Yesterday I spoke with Steve Hill, founder along with Peggy Hogan, of Flying Point Press. They have set out to fill an under-served niche in the market-place of children's books. They are focusing on historical non-fiction books with a strong narrative line for 10-15 year old independent readers.
While they have a handful of new titles that they have published, much of what they are doing, and which is near to the TTMD heart, is salvaging the great books of yesteryear which have sunk beneath the tsunami of contemporary titles. One of the lost galleons to which they have returned is the Landmark series of books from the 1950's and 1960's, originally published by Random House under the auspices of legendary editor and company founder Bennett Cerf. It sounds as if one of the more intriguing aspects of this effort at resurrecting forgotten favorites was the act of simply finding the original authors (or their estates) and obtaining rights to republish.
Just take a look below at the titles, which are intriguing enough, but then also at the authors. I was startled to see just how many were by well established adult authors and historians and whom I never realized had ever ventured into children's books. There are, for example, William Shirer (author of the magisterial The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich first published in 1960 and still in print), John Gunther (author of the still available Death Be Not Proud, but known at the time primarily for his Inside series of books as in Inside Europe), Sterling North (Featured Author of September 23, 2007 and author of Rascal), Armstrong Sperry (author of 1941 Newberry Medal winner Call It Courage), Alistair Maclean (the 1950/60s spy/mystery writer best know for The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, and Night Without End ), C.S. Forester (best known for the Horatio Hornblower series and African Queen ), etc. Clearly there is no dearth of talent for action-packed tales in this crew.