My mother wanted readers ~ & readers she got. It was nothing for me to read my way through a dozen books a week. I read indiscriminately, widely & prolifically a lot of really forgettable books, as most children's books are. The gems I remember.
Writing for the inbetweeners, those too old for picture books but not quite ready for the classics, can be a tricky business but I was lucky. Our library carried a number of books by both Marguarite De Angeli & Kate Seredy, authors who were gorgeous illustrators but who wrote intriguingly of peoples & places I knew nothing about.
The Good Master was the first of Seredy's I read ~ not surprising as it is considered something of a classic even now. It was some years before I found the companion piece: The Singing Tree. I adored these books. The illustrations are just glorious. She & De Angeli are probably totally responsible for my love of history & anthropology.
I recently purchased a copy of The Singing Tree, hardcover & with the original dust jacket. Set just before & during WWI this is a Hungary that has disappeared & as I revisit these two books now it is with great sadness. Seredy writes with great hope the common theme when WWI finally came to its devastating conclusion: Never Again ~ yet within a generation history repeated itself & Hungry became embroiled in civil unrest & impaled on communism. I wonder if that is why Seredy never wrote about Jansci & Kate again. She dealt with the second war in The Chestry Oak but Kate & Jansci are forever embalmed on the great Hungarian plain, safe from all harm.