Today I’m sharing a list of some of my favorite vintage MG novels that don’t get discussed much, but I love them and hope you enjoy them too! These are not always easy to find, but they’re worth looking for. 🙂

• The Golden Name Day by Jennie Lindquist: Although it’s a 1950s Newbery novel, this one isn’t talked about much, perhaps because it was out of print for decades until Purple House Press released a new edition! I love the tidbits of Swedish culture in this one (I have a lot of Swedish heritage and enjoy reading about it).
• Maggie Rose: Her Birthday Christmas by Ruth Sawyer: It’s a charming gem of a novel, one that I have recommended so many times but never see discussed, possibly because it also was out of print for decades and has yet to be re-released. Maggie Rose is set in Maine, features a hardworking young heroine determined to make life better for herself and her family, and has the happiest ending you could imagine. What more could you want in a book?
• Jill’s Story by Jean Fiedler: I am not sure I’ve ever seen anyone else discuss this book about a family vacationing at Cape Cod for the summer. Jill longs to become a writer, and this story inspired me a lot when I was ten years old and daydreaming of being an author!
• The Sea Is All Around by Elizabeth Enright: The only Enright novel currently not in print, this is more slow-paced than some of her other books, but the rich language and evocative setting is brilliant. I’m currently rereading this right now!
• Family Sabbatical by Carol Ryrie Brink: There are two very sweet books in this series, but I just re-read Sabbatical last November, so I’ll recommend it especially. This one follows the Ridgeway family to France for a year, and there are some delightful adventures!
• Caldicott Place by Noel Streatfeild: There are so many excellent Streatfeild stories but this one is great if you’re looking for one of her non-theater stories (there is some ballet, of course! but it’s not a big aspect of the book).
• Mine for Keeps by Jean Little: I love so many of Jean Little’s books, but this was her first novel and it’s such a good one. And the best part? It’s easy to find, because Puffin reprinted it just two years ago!
• Time at the Top by Edward Ormondroyd: This is a fantastic story if you’re looking for light fantasy–it’s a time travel tale, set in both “present-day” 1960s and the 1880s. I won’t go into too many spoilers, but when a girl goes into an elevator in her apartment building, it whisks her off to a time much different than her own …

I hope you find a great read from this list! 🙂 What are you reading right now? I’d love to hear!

This post originally appeared on my Patreon.

I hope you are having a lovely spring! I am having such a good time planting a few early seeds, doing some weeding, and watching a certain chickadee gather materials for her nest. But as usual, I’m also deep in the throes of rewriting a novel (I’m at 26k), and I’m enjoying my reading as well.

With the assistance of a helpful librarian at the Kerlan Collection of the University of Minnesota Libraries, I was recently able to acquire some scans of Maud Hart Lovelace’s research materials for Emily of Deep Valley (1950), which provided an interesting window of insight into Lovelace’s method of pre-writing (at least for Emily). I’m very much fascinated by the behind-the-scenes processes of my favorite writers, which I am sure will inspire many more blog posts like this one today and this one from last year, which explores L.M. Montgomery’s possible influence on the novels of Noel Streatfeild and Margaret Sutton. That is my particular area of interest: how writers are influenced by the authors who came before them.

Speaking of scans from the Kerlan Collection, I was also able to study a letter written in 1958 by Noel Streatfeild to Elizabeth Enright, who was evidently one of her favorite authors. In this letter, Streatfeild complimented the Melendy Quartet books and wondered if perhaps the Melendy children’s father remarried after the series ended. Since this is exactly the idea that flitted through my brain the last time I read the series, I was utterly delighted by this and by the fact that Streatfeild wrote about the family as if they were real.

This example, too, fits into my niche of fascination, and leaves me with no doubt that Streatfeild was inspired by Enright when writing her own novels. Best of all, Streatfeild also mentioned how happy she was that Enright liked her books. This was perhaps the greatest discovery of all, for there are Streatfeild-esque traces in Enright’s The Four-Story Mistake (1942), in which Shakespeare-quoting Mona gets a job as a radio actress. (And the fact that Randy is an aspiring ballerina seals the deal.) Since the first Melendy book (The Saturdays) wasn’t published until 1941—and Ballet Shoes was from 1936—it’s safe to say that Streatfeild’s stage-inclined characters could have served as inspirations for the Melendy sisters.

Along similar lines is the way that Canadian author Jean Little (who sadly passed away last year) was influenced by L.M. Montgomery. My introduction to Montgomery’s Anne of Ingleside (1939), the sixth book in the Anne series and a recent re-read, was somewhat unusual. I was reading Little’s Spring Begins in March (1966), the sequel to her acclaimed Mine for Keeps (1962), and I came to the great scene where Meg’s grandmother reads aloud Anne of Ingleside. I had always steered clear of the book, thinking it sounded dull, but Little made the story sound so interesting that I had to give it a try.

I was subsequently swept up into the Ingleside world and immediately read Rainbow Valley (1919) and then Rilla of Ingleside (1921), despite repeated warnings from my older sisters that Walter died and it was Very Sad. But what made reading Rilla particularly interesting was that I had also just read another sequel of Jean Little’s: Listen for the Singing (1977), the heart-wrenching encore to From Anna (1972). The parallels between Listen for the Singing and Rilla of Ingleside are unmistakable: two Canadian wartime novels focused on a teenage girl’s coming of age alongside a brother who does not want to go to war (and yet who goes anyway, with ensuing tragedy). Since I already knew that Little had read Montgomery from that scene in Spring Begins in March, I wondered if she had modeled Anna Solden’s brother Rudi off of Walter Blythe. I suspect that it was an influence, whether consciously or not, and I hope to someday find a bit more concrete evidence to support my theory. Little was not without criticism of Montgomery—an article she wrote for Canadian Children’s Literature in 1975 confirms that—but she also praised the way Montgomery wrote her child characters.

But lest you think that Montgomery only inspired other writers and was not inspired by any herself, this is far from the case! When recently reading Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline, I was enraptured by the Acadian tale but also enormously pleased to realize that here was where Montgomery doubtlessly found inspiration for her own prose. The tone and style and word choice convinced me, and this paragraph in her 1929 novel Magic for Marigold clinched it:

Lazarre was playing his fiddle behind the copse of young spruces back of the apple-barn—the old brown fiddle that his great-great-great-grandfather had brought from Grand Pré. Perhaps Evangeline had danced to it. Aunt Marigold had told Marigold the story of Evangeline.

But although poetry was a major source of influence for Montgomery, it was not her only inspiration. I’m fairly certain that she read Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868-9)—I know I’ve read this fact somewhere but I can’t remember where at the moment—and it’s fun to note that Alcott uses the phrase “kindred spirit” twice in Little Women; the phrase that Montgomery borrowed so memorably for Anne of Green Gables. Nowadays, the words “kindred spirit” are almost synonymous with Anne and Montgomery, and I love that it was perhaps Alcott who helped to influence Montgomery’s usage of the phrase.

These are just a few of the tidbits I’ve been pondering lately—including how Maud Hart Lovelace, as mentioned at the beginning of this post, may have been inspired by Montgomery’s books—but I shall have to close now. In any event, I’ll probably return to this subject soon, because I’m finding it pretty fun to wade through all this bookish conjecture!

And speaking of bookish conjecture … I have some *very exciting* news coming up hopefully later this year, so if you’d like to be one of the first to know, make sure you’re signed up to my newsletter!

Recently Read: The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner, The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright
Currently Reading: Depend on Katie John by Mary Calhoun, Nothing to Do but Stay by Carrie Young

Springtime is such a glorious time of year—the first chirps of returning birds, the sprouting of long-dormant flowers, the happiness in the air. For the final installment of my seasonal blog series, I’ve compiled some books that I feel complement the splendor of spring!

Emily of Deep Valley by Maud Hart Lovelace
One of my all-time favorite novels is this marvelous coming-of-age story. Set in 1912 and starring an introverted but whimsical heroine, this book focuses on an orphaned girl who longs to go to college but cannot leave her beloved grandfather. But Emily eventually finds the courage and inspiration to make a special life for herself right where she is—and essentially blooms where she is planted.

Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter
This is another great favorite of mine, and a highly underappreciated classic novel. Although the essence of the Pollyanna story is well-known—a cheerful girl who teaches others how to be glad—the real book features so much more; it’s a layered tale with beautiful life lessons and fascinating characters.

What Katy Did at School by Susan Coolidge
I first read this novel the spring I turned nine years old, and I’ve always loved its delicious account of life at a nineteenth-century boarding school. Katy Carr and her sister Clover leave their small town to attend school in a bustling city, where they must contend with a feisty new friend, snobbish classmates, and a teacher who seems determined to make trouble for the Carr sisters.

The Sea is All Around by Elizabeth Enright
Elizabeth Enright is one of my favorite authors—she’s well-known for her Melendy Quartet series and Gone-Away Lake—but sadly, this marvelous story is out of print and is hard to find. However, it’s well worth the effort to obtain a copy, as The Sea is All Around is flavored with truly remarkable prose, an endearing young heroine, and all the beauty and majesty of life by the sea.

The Clue of the Stone Lantern by Margaret Sutton
The twenty-first volume of the Judy Bolton mysteries, Stone Lantern was published in 1950 and is one of the best books of this series. As Judy begins her preparing her flower garden for the spring, an uncanny coincidence leads her on a thrilling search to establish the unknown identity of a mysterious little girl.

Magic for Marigold by L.M. Montgomery
I just finished re-reading this lesser-known novel by Montgomery, and I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in the hilarious escapades of Marigold Lesley, whose imagination and flights of fancy continually get her into mischief. While the book has very little plot—it was originally a set of short stories—it’s a lovely read, and the opening of the story (in which the sprawling Lesley clan gathers to decide on a name for baby Marigold) is simply delightful.

Kilmeny of the Orchard by L.M. Montgomery
Another special book by Montgomery that has never received the recognition of the Anne or Emily novels is Kilmeny of the Orchard. It’s the tale of a schoolteacher named Eric who comes to Prince Edward Island intending to remain a short while—only to fall in love with an isolated girl named Kilmeny. One of Montgomery’s earliest works, this novella has a sweet fairy-tale tinge and a very happy ending!

Spring Begins in March by Jean Little
This is actually the second book in the Copeland family series by Jean Little—so I might recommend reading the first book, Mine for Keeps, before diving into this one! Of course, I read them out of order, so it can be done. 😉 This is the heartwarming story of Meg, a girl determined not to get along with her grandmother, who has recently come to stay. (My favorite scene in this book is when Meg’s grandmother reads aloud from Anne of Ingleside!)

Don’t forget to check out the previous posts in my seasonal series!

The Best Books of Summer
The Best Books of Autumn
The Best Books of Winter

I’m 4,000 words into my latest work-in-progress, a novella set in 1911 England. (A bit of trivia: my first historical story, written at age seven, was actually set in 1911 England. But there, the similarities of the two tales end.) 🙂

My last novel, entitled A Heart’s Memory, was set in a small English village on the cusp of World War II. I finished writing the first draft about a month ago, but I discovered that I wasn’t quite ready to leave England behind yet! So I chose this awe-inspiring nation as the setting for the novella I’m currently writing, which is called The Mistress of Half Moon Hall.

I polled my followers on Twitter to name the title of my novella, but it ended up tied between Half Moon Hall and Melody Hall. I ended up choosing the former:

Which estate name do you all like best? 🙂 The title of my new book will be “The Mistress of ______.” #amwriting #workinprogress

— Anna Rose Johnson (@GymnasticsRosie) August 9, 2018

Writing this story – which is currently feeling like a mash-up of Jane of Lantern Hill, Celia’s House, and Caldicott Place – is shaping up to be a perfect excuse to read through my old British issues of Victoria. This luscious, old-fashioned magazine has given me so many ideas for novels over the years, and the combination of sparkling photography and remarkable writing makes each issue very re-readable.

I’m so excited to continue working on this story, which will hopefully be available as an ebook this fall! (Or should I say ‘autumn’? After all, that sounds more British.) 🙂

CURRENTLY READING: A Tangled Web by L.M. Montgomery (This has made me laugh out loud more than once already!)

JUST FINISHED READING: Magic Elizabeth by Norma Kassirer (A middle grade novel from the 1960s featuring a lonely girl, time travel, and a mysterious old house. The story is a bit slow, but the writing is rich and beautiful.)

PLANNING TO READ NEXT: The House on the Cliff by D.E. Stevenson, Mine for Keeps by Jean Little, and Beany Malone by Lenora Mattingly Weber