FFB: The Scott, Foresman Invitations to Personal Reading Program edited by Helen Robinson, et al.

I've written before about the Scott, Foresman reading/literature textbooks that my various schools, public and private, used through my elementary through high school education (1970-1982), in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Hawaii. (They had the Dick and Jane first-grade franchise in the '60s, and were ubiquitous, obviously, in later grades as well.) I remember the first actively psychotic teacher I had, a second-grade reading teacher who egregiously resented my ability to read before entering her class, growing volubly vexed with me when I wrote in the answers in the blank spaces in the text assuming that was what we were meant to do.) Among the supplementary materials Scott, Foresman offered were editions of various selected children's and YA books that they published in uniform "framed" cover-format as above and below, though in various sizes--the books were more or less in the dimensions of the original editions, and reprinted the original covers, except with no dust jackets and printed-on-the-boards images of those original front covers. I don't have them to hand, but as I recall them they didn't make an attempt to reprint the back covers or flap copy.

Image of these books, and the list below, courtesy Jennifer Arrow's blog

The list at the end is the set that was available for browsing and reading in my fifth grade and sixtth grade classroom at Nathan Hale Elementary School in Hazardville, CT. (The examples above might've been pitched to a slightly younger set of readers, with a Jean Craighead George early reader that I've never seen...while I do clearly remember her powerful Newbery Award-winner Julie of the Wolves and My Side of the Mountain. (We had one classroom with one teacher for all but some art classes at that small school at that time, and the same teacher for both fifth and sixth grades, and nearly the identical population in the classroom in those two years. We were also, probably unfortunately but conveniently, divided by our perceived ability as readers, with a half-doze of us on the students' left side of the classroom the sophisticated readers, using as our textbooks Scott, Foresman's Vistas (in fifth grade) and Cavalcades (in sixth)...the intermediate readers, making up most of the class, had another text (title forgotten) and sat in the middle of the classroom; and the ten or so of the struggling readers sat on the right, and used the Open Highways volumes for their grades. Scholastic Book Services and Dell Yearling paperbacks, among some others, were available for the kids to read during "open reading" periods or indoor recess, in shelves at the back of the room...I dipped in more than most, I think, even among the "advanced" readers. 

Among those which mad the strongest impression were Henry Reed’s Journey by Keith Robertson, the first of Robertson's Reed and Midge Glass novels I read and the second in the series (I recall that a chapter from Henry Reed's Baby-Sitting Service had been included in one of textbooks), Harold Courlander's collection of mythlore and folktales from around the world Ride with the Sun, and the handsomely illustrated edition of "The Charge of the Light Brigade"...though I now remember, looking at this list, that I definitely read the Newbery-winning Across Five Aprils and The Twenty-One Balloons from this set, and North to Freedom, the Danny Dunn books (that one doesn't stand out in memory) and Sea Pup Again (interesting the degree to which they didn't feel the need to include the first novels in a given series). Pretty sure I read James Kjelgaard's Stormy, as well, having already read his Big Red and a few others (at least a few of those among the paperbacks on the same shelves)... Kjelgaard having been a prolific writer for adults, in the slick magazines and higher-paying pulps, as well, who died young, after illness...Robert Bloch helped him shape up some of his last work for publication, when he was simply too ill to produce final drafts. 

To what extent did your classrooms have their own collections of books when you were in elementary grades, and did you have any fond memories of those collections...in addition to any libraries your school also maintained? (We had a library at that Enfield, Connecticut school...Hazardville having been absorbed by Enfield some decades before...which was in 1973 already a "media center" instead...the first thing I remember taking out from there was an audiocassette dramatization of Dracula...which my brother, then aged two, gleefully recorded over in part while playing around with the inexpensive cassette player/recorder I had at that time.).

The Scott, Foresman Invitations to Personal Reading Program set we had in my 5th/6th grade classroom:

Adventures in Many Lands

Henry Reed’s Journey by Keith Robertson

The Minnow Leads to Treasure by A. Philippa Pearce

The Singing Cave by Ellis Dillon

“What Then, Raman?” by Shirley Aroroa

Science and Nature

The Giant Golden Book of Biology by Gerald Ames and Rose Wyler

Jets and Rockets and How They Work by William P. Gottlieb

The Peaceful Atom by Bernice Kohn

Sea Pup Again by Archie Binns

Stormy by James Kjelgaard

Biography and Historical Fiction

Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt

America’s Ethan Allen by Stewart Holbrook

From the Eagle’s Wing by Hildegarde Swift

Trace Through the Forest by Barbara Robinson

Tree in the Trail by Holling C. Holling

Legends, Myths, and Other Tales

The Golden Treasury of Myths and Legends adapted by Anne T. White

Ride with the Sun edited by Harold Courlander

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Bob Fulton’s Amazing Soda-Pop Stretcher by Jerome Beatty, Jr.

The City Under the Back Steps by Evelyn S. Lampman

Danny Dunn, Time Traveler by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin

Books Too Good to Miss

Mr. Twigg’s Mistake by Robert Lawson

North to Freedom by Anne Holm

The Story of Design by Marion Downer

The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois

Poetry

The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Moment of Wonder edited by Richard Lewis

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

FFB: TEN TALES CALCULATED TO GIVE YOU SHUDDERS edited by Ross Olney (and its sfnal companion), Whitman 1972

Whitman, as an expression of Western Publishing, was certainly omnipresent in the mid-price and discount department stores, and the drugstores, of my youth, with their comics and even more notably with their usually brightly-colored, cheaply produced books, which, like Grosset and Dunlap's various series books for children (Nancy Drew, the Hardys) but slightly less well-bound, had no dust jackets, but full-color illustrated board covers. I owned copies of at least some of their classics for children (such as Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, a book which did defeat me as a youth in its dullness and dreariness in the early going), Big Little Books (the one I remember best was Woody Woodpecker and the Meteor Menace written by Don Christensen, which was my first encounter with the concept of a Grand Vizier, and of course an evil one), and some original items (usually media-driven...I had a hand-me-down copy of Doris Schroeder's Annette and the Mystery at Smuggler's Cove, part of that veteran screenwriter's Funicello book series commissioned by Disney and Western). Among the last were two rather good entries edited by Ross Olney.

Ross Olney has been mostly a writer of YA materials, and while I'm not sure I ever read any of his books, I'm particularly surprised I didn't come across (if I didn't) either of his two anthologies here, the horror item even moreso than the earlier sf volume...but not too many libraries carried Whitman books, seen as downmarket and disposable (and in severe need of rebinding if they were to survive at all in the circulating environment). I might've not taken too seriously any casual encounter with Shudders, since who expected a Whitman anthology to contain much of compelling interest, not Safe for the Kiddies? But, if so, I was mistaken, as a glance at the Weird Tales-heavy table of contents might suggest:

Ten Tales Calculated To Give You Shudders (Whitman 1972) (indices courtesy ISFDb:)

• 13 • A Forewarning • essay by Ross R. Olney
• 19 • Sweets to the Sweet • (1947) • shortstory by Robert Bloch
• 34 • The Waxwork • (1931) • shortstory by A. M. Burrage
• 56 • Used Car • (1932) • shortstory by H. Russell Wakefield
• 80 • The Ghost of Fear • (1896) • shortstory by H. G. Wells (variant of The Red Room)
• 102 • The Whistling Room • [Carnacki (William Hope Hodgson)] • (1910) • shortstory by William Hope Hodgson
• 132 • The Last Drive • (1933) • shortstory by Carl Jacobi
• 141 • The Monkey's Paw • (1902) • shortstory by W. W. Jacobs
• 160 • Second Night Out • (1933) • shortstory by Frank Belknap Long (variant of The Black, Dead Thing)
• 176 • The Hills Beyond Furcy • (1966) • shortstory by Robert G. Anderson
• 194 • Floral Tribute • (1949) • shortstory by Robert Bloch

It's notable that relatively few Whitman books have introductions, much less long ones, and more notable yet the lack of watering-down this assembly presents to the young reader; the majority of these are chestnuts, though the other near-half weren't widely anthologized, and most of them had also been published in other YA anthologies over the previous decade, though not all (a lot of overlap with Robert Arthur's "Hitchcock" anthologies aimed at adults and for the YA market, for example). I'd forgotten I'd encounterd the FB Long story elsewhere, for example (in a "Hitchcock Presents:" volume, and in another Robert Arthur horror antho for young readers) (and it's always amusing to be reminded of Burrage's initial pseudonym, "Ex-Private X"). The Anderson was from a then fairly-recent Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine issue, and beginning and ending the book with Robert Bloch (and these Bloch stories, particularly "Sweets") wouldn't've hurt my feelings any as a young reader. Olney is particularly an aficionado of cars and auto racing, hence the choices of these particular Jacobi and Wakefield stories, at least. 

Whitman had taken a slightly less impressive, but still good and only slightly idiosyncratic, science fiction anthology from Olney previously, with two from William Campbell Gault in that book...Gault, of course, is best remembered today for his crime fiction, but was a fairly consistent if rarely exceptional contributor to sf magazines, and one of the great stars (if not the greatest) of the sports-fiction magazines (and made much of his money in the 1960s from his YA sports novels), and I suspect Olney was particularly fond of Gault's auto-racing fiction...


Tales of Time and Space (Whitman 1969)

• 10 • Yesterday's Fantasy, Today's Fact-an Introduction • essay by Ross R. Olney
• 15 • All the Time in the World • (1952) • shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke
• 34 • Puppet Show • (1962) • shortstory by Fredric Brown
• 50 • Birds of a Feather • (1958) • novelette by Robert Silverberg
• 82 • Clutch of Morpheus • (1946) • shortstory by William Campbell Gault [as by Larry Sternig ]
• 105 • The Last Command • [Bolo] • (1967) • shortstory by Keith Laumer
• 136 • Fog • (1951) • shortstory by William Campbell Gault
• 161 • The Martian Crown Jewels • (1958) • shortstory by Poul Anderson
• 189 • Of Missing Persons • (1955) • shortstory by Jack Finney 

I'm very certain I never encountered the sf anthology in my early reading, and still wonder if saw and simply never got around to the horror book (the first edition of which is proud to note that it's published on recycled paper, and that paper is of a better grade than that used on the Whitman books I recall above--I wonder if this was a shortlived upgrade in the production process generally of these books)...all told, either of these books wouldn't be the worst introduction to their fields for young readers still (if not quite up to the Robert Arthur "Hitchcock" anthologies, or some of the other landmarks I've reviewed previously).

This week's FFB list of links is being assembled by Evan Lewis at his Davy Crockett's Almanack of Mystery, Adventure and the Wild West (speaking as we have of personages caught up in the Disney machines), and will be hosted here again next Friday, with one more pass through Evan's and then my blogs before Patti Abbott returns to hosting them. 

3 books I almost completely forgot (two deservedly) and recently finally "found" again online...

However, all three have been haunting my memory...all made an impression, one way or another, in my early reading...

At the fine site, Vintage Scholastics, I finally found a reasonably good accounting of this anthology I read when I was eight or possibly nine, and have nearly zero memory of the contents...I barely remember the Asimov story, one of his more famous and one I'd encountered elsewhere, other than it involves, iirc, a sentient car...

For Boys Only edited by Eric Berger, 5th Scholastic paperback printing, T133,  192 pages.

DESCRIPTION:“Every story a trailblazer. Stories that shock and chill…and some that are just for laughs. Yarns of adventure and mystery…of yesterday, today, and tomorrow…of faraway places and for the girl around the corner. Read one and you’ll want to read them all!” (from the back cover)

CONTENTS:
Introduction 
The Adventure at the Toll Bridge by Howard Pease
A Good Clean-cut American Boy by Harlan Ware
First Command by Eugene Burdick
The Slip-Over Sweater  by Jesse Stuart
Caesar’s Wife’s Ear by Phyllis Bottome
Sally by Isaac Asimov
Open Sesame by Ray Harris
The Torn Invitation by Norman Katkov
High Diver by John Ashworth
As the Eagle Kills by Hal G Everts
Alone in Shark Waters by John Kruse
The Rookie Pitcher by John McKlellan

The original cover painting

Nancy Faulkner:  Witches Brew (Curtis Books, 1973)

An utterly run-of-the-mill "gothic romance" of the sort that really caught fire commercially in the 1960s, including the line Terry Carr edited at Ace Books which featured actually interesting-looking titles from the likes of Joan Aiken (previously, I've run covers from other publishers' attempts to sell Northanger Abbey and Conjure Wife to supermarket gothic fans...Joanna Russ wrote what is the best essay about this kind of work I'm aware of, "Someone's Trying to Kill Me, and I Think It's My Husband").  Faulkner apparently wrote rather better children's books, as well...this one was the example I happened to pick up in a supermarket one day, in my 8yo horror-fiction-seeking missile days, and was sorely disappointed, but educated in that not everything that looked like horror fiction actually was...(Notable, perhaps, as a Curtis book in those rather bleak years for the old Curtis Publishing properties...Curtis Circulation distributed a number of fiction magazines and comics, the revived Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies Home Journal were in others' hands, and I assume the Perfect Film folks, who owned the distributing business, put out this line of paperbacks...)

The only image I found of the cover.

As I noted last week about the earlier book below:

"Managing to dig out information on such somewhat enigmatic and/or influential books on my young reading as Eric Berger's anthology For Boys Only or Emile Schurmacher's Strange Unsolved Mysteries (and further discovering that this journeyman writer had a diverse if obscure career, writing paperback originals, men's sweat magazine articles and, earlier, for Collier's, as well as for the tv series Coronado 9--and, apparently, his daughter became a sort of small-time newspaper magnate)"

Never have actually seen the sequel volume.

Schurmacher's book I read also looking for horror-content...even as a youngster, I was a skeptic about all matters supernatural, but that didn't stop me from being fascinated by all such matters in the arts, particularly the narrative arts (but also music and visuals)...the other thing that I remember clearly about Strange Unsolved Mysteries is that it was easily the most sexually explicit book I'd encountered to that point, though no doubt it would probably seem tame if I was to first encounter it today. That aspect, of course, was fascinating, as well.