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[ivyblogs]

I read a lot of kid and YA fiction. I'm not sure I ever stopped reading them once I became an adult. Vintage books are fun reads (I'm a fan of Beany Malone). There's so much YA fiction nowadays you don't have to look hard to find something good

Comments

[ivyblogs]

I didn't find Beany until I was an adult- around six years ago. I bought a couple books from a used book dealer at a flea market- one was Beany Malone and the other was a book called something like Three Party Line about young women who became telephone operators. I was really happy to find the reprints- though my local library is little and old enough that I actually found quite a few of her books there.

I loved A Little Princess! I had an old copy of my mom's and I can't think of that book without remembering that wonderful old book smell. I read that one over and over. I also had Mom's entire collection of Pollyanna books. I loved those too. I haven't read them as an adult because I'm fairly certain they'd seem silly now. There were already outdated in the 70's when I was reading them. But they had belonged to my mom and she was a bit of a Pollyanna herself, so they meant a lot to me.

I think being a used book dealer sounds like really interesting work. If I ever did something like that, you wouldn't be able to get in my front door. We already have stacks of book all over the house. Do you know if there are any other authors like Lenora Mattingly Weber?

[dragonfly1867]

Yes, it was pretty bad around here for a while, with stacks and cartons of books everywhere.

I think Weber was really the best in that teen genre, she had a lot more depth to her characters and the problems they encountered. Some other teen writers from that time who are pretty good are Rosamund du Jardin, Betty Cavanna, Bianca Bradbury. Florence Crannel Means and Mary Stolz are okay, but I have had a harder time really getting interested in the characters.

I think it's Four Party Line, and most likely you got the book club edition from the Best Loved Girls' Book Club. I am not sure how long the club was in existence, I have found quite a few books that were part of it (all the books were published as regular books first, and then the book club would distribute them in a later printing). Some are very good, some are really silly. One in particular had to do with a fourteen year old girl whose mom was worried because she wasn't interested in dating so kept forcing her to go to parties so she could meet nice boys. It was so awful!