‘Nancy & Plum’ In Print Again After Years Off Shelves Tale By Late Betty Macdonald Republished By Her Daughter
Fans of the late Puget Sound writer Betty MacDonald remember her as the author of such novels as “The Egg & I” and “Anybody Can Do Anything.”
Perhaps not as well known is the fact that MacDonald also wrote children’s books. Four of them comprised the “Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle” series.
Another, which has just been republished by MacDonald’s daughter, is the 1952 novel “Nancy & Plum.”
Joan MacDonald Keil co-published the book with her husband, Jerry Keil, out of their Medina, Wash., home (they winter in Palm Springs, Calif.).
Out of print for years, “Nancy & Plum” is a Christmas story about two young girls, 10-year-old Nancy and 8-year-old Plum, that MacDonald used to tell to her daughters at bedtime.
The book involves orphaned children, an impatient and remote uncle, a mean-spirited owner of a boarding school and adventures that occur when the girls run away.
“Nancy & Plum” ($9.95, 190 pages, ISBN 0-944309-00-3) includes family photos of MacDonald and her children. The book can be ordered directly through Joan Keil Enterprises, P.O. Box 205, Medina, WA 98039.
Winter of their discontent
Running under the title “Everybody’s a critic,” Town and Country magazine ran a book-related item in a recent edition.
Seems a bunch of grizzly bears were on a feeding frenzy before heading for their winter’s nap, when they broke into the lodge at Alaska’s Katmai National Park.
Finding no food, they shambled off the lodge library where they commenced to devour more than 100 paperbacks.
As the magazine reports, the books were “mostly easily digestible fiction by Danielle Steel, Sidney Sheldon, et al.”
By the way, as a further insult, the magazine misspelled Steel’s last name.
The reader board
Layne G. Sperber, author of “And Five Were Hanged,” will read from her book at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Auntie’s Bookstore, Main and Washington. For further information, call 838-0206.
Carolyn Kremers, author of “Place of the Pretend People,” will read from her memoir at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Auntie’s Bookstore. Kremers teaches in the creative writing program at Eastern Washington University.
Katherine Morrissey, author of “Mental Territories: Mapping the Inland Empire,” will read from her book at 5 p.m. Friday at Clarke & Stone Book Co., 204 N. Division (in the Globe building). For further information, call 838-0607.
, DataTimes