Lost book found

[pegkerr]

When I was about, oh, ten years old, I'd say, I saw a beautiful oversized book in a bookstore, and I fell in love with it. It was fabulously expensive for me to buy with my allowance (a whole $5.00!) but I pined for it and pined for it and saved up my pennies, and I bought it, and I loved it and re-read it and kept it. The book was Lona: A Fairy Tale by Dare Wright. It's a tale told in both story text and really beautiful black and white photographs, about a princess who leaves her home to break an enchantment that has been placed over three kingdoms, guided only by her own courage and a magic jewel that speaks to her with the voice of her lover. I took it from my home when I graduated from college, and moved it from apartment to apartment, and always kept track of it. But in our last move, we packed oh, I'd guess over a hundred and fifty boxes and they were all put in our basement of our house. I had carefully numbered the boxes and catalogued their contents, so I could find whatever I needed. And the day of the move someone walked off with the packing list and never brought it back! So we've had all these boxes with nothing but numbers on them, piled on top of one another, jumbled into heaps. And somewhere or other there was that book in there, my favorite book of all from my childhood, and I couldn't find it.

I've cursed that lost packing list so many times. Every several months, I'd go down there and root around through boxes, but I'd never find it. I desperately wanted to find that book to read to my own girls. It had fired my imagination in a way that is difficult to explain, but my deep love for fairy tales was rooted in that book. I wanted it, I wanted it, I wanted it. And for TEN YEARS, even though I knew it was in that basement somewhere, I just couldn't find it. Maddening!

Today, when I got home from work, the book was waiting for me on the dining room table. Rob had gone down into the basement and dug around for two hours until this time he found it.

I was fascinated to find similarities in it to The Wild Swans, too, which hadn't even occurred to me until now. Both are stories of a maiden of noble birth who sets out in the world alone, armed only with her own courage, with no idea of where she is going, because she intends to break a spell that has made others suffer. It even has a section where she is carried through the air, except in this story, it's by sea gulls.

I am really looking forward to reading it to Fiona and Delia.

Now if I could just find the illustrated edition of The Wild Swans picture book I had when I was a child, my happiness would be complete. Unfortunately, that book I didn't keep, and I'm sure my parents got rid of it long ago.

Comments

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

It's so good that you have that book again.

If you are looking for an older copy of The Wild Swans (the fairy tale) a couple more resources:

Alibris.com and Bookfinder.com, both excellent places to find used books online. Alibris is a very large used book site, bookfinder is an independent used book store index.

If you have no idea who the illustrator was, and you are willing to going on a field trip, you might consider visiting the Kerlan Collection at the U of M. It's one of the largest collections of children's books in the country. You can't take anything out, but you could look through all the copies of The Wild Swans they have and see if any of them are the one you remember.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I have indeed already tried the Kerlan collection. The biggest problem is, I don't remember whether it was a stand-alone book, or part of a larger collection of Andersen's work, or part of a general fairy tales for children book. The Kerlan doesn't allow you to browse their stacks. You have to sit down and look through their card catalogue and write down the name and call number of each and every book you want them to bring out to you to check. And if the book was part of a larger fairy tale book or even just an Andersen collection, it would be like hunting a needle in a haystack. They have hundreds of them.

I remember the illustrations soooo vividly, too; that's what's maddening. And I used at least one detail in my re-telling of The Wild Swans, the princes' fantastically lush matching white outfits that they wore when they regained their human forms at night. Eliza had reddish hair, I think. I remember a picture of Eliza holding a leaf in front of her face, and sunlight streaming through a hole in it onto her face. I remember a picture of Eliza and her brothers standing all crowded together on the rock in the ocean. I remember Eliza dressed richly, with her hair in a snood set with pearls I think, as the king showed her the room hung in green he had made for her to remind her of her cave; the first completed shirt hung from the ceiling in the corner. And I remember the brothers gathered around her when she fainted at the end, as the king lays the white rose on her breast.

*Sigh* I would dearly love to be able to see that book again.