How to use this Page

Recently Slate decided to create a “pop-up blog” of sorts with a concentration on children’s literature. They’ve called it nightlight.  A good name.  We would have also accepted “flashlight under the sheets”.  In any case, I was initially worried that this would be another case of writers who have just found themselves to be parents writing the same articles we’ve seen a million times before about the usual.  And while their writers aren’t children’s literature experts, they’ve surprised me with the quality of their pieces.  There was one defending Anne Carroll Moore in a very balanced manner, one on branded children’s books, and one on the rise of LGBTQ stories for families.  Yet the one getting the most attention so far is We Don’t Only Need Diverse Books. We Need More Diverse Books Like the Snowy Day.

Professor Ebony Elizabeth Thomas was the person who raised some concerns about the piece in a series of posts the fell under the title Should *The Snowy Day* Be the Example for Diverse Children’s Books?

In the piece Ms. Thomas discusses something that’s always sort of struck me as difficult when we discuss the Keats classic.  A classic that I should say I adore, mind you.  But consider a situation I encountered about a year and a half ago.  From December 10, 2014 through February 7, 2015, the Grolier Club hosted the exhibit One Hundred Books Famous in Children’s Literature.  It was a once in a lifetime opportunity.  Collectors from all over the country donated their most precious pieces, bringing together titles never seen together before (and probably never to be seen again).  I was floored by some of the offerings.  It was only as I looked through them that I began to get a nagging sensation that it was awfully awfully awfully white.  In fact, the sole dark face I saw (aside from Uncle Remus on a cover) was Peter’s on The Snowy Day.  Coward that I am, I didn’t bring this up at the time.  Had I, I suspect the answer would have been similar to the justification given for the inclusion of Harry Potter.  Mainly, that the exhibit was only covering “books famous”.  And after all, how many diverse children’s books are overwhelmingly famous?

Well . . . quite a few, but let’s first consider why it is that The Snowy Day was included.  It was a groundbreaking work during its day (and if you haven’t read the K.T. Horning story of its history or heard about Andrea Davis Pinkney’s upcoming and eerily lovely bio of Keats A Poem for Peter then do so now).  Often I hear people say that it was the “first” picture book featuring a black protagonist on the cover.  Or that it was the “first” picture book where the color of his skin was incidental.  I am not a scholar in the field, but this sounds sketchy to me.  Let us consider something else that Ebony Elizabeth wrote in that recent post:

“Where has the mainstream media covered Black authors & illustrators of books for children published in the 60s & 70s that are out of print?”

That got to me.  She’s dead right.  Because Keats was wonderful but he was by no means the only guy making books about African-Americans out there.  A lot of Black authors and illustrators books were out there at the time (paging Langston Hughes).  Consider the 2014 Walter Dean Myers article in the New York Times Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books? Actually, no.  Scratch that.  Go back further.  Look at the 1986 Walter Dean Myers article in the New York Times I Actually Thought We Would Revolutionize the Industry.  He writes:

“By the end of the 60’s the publishing industry was talking seriously about the need for books for blacks. Publishers quickly signed up books on Africa, city living and black heroes. Most were written by white writers. In 1966 a group of concerned writers, teachers, editors, illustrators and parents formed what was to be called the Council on Interracial Books for Children. The council demanded that the publishing industry publish more material by black authors. The industry claimed that there were simply no black authors interested in writing for children. To counter this claim the council sponsored a contest, offering a prize of $500, for black writers. The response was overwhelming . . .

. . . In 1974 there were more than 900 children’s books in print on the black experience. This is a small number of books considering that more than 2,000 children’s books are published annually. But by 1984 this number was cut in half. For every 100 books published this year there will be one published on the black experience.”

Now let’s double back to Ebony Elizabeth’s question.  I repeat, “Where has the mainstream media covered Black authors & illustrators of books for children published in the 60s & 70s that are out of print?”

Well, shoot. I’m mainstream media, right? And out-of-print titles are a delight to me.  And yet I have never seriously considered just how many Black penned and illustrated children’s books have disappeared from the public consciousness.

Here’s something else I realized.  There are publishers out there that reprint out-of-print titles.  Folks like New York Review of Books and Phaidon and such.  Yet even in the era of We Need Diverse Books, not a single publisher has ever created an imprint specifically designed to reprint classic and older multicultural children’s literature.  Correct me if I’m wrong about this.  I’d love to be wrong.  But at this moment in time, I haven’t seen a publisher fully commit.  Which is to say, there is a gap in the marketplace.

Today then, let’s conjure up a list.  Since we began with The Snowy Day, let’s limit it today to picture books by and about African-Americans.  I want you to tell me your favorite out-of-print titles.  The stipulation is that they have to have been published by a major publisher, they have to feature Black characters, and they have to have been written and/or illustrated by someone African-American.  To do this list properly I wish I still had access to New York Public Library’s lists of The Black Experience in Children’s Books dating back decades.  In lieu of that, I’ll just start with my own personal favorites.

Here are the books that should be reprinted and reprinted right now.

Baby Says by John Steptoe

I’m beginning with the most egregious of the errors.  There are a lot of out-of-print Steptoe books to choose from, but this is the one that’s the weirdest.  I mean, Harper Collins itself basically acknowledged that this book was a classic when they included it in their Harper Collins Treasury of Picture Books Classics (<—see? In the title and everything!) That book contains everything from Goodnight Moon and Harold and the Purple Crayon to If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and, you guessed it, Baby Says.  So I decided to do some checking.  Are any of the other stories in this book out-of-print?  Yes.  One other – George Shrinks.  Be that as it may be, I’d argue that Steptoe’s book is board book perfection.  My son, who is two, specifically asks for the “baby book” in that collection and I have read it over and over and over again.  So what exactly is going on here?  Why is it out-of-print?

My Aunt Came Back by Pat Cummings

This one also makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in fury.  A brilliant book.  A fun, catchy, magnificent board book that’s so colorful and delightful that you’ll be happy to read it over and over again.  So why exactly is it out of print?  Again it’s a Harper Collins title.  So, uh, hey, HC.  You guys are big.  You have a back catalog that’s immense and impressive.  Why not start that out-of-print diverse imprint I was just talking about?  You clearly have the stock.

The Everett Anderson book series

Had to do some research on this one.  As it happens, Everett Anderson’s Goodbye is still in print, but all the other books in the series are long gone.  Why?  I used to get parents and teachers in my library asking for the other books in the series.  Particularly One of the Problems of Everett Anderson which discusses the incredibly difficult topic of what to do when you’re a kid and one of your friends at school is being abused at home.  And after all, if you can find another book that covers the same topic with half the skill, all power to you.  Until then, reprint these books.  Re-illustrate them even, if you like.  I wouldn’t mind, as long as the text was available again.

Blast Off by Linda C. Cain and Susan Rosenbaum,

ill. Leo and Diane Dillon

I’ve written about this one before and admittedly I haven’t read it myself.  However, it looks beautiful and features an African-American girl dreaming of becoming an astronaut.

This is just to start.  Your turn now.  Which titles would you add to this list?  Tell me and I’ll do my best to add them.

There is a perception that we’re all very sophisticated and educated these days, as opposed to the past.  That older books for children have a tendency to be racist or contain outdated ideas.

Not so.

In my *does the math* thirteen years as a children’s librarian I’ve discovered that you can find some real gems if you just dig deeply enough into a library’s backlist.  And just because a title came out twenty or thirty years ago, that doesn’t mean it’s any less forward thinking than our books today (in some cases, more so).

The other day someone asked me a very specific question:  If you could bring back in print any diverse out-of-print children’s book titles, what would they be?

Now the crazy thing is that the first two books I thought of are actually still in-print, albeit in ebook form.  I’ll put them here anyway since they deserve a wider readership.  The first is the delightful Lavender Green Magic by Andre Norton.  Considering the fact that even today I can count the number of middle grade fantasy novels starring African-American characters on one hand, Norton’s book deserves to be better known.

The other novel is Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush by Virginia Hamilton.  A slightly more difficult sell as a YA (a genre that I believe dates more quickly than its younger counterparts) it’s still a compelling read.

Both of those are available through Open Road Media as ebooks, of course.  You know one book that isn’t?  A book that’s about a black, female, space explorer with art from the Dillons?  I’ve mentioned it once before but it bears repeating:

An interior image:

Get more information on the book at Stephanie Whelan’s blog Waiting to Tesseract.

And just to make myself feel old, I’m including here a book that was in-print when I first reviewed it back in 2006 but has since fall out.  The delightful early chapter book Younguncle Comes to Town by Vandana Singh.

I know that there are many other out-of-print diverse books out there.  Can you think of any favorites of your own?

Let’s try something a little new.  I’m only human.  I like to rant and rail about various children’s books being lamentably out-of-print as much as the next guy.  But I also acknowledge that in the current publishing state in which we live it is simply not possible to keep all books in print.

That said, there really are a couple books out there that I think deserve another chance at life.  Now I’ve done variations on this kind of post before.  Last year I wrote the piece Baby, Remember My Name: Picture Book Gems of Years Past.  In 2010 there was also Two Down! One to Go.  But apparently I haven’t done a consistent series on books I’d love to see resuscitated.  Why not start today?

Let’s be systematic about this, though.  Can’t be asking for any old thing to be republished.  And since I’ve already talked your ear off about the remarkable out-of-print Newbery Honor winning book The Winged Girl of Knossos (seriously, bring it back) let’s try something a bit more recent, eh whot?

The Title: Adios, Oscar!: A Butterfly Fable

The Author: Peter Elwell

Publisher: Blue Sky Press (an imprint of Scholastic)

The Cover:

When Was It Published?: 2009

Is It Out-of-Print?: Yup.

Why Should Someone Bring It Back?: Well, here’s the plot as I reviewed it back in the day:

“One day, while sitting in a plant in a pot, a caterpillar named Oscar makes the acquaintance of a high flying butterfly by the name of Bob. Bob’s on his way to Mexico, and he assures little Oscar that one day he’ll have a pair of wings too and can follow. Bob is intrigued by this notion, and even though the other caterpillars mock him, he teams up with a local bookworm Edna to learn about butterflies and Mexico. By the time he’s ready to go for a long sleep, Bob has learned a lot of Spanish words and phrases. But oh no! When he awakes, Bob discovers that he’s not a butterfly at all but a measly moth! Yet buoyed by Edna’s faith in him, Bob determines to go to Mexico anyway. And if you happen to travel to Mexico someday and see a moth sitting there, you might hear him say, “Mi nombre es Oscar!” loud and happy and proud. A section at the end provides English to Spanish translations as well as some useful facts about butterflies and moths.”

Now as far as I can ascertain, this is pretty much the ONLY picture book I’ve ever encountered that took the idea of butterflies flying South for the winter to Mexico and decided that the logical thing for any butterfly to do would be to learn the Spanish language.  It’s a brilliant notion!  Add in the art, which is reminiscent of 1930s Walt Disney cartoons (in a good way) with lots of straw boaters and ukuleles, and you’ve got yourself a lovely book.

Think about it.  Spanish language words pepper the text.  The book deals with the subject of handling your disappointment in a strong, smart manner.  And you’ve got the metamorphosis aspect to boot.

The time has never been better to bring this puppy back in print.  Go for it, Scholastic!

Today we published the 2014 Bookfinder.com Report which features the 100 most sought after out-of-print books in America.  The big surprise this year annual report was that after years on the throne the Queen of Pop (Madonna)’s photographic escapade "Sex" was finally knocked off the top of the list, and the book(s) that took its place may surprise you.  There were in fact two, and you can read about them here.  What I wanted to talk about on the blog, however, are some of the usual suspects there were some interesting additions and subtractions to this year’s list.

Back In-Print:

2014 edition

Avid readers will notice that A.C.H Smith’s Labyrinth novelization is noticeably missing from the top end of the report; the book has been a part of the BookFinder report since 2010 and was finally re-published in April as Jim Henson’s Labyrinth and contains updated cover art.  I’m not sure the books target age group would have any idea who David Bowie is anyway.  According to reviews the books both stay quite close to the movie’s plot line however the novel replaces Bowie’s musical interludes with additional dialogue; and Smith also draws out the dialogue in a number of scenes.

Another graduation was In A Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting by Ray Garton who’s book has been on the BookFinder.com Report since 2008.  The fact that it was republished December 31^st 2014 left me on the fence as to whether I should remove it from this year’s list, but considering precious few of you would have gotten to read an in-print copy in 2014 I decided to leave it on this year.  In 2009 the book became the basis for the hit film The Haunting in Connecticut (starring Virginia Madsen).

New to the BookFinder.com Report

An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion by Dorothea Lange this book was featured heavily in the photographer’s episode of PBS’s American Masters series (snippet below) which aired late August 2014.  The full episode covered Lange’s five decades photographic work which documented Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and World War II Japanese internment camps and more.  You can find a wide array of Dorothea Lange’s other work on BookFinder.com.

Another new, and timely, entry to the list was Margin of Safety by Seth Klarman.  The books author, who has been singled out by Forbes as one of the most successful hedge fund managers of recent years, was quoted numerous times this year after his 2013 year end investor letter was leaked online.  In the letter he preaches caution and warns of today’s stock markets being too bubbly, and that today's investors should take warning.  The fact that his track record for posting huge growth has remained in tact all these years has lead to his 1991 out-of-print value investing opus to fetch four figures, when you can find it.

Every year I find stories about these books buried within the list, and every year I also miss some amazing stories.  Read the full list and let us know any of your interesting stories about the books within.

When I first became interested in children’s literature I decided that it would be a good idea to teach myself about all the old greats of the picture book world.  A good idea, but self-teaching is inherently limited.  As such, I’ve missed a lot of folks. For example, until now “Saul Bass” meant nothing to me.  Yet after reading the Ward Jenkins post on the Rizzoli reprint of Henri’s Walk to Paris, that is one book I would love to get my sticky digits on.  Just gorgeous stuff.

I’ve noticed a couple of folks around the country working to make literary loving hip in the mind of the average consumer with varying degrees of success.  One project that has interested me, though, is this Litpunch idea the Twin Cities are engaged in.  Basically you get a card, you attend fun free literary events, and if you get your card punched twelve times you get a $15 gift card to a bookstore.  I do wish the libraries were involved in some manner but it’s a great notion.  Imagine if they did the same thing with children’s literature!  I await that happening someday.

• This is impressive!  Want a fabulous list of in-print books set on every continent of the world?  And would you like such a list to also include activities and recipes and the like?  Then I think it’s time to take a trip to Read Around the World.  It’ll do your old heart good.  Promise.

• Speaking of recipes, you know that fabulous book Press Here by Herve Tullet?  Well, would you fancy trying a mess of Press Here cookies?  Children’s Books for Grown-Ups has got the goods.  It’s part of a regular “Bookish Bites” series.  I’m seriously looking forward to how Natasha will tackle that upcoming Moomin birthday cake.  There but for the grace of parental challenges go I . . .

• Once in a while at Hark, A Vagrant, Ms. Kate Beaton will reinterpret various Edward Gorey covers.  Here’s one she may have missed.  It appeared recently on the 50 Watt blog and features a Gorey spider.  Have you ever seen a Gorey spider?  Did you know that you were missing out?  That your life contained a gigantic Gorey-spider shaped void?

Well now you know.

• Is texting “an ideal sp
  6 Comments on Fusenews: Hotsy Totsy, Ducky, Spiffy, Etc., last added: 9/12/2011
  Display Comments
  Storied Cities said, on 9/10/2011 2:39:00 AM
  

  Surprisingly, I DO know of a Scottish picture book author! Natalie Russell!

  Elizabeth Fama said, on 9/10/2011 6:44:00 AM
  

  That Edward Gorey spider reminds me of the Medieval bestiary drawings, where the artist had never seen the living creature before! “Uh, it has 8 legs. It’s sort of furry up close. Yeah, it’s sort of like a crab, I guess.”

  DanMc said, on 9/10/2011 8:21:00 AM
  

  I can understand not knowing he did a kids’ book (certainly came as a shock to me) but how could you be married to Matt and not know Saul Bass?

  http://notcoming.com/saulbass/index2.php

  Elizabeth Bird said, on 9/10/2011 9:55:00 PM
  

  This is a pretty good case of my blithely blogging something without consulting the resident husband. Good call, Dan. Matt definitely knows who he is.

  Rams said, on 9/11/2011 4:43:00 AM
  

  Now we know why the itsy-bitsy spider was looking for a water spout.

  jules said, on 9/12/2011 10:36:00 PM
  

  Wow. Thanks for filling the gigantic Gorey-spider shaped void in my life. Creepy cover.

  Add a Comment

If you are at all familiar with BookFinder.com you probably know all about our annual BookFinder.com Report which tracks the demand of the 100 most sought-after titles which are no longer in print in the United States.  The list differs from year to year as trends change and books get republished (Indie publishers take note, there may be a hidden gem in the list for you.)  This list is no different as number of titles from last year’s report have been republished in the past twelve months including The Sixteenth Round: from Number 1 Contender to #45472 by Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Old Southern Apples by Creighton Lee Calhoun and Aran Knitting by Alice Starmore, leaving room for some new additions.  

In fact Alice Starmore, a superstar in the knitting world, took her own spot on the list. Aran Knitting lived on the BookFinder.com report for years before getting re-published in 2010 and now another one of her works, Tudor Roses, has jumped onto the list to take its place.  Tudor Roses is interesting because it includes a number of sweater designs inspired by the Tudor royals (eg. Henry VIII and Elizabeth I) and their over-the-top gold embroidery, velvet, jewels and lace.

Current events also have an impact on the list.  In A Payroll to Meet, David Whitford discusses the incidents surrounding Southern Methodist University's (SMU) receiving the "death penalty" from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA); which involves banning the school from competing in a sport for a year or more (two in SMU's case).  This book has been out-of-print since 1989 but scandal in college football has never been more in vogue.  The recent rash of cheating, bribing and recruitment scandals to hit Ohio State, Southern Cal, Auburn, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, LSU, and the Hurricanes in Miami have renewed the interest in the grandfather of college football scandal.  I somehow doubt this book will see reprint but it’s always interesting to well researched books jump back into the spotlight because of current events.

View all 100 books in the 2011 BookFinder.com Report

The eighth edition of the BookFinder.com report is now available for your reading enjoyment.

We changed up this year’s format ever so slightly, and have provided a list of the top 100 most sought after out-of-print books, regardless of category.   Among some of the usual suspects (Madonna’s Sex is, not surprisingly, once again on the top of the heap) we have some very interesting newcomers, including:

• The Secret of Instantaneous Healing by Harry Douglas Smith (a guide to mental healing)
• Basic Building Data by Don Graf (A compendium of tables and facts for anyone with an interest in selecting the right materials, location, and layout for a construction project).
• William Burges and the High Victorian Dream by J. Mordaunt Crook (a biography on the great Victorian era architect William Burges)

It also brought a smile to my face seeing Fly Fishing by J.R. Hartley show up in the list. This, of course, is the book that anyone who lived in the UK in the 1980s would remember from the now classic Yellow Pages advert which featured an man traipsing around London's used book shops looking for an old book, only finding success with the telephone directory. 

Neither the book, nor the author, existed at the time of the when Yellow Pages created this commercial.  So why, you may ask, is this book found in the BookFinder.com report? 

The beauty of this whole scenario is that in 1991 a spoof memoir by the fictional Mr. Hartley was published due to the popularity of the ad, and now the spoof is the out-of-print book which is sought after.  It kind of reminds me of the time paradox in Terminator, only with used books instead of cyborgs.

See the whole list in the 2010 BookFinder.com Report

Back when my blog was an itty bitty little thing, just puttering away on Blogger, I made a little sidebar called BRING IT BACK! Out-of-Print Crimes Against Humanity! (I’m often going for the touchdown in the hyperbole). I must’ve put it up in 2007 or so, and you can look at it now if you like. I decided to limit my scream of pain to three books. They were:

The Day the Cow Sneezed by James Flora (are you not pleased, Ward?)

The Noisy Counting Book by Susan Schade

The Winged Girl of Knossos by Erick Berry

Now we are in 2010. The economy has crashed. Folks are less likely to take chances on new books, let alone old reprints of almost forgotten gems. Yet looking at the list, note the following.

The Day the Cow Sneezed by Jame Flora – To be published September 1, 2010 by Enchanted Lion Books

The Noisy Counting Book by Susan Schade – Printed in board book form June 22, 2010 by Random House Books

I don’t think a defunct blog from 2007 had a bit to do with this, but it does mean one thing.

Winged Girl of Knossos . . . Your time is due!!!

Consider the following.

I’m not the only one saying this. Peter at Collecting Children’s Books had a fantastic post on the very same topic back in February 2008 where he not only lauded the book but found an actual honest-to-god letter written by Erick Berry (a.k.a. Mrs. Herbert Best) as well.  Here was my review of it in two parts (here and here).

Obviously you’d need a new cover for it. This is the old one.

It’s out of date but notice, if only for a moment, that this is a kick-ass image of a girl hang-gliding and it’s a book from 1928. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

I’ll be changing my BRING IT BACK list on the old blog soon. I’ll probably put in The Changeover by Margaret Mahy and a picture book of some sort (probably Ultra-Violet Catastrophe by . . . oh shoot. That’s also Margaret Mahy) as well. Maybe The Girl With the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts. But for now, I’m pleased as punch at the way things have turned out. Now to sit back and hope a little more for a new Winged Girl to appear somewhere, someday.

Not sure if any of you read the advertorial op-ed column in the New York Times last week where Google Technology President Sergey Brin voiced his thoughts on the Google books campaign but one sentence really irked me.

He cannot possibly believe that? All you have to do is type "Out-of-print books" into his own service and see AbeBooks, Alibris, Amazon, Biblio, BookFinder, etc offering more OOP options that you could shake a virtual stick at.  The rest of the article reads like a cheap advertorial.

I'm not even versed enough in the whole Google Books rights controversy to say whether i'm for or against it (note: book lunch with Charlie, learn more) but this essay is trash.

[Now Reading: Our Man in Havana by Grahame Greene]

We have released the 2009 edition of the BookFinder.com Report.

The Report tracks the most sought-after out-of-print books in America, breaking down demand for popular out-of-print titles in ten different genre categories.

As usual this edition features a number of books with very interesting stories:

• Cop Without a Badge by Charles Kipps, had a sudden spike in demand after a run in with The Real Housewives of New Jersey
• The Recently Deflowered Girl by Edward Gorey, got a second wind on the back of an internet meme
• Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins, a conspiracy theory propped up by the economic collapse

There are many more so go ahead and read the whole 2009 BookFinder.com Report

Also if any of you are interested I will be on CBC Radio One tomorrow (September 17th) on the All Points West program between 3:30-4:00pm PST.  I will be talking to Jo-Ann Roberts about the BookFinder.com Report.  If you like you can listen online here.

I wonder if everyone has Lost Books? I suspect most writers, at least, do; and I suspect they're not the only ones.

By Lost Books, I mean books which are out-of-print; books on which you can no longer lay your hands, but for which you retain a remembered fondness, and which perhaps at some level have had an effect on you or your writing. I'd like to share a couple of mine with you:

Borrobil, by William Croft Dickinson. Anyone remember this one? It's a magical fantasy about two children who find themselves transported to a Britain of the mythical past, where the narrative takes in dragons, faery creatures, viking raiders, mermen... I loved it, and the last sentence has just popped unbidden into my head after all these years: Borrobil! They knew - and they would never forget!

I don't think I'll ever forget, either; yet the book is now unavailable. It had a Wikipedia entry for a couple of days but that was deleted, apparently on the grounds of the book's lack of significance. For me, though, it was hugely significant - and probably a major influence on my latest book, Bansi O'Hara and the Bloodline Prophecy. Like Borrobil's Donald and Jean, my heroine finds herself in another world; like them, she gets there via a ring of standing stones; like them, she meets creatures from faery legend. My story is very different from Dickinson's, I hasten to add, but the influences are clearly there.

My second Lost Book is The Gadfly, by... er... I can't remember. I'd love to know, if anyone can tell me. I'm pretty sure it was published by Puffin, if that helps. It's the story of a young Greek boy who enters the circle of influence of the philosopher Socrates and witnesses the events leading up to his trial and execution (or, at least, State-commanded suicide). I can't recall so much about this book, but one thing that stuck with me was the reason that Socrates was condemned to death: his 'blasphemous' assertion that if there were gods, they would be better than those of Greek legend, who behaved like overgrown children with wonderful powers.

When the idea for my first book, Zeus on the Loose, was slowly awakening in my head, it was the memory of this assertion that suddenly brought it all together. Greek gods are like big kids! That became the conceit on which the book hinged. Without The Gadfly there would be no Zeus on the Loose.

I find this somehow comforting. Maybe in twenty years' time my books will all be out of print. Maybe in forty years no-one will even remember them. But perhaps some child who is now reading one of my books will grow up to write books of their own; and perhaps one day they'll write a book that in some way owes part of its existence to one of mine. And maybe that book will become the ancestor of another; and that one of another. Perhaps some day there will be a great and enduring classic of literature that would never have been written if not for one of my books - and that will perhaps therefore owe its life not just to my book, but to Borrobil or The Gadfly, too.

When I began this blog, my intention was to review not only new releases, but also some favorites that have been out for years- even out-of-print titles- to bring awareness to the marvelous books that nobody talks about.  However, I've been mostly reviewing more recently released books because there have been so many great ones released.  So, in time for summer, I'm reviewing a great summer read that was released years ago but is still completely wonderful!

Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe

Coordinates: 23 0 S 31 45 E

Approximate area: 13,514 sq. mi. (35,000 sq. km)

When it comes to political geography, the twenty-first century has so far been especially concerned with issues of national sovereignty and in some circles, a renewed interest in the old maxim that good fences make good neighbors. Theoretically, those with means are free to move about the globe as the please, but in doing so, these individuals often navigate contentious borderlands. It interests me then, that in Southwestern Africa, three countries have worked together for the last seven years to literally remove physical and political barriers with the goal of creating a viable Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park. (more…)

Share This