
We had this one as a kid, too. I even started a thread here to help me identify it!
My favourite obscure (? or not) children’s book is “The Portmanteau Book” by Thomas Rockwell (more famous for “How to Eat Fried Worms”). The self-referential index really tickled me as a kid!
I was glad to see The Pushcart War mentioned in the very first post; it’s one of my favorite books.
I read thru the whole thread, all set to be the first to mention The Portmanteau Book, only to find that hogarth beat me to it by a few minutes (in a 4 year old thread, no less!). I love this book and own 2 copies.
But I can still be the first to mention House of Stairs by William Sleator. I was 9 or 10 years old when I first read this, and hoooboy! did it ever make a lasting impression on me.
Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang is my absolute favorite short and shivery kid story. It’s just great, and I just found out that the family let another author finish out the set (4 books now) and they re-released them!
Very good book, and very few people have heard of it.
In Canada, that’s a very popular book! (At least it was when I was a kid.) The sequels, probably less so.
The series was called “Sweet Pickles.” My sisters had one of the books, “Me Too Iguana.” They wrote funny comments all over it. I think my mom threw it away after a few years because it was too damaged. I found a gently used copy of it years later at a used book sale, and we may still have it around somewhere.
I remember loving a book called “The Noonday Friends,” about an Irish-American girl named Franny, who was very poor because her father was an artist who couldn’t hold a job, and her Puerto Rican friend Simone, who had a big family. I read it several times and wonder what became of my copy.
I’ve seen Understood Betsy mentioned here a few times (loved that book when I was a kid!!) and thought I would point out that it is out of copyright and available for free at Project Gutenberg.
Louie’s Lot - “There’s keen competition among the town’s youngsters to be Louie’s assistant when Louie, the milkman, runs a battery of tests to see who’s qualified.”
The Bandit of Mok Hill - “A twelve-year-old orphan in San Francisco joins a traveling show as a vocalist only to get to the California gold fields where he plans to meet his famous bandit friend. Then, when his voice begins to change and he discovers bandits also kill, he learns the value of honest friendship.”
21 Ballons, already mentioned, was a favorite of both myself and my children.
“Who Built the Highway” and “Who Built the Bridge”. I couldn’t even find them in a quick Google search, so I guess that makes them obscure.
They’re (just guessing) 1940’s -50’s era (maybe earlier?) IIRC there are steam machines in them. I loved reading them, the illustrations were kind of abstract and stark, which I thought was really cool.
They re-surfaced at my parents’, and now my 2.5 y/o loves them as well 