Well you did me a favor! I read this the other day, thought how nice it would be to get a copy, and went on with my day. On Fridays I always help set up a used booksale at the public library (my job is at the community college library) and what do you know, a copy of a double volume of Ellen Grae and Lady Ellend Grae had shown up in a children's box! It's a sad economy printing with no illustrations but better than nothing, and I never would have noticed it if not for your post.
Your library actually HAS this book? I cannot find stuff like this for love or money around here.
This kid is hilarious -- that whole adult vocabulary and precociousness is a lot. From being born in the seventies I have the vaguest, vaguest memory of this kind of thing in media, where adults thought it was comedic to talk to kids about adult things. I kind of feel like adults thought the only kids who were "cute" in the 60's were like this - I mean, this kid is going to grow up and star in their own version of Harold and Maude - be spectacularly unique until their parents decide they need an "analyst."
While I'd never heard of this book or this character (and it's kind of mindblowing how someone so sharply unique could have been utterly forgotten like this. I mean, we remember Harriet and Anastasia Krupnik why not Ellen Grae?) I'd heard of the authors. I read THE KISSIMMEE KID, which was published in 1981, and I remember it being uniquely regional with a quirky character - but nothing like Ellen Grae. Apparently, that uniqueness was a Bill & Vera Cleaver specialty. In grad school they talked a lot about rising/falling trends in children's lit, and how they were influenced over time by politics. I suspect this trend of the frankly-spoken child and the unique family situation met the late sixties financial panic which morphed into the 1979 Moral Majority, and grimly scrubbed Ellen Grae away. Norma Fox Mazer and Paula Danziger were really the last keepers of the Slightly Obnoxious Bright Kid type. Really, that's kind of a shame.
Oh good lord, no, my library is way too small to carry stuff this long-forgotten. I found this one on the Internet Archive. I find some of this long out-of-print stuff there, and also pick books up at yard sales, on eBay, order via interlibrary loan, etc.
Yeah, there's something about the super-precocious kid voices of this era that I love, and I don't know WHY, because in more contemporary stories it can turn obnoxious so quickly. Some of them are clearly emulating the adults around them and actively *trying* to sound mature and blasé—I'm especially thinking of Constance C. Green's Al here—while some, like Ellen, seem to just naturally talk and act like this. But in both types of character, their emotions ring so kid-true to me, and so the combo of the kid-emotions and the adult-voices almost invariably works (again, for me!) in some way. Maybe it's purely because it's tapping into similarly vague childhood memories? (And, even more personally, maybe I'm relating because of my memories of my child self so desperately wanting to be taken seriously?)
You hit the nail almost squarely on the head about her future, by the way—the second book in the series involves her father sending her to Seattle to live with an aunt who is tasked with making her into—get ready to gasp with shock/horror/outrage—A LADY. I can't wait to read it.
I knew of the authors, too, but I think this is the first one by them that I've ever read? I'll look for The Kissimmee Kid, for sure, and I'll look for more about the Cleavers as well. Tracking social and economic trends via children's lit is a trip. Speaking of—I always think of Beverly Cleary when I think of seeing economic trends reflected in kids' books, heh—I feel like Ramona falls into the Slightly Obnoxious Bright Kid type, too, but she's PURE KID, and definitely a shift away from Ellen & Co.
Well you did me a favor! I read this the other day, thought how nice it would be to get a copy, and went on with my day. On Fridays I always help set up a used booksale at the public library (my job is at the community college library) and what do you know, a copy of a double volume of Ellen Grae and Lady Ellend Grae had shown up in a children's box! It's a sad economy printing with no illustrations but better than nothing, and I never would have noticed it if not for your post.
Library booksales result in so many amazing finds for me, I'm so glad that the timing on this one worked out!! I hope you enjoy it. <3
I want "All artists die in garretts" on a t-shirt.
I've been leaning towards starting to make stuff again, so I'll keep that one in mind, heh.
Your library actually HAS this book? I cannot find stuff like this for love or money around here.
This kid is hilarious -- that whole adult vocabulary and precociousness is a lot. From being born in the seventies I have the vaguest, vaguest memory of this kind of thing in media, where adults thought it was comedic to talk to kids about adult things. I kind of feel like adults thought the only kids who were "cute" in the 60's were like this - I mean, this kid is going to grow up and star in their own version of Harold and Maude - be spectacularly unique until their parents decide they need an "analyst."
While I'd never heard of this book or this character (and it's kind of mindblowing how someone so sharply unique could have been utterly forgotten like this. I mean, we remember Harriet and Anastasia Krupnik why not Ellen Grae?) I'd heard of the authors. I read THE KISSIMMEE KID, which was published in 1981, and I remember it being uniquely regional with a quirky character - but nothing like Ellen Grae. Apparently, that uniqueness was a Bill & Vera Cleaver specialty. In grad school they talked a lot about rising/falling trends in children's lit, and how they were influenced over time by politics. I suspect this trend of the frankly-spoken child and the unique family situation met the late sixties financial panic which morphed into the 1979 Moral Majority, and grimly scrubbed Ellen Grae away. Norma Fox Mazer and Paula Danziger were really the last keepers of the Slightly Obnoxious Bright Kid type. Really, that's kind of a shame.
Oh good lord, no, my library is way too small to carry stuff this long-forgotten. I found this one on the Internet Archive. I find some of this long out-of-print stuff there, and also pick books up at yard sales, on eBay, order via interlibrary loan, etc.
Yeah, there's something about the super-precocious kid voices of this era that I love, and I don't know WHY, because in more contemporary stories it can turn obnoxious so quickly. Some of them are clearly emulating the adults around them and actively *trying* to sound mature and blasé—I'm especially thinking of Constance C. Green's Al here—while some, like Ellen, seem to just naturally talk and act like this. But in both types of character, their emotions ring so kid-true to me, and so the combo of the kid-emotions and the adult-voices almost invariably works (again, for me!) in some way. Maybe it's purely because it's tapping into similarly vague childhood memories? (And, even more personally, maybe I'm relating because of my memories of my child self so desperately wanting to be taken seriously?)
You hit the nail almost squarely on the head about her future, by the way—the second book in the series involves her father sending her to Seattle to live with an aunt who is tasked with making her into—get ready to gasp with shock/horror/outrage—A LADY. I can't wait to read it.
I knew of the authors, too, but I think this is the first one by them that I've ever read? I'll look for The Kissimmee Kid, for sure, and I'll look for more about the Cleavers as well. Tracking social and economic trends via children's lit is a trip. Speaking of—I always think of Beverly Cleary when I think of seeing economic trends reflected in kids' books, heh—I feel like Ramona falls into the Slightly Obnoxious Bright Kid type, too, but she's PURE KID, and definitely a shift away from Ellen & Co.