Reader’s Digest Great Stories for Young Readers (1969)
“On May 18 of last year (2011) I wrote a post about my search
for a book that I had read way back in the early Seventies, when I was about
nine or ten. I knew I had read it at the house of one of my aunts. I had a
pretty strong memory that it was from Reader's Digest (she had a ton of Reader's
Digest books; I think she belonged to some club). I remembered some of the
stories I had read in it, especially some with illustrations that had made an
impression on me. I put down every detail I could remember about it and asked
for any help that anyone who saw the post could give. I got no replies, which
isn't very surprising (my readership isn't very broad, though I like to think
its choice), but I kept searching periodically, and hoping.
Finally last week my Googling brought up a listing from a library that looked
very promising; it showed the contents of a book that matched in every way my
memory of that long-ago volume. This was the Reader's Digest Great
Stories for Young Readers. A quick check on Amazon found a copy offered as
"Good" (for $1.78!), and it wasn't long before I had ordered it and
it was on its way. I wasn't absolutely sure it was the right book until I
actually opened the box yesterday, flipped through the pages, and saw the
well-remembered pictures of forty years ago.
The book contains many childhood favorites of old. Stories of King Arthur,
Robin Hood, Till Eulenspiegel, Anansi, Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and Johnny
Appleseed, as well as Hindu, Finnish, Dutch, and old Greek legends are here.
Excerpts from Mr. Popper's Penguins, Ben and Me, Rabbit
Hill, and Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang are included. Authors
like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oscar Wilde, Carl Sandburg, Rudyard Kipling, Isaac
Asimov, A. A. Milne, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and James
Thurber are represented. There are many illustrations by one of my personal
favorite artists, Darrell K. Sweet. All in all, there are seventy stories.” “When
I was in college in the early Eighties I ran across the picture of the Devil's
cat in a book, one in a yearly series of commercial art and illustration. I
made a Xerox of the picture; like a fool I made no note of the artist or where
it was published. I dug that picture out of my archives and made a new scan of
it; the name is down there in the grass, but I can't make it out.” – Power of
Babel. It was Jean-Leon Huens, another great illustrator. This scan led me to
the memory and to the book eventually.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Anthology. Children’s. Hardback.
The Secret of Crossbone Hill, by Wilson Gage. Illustrated by
Mary Stevens.
Weekly Reader’s Children’s Book Club. “The Secret of
Crossbone Hill holds a peculiar place in our family lore. If I
remember correctly, we got it at an old second-hand/army surplus store, not
because we really wanted it but because it was pretty cheap: in other words, a
parental decision. But we all read it, at one time or another. We had two
summer occupations as children. There was the week-end trip to the beach, and
there was camping out in the country. We found that Crossbone Hill pretty
much described the quality of those outings, the spirit of what we experienced.
The old blue book even accompanied us on several of these trips. It helped
develop our appreciation of nature and of the wildlife we saw. So even though
it never became what I would call a favorite, it was always around and a sort
of quiet influence; so much so that when I found this newer copy, I had to get
it.” – Power of Babel.
Ranking: Essential Nostalgia.
File Code: Children’s Book. Adventure. Hardback.
Mystery in the Night Woods, by John Peterson. Illustrations
by Cyndy Szekeres.
“Probably my most favoritest book that I got before fourth
grade, but my copy was read to rags. This one is actually one my brother [John;
his name is in it, written by his teacher] got when he was in second grade, the
same year I was in fourth. It's the story of a flying Squirrel and his best
friend Bat, the mistake he makes, and his redemption foiling the depredations
of the villain Weasel. Animals living in the wild, but with clothes and some
civilized artifacts like stoves and flashlights. Looking at it now I see some
influence from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, but it
has a charm all its own. And that great title!” – Power of Babel. I might at
this time draw attention to one of my favorite pictures, the Maple Syrup
Factory. I always loved the idea of eccentric, complicated machinery, possibly
from seeing clips of the Breakfast Machine from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on
Captain Kangaroo. And Szekeres’s style was just great here; fluffy, but more
restrained than her later art.
Ranking: Super Essential.
File Code: Animal Story. Fantasy. Softcover.
The Case of the Marble Monster and Other Stories (Original
Title: Ooka the Wise), by I. G. Edmonds. Illustrated by Sanae Yamazaki.
A Scholastic book. My first real contact with Japanese
culture if you don’t count Godzilla movies or dubbed Toei animated films. “The
Case of the Marble Monster was my first exposure to
Japanese stories, and the adventures of the kindly and wise Judge Ooka, who
declares that the sound of money is adequate payment for the smell of food, and
who may be the first person to use the old ruse of having every suspect touch
an object, saying it will expose the guilty party, and by finding out who
didn't touch it, knows that one is guilty [I’ve seen the same ploy used in a
Donald Duck story and on MASH].” – Power of Babel. A little research indicates
there might be a sequel volume, also illustrated by Yamazaki, but the confusing
publishing history and constant retitling makes it hard to determine.
Apparently, Edmonds also wrote other books (for adults) about Eastern culture
and the supernatural.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Folktale/History. Softcover.
Mr. Pudgins, by Ruth Christoffer Carlsen. Illustrations by
Margaret Bradfield.
Mr. Pudgins is another babysitter in a magical vein, except
he is a pipe-smoking elderly man rather than a Mary Poppins. But under his care
the plumbing can be re-arranged to spout soda-pop, bathtubs can fly, and you
might get visited by bears or dodo birds. Never really heard of him until I
read an excerpt in middle school, and really didn’t think of him again until I
found this Scholastic book years later. But it fits in well with what I’ve come
to call my “alternate childhood” of books I might have liked but somehow missed
at the time, or old toys that I never got.
Ranking: Keeper.
File Code: Magical Babysitter. Fantasy. Softcover.
Jason and the Golden Fleece, by John Gunther (Illustrations
by Ernest Kurt Barth), Hercules and Other Tales from Greek Myths, by Olivia E.
Coolidge (Illustrations by David Lockhart), The Gorgon’s Head by Ian
Serraillier (Illustrations by William Stobbs).
Scholastic books I first read in the 4th Grade. “I
really started reading myths then. I loved the Ray Harryhausen movie Jason
and the Argonauts, and the illustrations in Gunther's book were
engaging and realistic for me. The Hercules and Perseus books were a little
more stylized; The Gorgon's Head pictures were particularly
like the designs on Greek vases.” – Power of Babel. I would like to point out
the pictures of the winged ram and the dragon in ‘Jason’; such peculiar beasts
were always of special interest to me. I encountered Olivia Coolidge in several
more books retelling old myths over the years, including “Legends of the North”
in high school.
Ranking: Essential.
File Code: Myths. Greek. Softcover.
Tall Tale America, by Walter Blair. Illustrations by Sergeant
Glen Rounds.
“A Legendary History of Our Humorous Heroes”. This book came
out in 1944, and has all the earmarks of the time, from extreme patriotism to
simplified, almost crude, unsentimental art. The cover, showing a man sitting
on a wooden box and smoking a cigarette as he tells a story, shows the rough,
tough, downhome nature of the stories. This book was in our grade school, and
in our high school, and I found this copy at a library sale. Of all the Paul
Bunyan and Pecos Bill I read there, I always remembered the story at the end of
the man who goes into the Pentagon without a map and gets lost forever in the
endless corridors of bureaucracy.
Ranking: Essential Nostalgia.
File Code: Tall Tales. America. Hardback.
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