Let's Not Forget - Betsy Byars

Oh! Oh! Oh!  Betsy Byars!  Over 60 books to her credit, Byars is an American treasure.  She has the talent and the perseverance to pare her prose down to the essential emotion or description.  In one of her Blossom families she describes a boy as someone who "Loved having too much to do."  I remember; it was in The Blossoms and the Green Phantom.   I knew exactly how Junior Blossom felt.  I saw his shining face and his excitement and Byars didn't even have to say "His face shone with excitement."  Sometimes, I read a Byars-written sentence and I am struck dumb with awe. 

My first ever Betsy Byars book was The Cartoonist.   How the author got into that boy's head, I'll never know.  No matter, I went on to read The 18th Emergency and I was launched.  I read every book she wrote - well, almost - from that day to this.

Enough fangirling.  She won a Newbery for The Summer of the Swans.  She won the National Book Award for The Night Swimmers.  AND get this.  She won an Edgar for Wanted...Mud Blossom.  What?!?  What about Herculeah Jones?

Please offer Betsy Byars books to young readers who need books about kids dealing with the real world.  The technology has changed since the 1970s, but the problems kids deal with are the same - finding a place for their passions, dealing with difficult people, dealing with being difficult people - those things are universal.