A fruitless search…
Today, in preparation for next month’s publication of Any Which Wall, I set out to look for other fans of Edward Eager, since WALL is a kind of tribute to Eager. I thought maybe I could interest Eager fans in MY BOOK!
But sadly, I have to report that there’s just nothing online about Eager. No fan page, no fan club, nothing.
I find this hard to accept. Eager has been in print for half a century. He was a bestseller in his day, and every library I’ve ever set foot in has had a copy of Half Magic on its shelves. I know countless people who love his books, and yet– I guess he just doesn’t inspite the kind of excitement required for fandom.
Which has me thinking about devotion, obsession. What is it about some books that inspires frenzy? Madness? Passion? Eager’s books are, I guess, not those kinds of books.
They’re not the kind of books you have wild nights with. They’re just the kind of books you marry.
Tags: any which wall, edward eager, half magic
April 26th, 2009 at 9:14 am
I’ve got an email about Eager in draft form. I plan to send it to you sometime over the next couple of days.
–Farida
April 27th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
I don’t know if I’m at all representative, but while I loved Edward Eager books when I was a kid, I haven’t thought about them much since. Same goes for, e.g., E. Nesbit and Ruth Chew (along with others in the groups-of-children-having-magical-adventures category). I tend to hearken back more to Louise Fitzhugh, Diana Wynne Jones, and other authors who for various reasons reverberated more for me on my way out of childhood.
May 8th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
I LOVE Edward Eager books. So did my kids (gah–I can’t believe they’re old enough now that I have to use past tense on that one!).
May 13th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Okay, this is getting spooky. I saved my copy (identical to the one pictured in your entry) from childhood, and my daughter absolutely loved it 30 years later.
FIrst I see you tout Nesbit and now Eager.
At last I’ve found a blog with bite!
May 13th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Oh, come on! That’s like saying only the hot book of the moment matters! (cough-Twilight-cough) I love Edward Eager’s books the same way I love Noel Streatfeild’s stuff: yes, I’ve read Ballet Shoes half a dozen times over the years! Does The Little Princess have its own website? (Well, maybe it does, but you get my point.) Which really brings up a graduate-thesis-type conversation about relevance and markers thereof. Symptoms thereof? Something like that! I haven’t read a Laurel Ingalls Wilder book in years, but I have some in my library and the whole series is part of who I am as a reader, writer, and human. (On a related note, one memorable night just a few years ago my chick-flick group–all women in their 30s and 40s–stayed up till 3:00 a.m. watching every single one of the Anne of Green Gables DVDs. Talk about tired but happy!)