The Blossom Family Returns

By Sally Lodge, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 6/12/2008

Holiday House is introducing a new generation of readers to Betsy Byars’s eccentric Blossoms, who made their debut in The Not-Just-Anybody Family, published by Delacorte in 1986. A new paperback edition ofthat novel and the second tale about the clan, The Blossoms Meet the Vulture Lady, are just off press. The remaining books in the series, The Blossoms and the Green Phantom, A Blossom Promise and Wanted... Mud Blossom, are due in August. Each volume contains a brief interview with the author as well as a reader’s guide, all of which are also available online. And in the fall, Listening Library will release audio editions of the five Blossom Family novels.

The reissue program reunites editor-in-chief Mary Cash with beloved old friends. Cash was editorial director at Delacorte before moving to Holiday House 12 years ago, and she edited the final book of the quintet (in which the Blossoms’ dog Mud gets in big trouble when a pet hamster disappears), winner of an Edgar Award in 1992. “Wanted... Mud Blossom was one of my favorite books to edit,” says Cash, who acted quickly to acquire the rights to the Blossom Family books when George Nicholson, Byars’s agent, told her that they were going out of print.

“It seemed so wrong to take these books out of print,” she says. “The plots weave together so many stories, yet are so accessible and are hilarious.” As the first novel opens, Junior Blossom perches on the barn roof, ready to test his greatest invention yet: a pair of homemade wings fashioned from wire, old sheets and staples. Meanwhile, his Pap lands in the country jail and Mom is spending the summer as a trick rider on the rodeo circuit.

Cash explains that she gave the novels to some young Holiday House staff members to read: “I played devil’s advocate and asked them if they thought the novels were dated and if today’s iPod-preoccupied kids would read them. And their answer to the last question was, ‘absolutely.’ ” Cash felt that the books needed a fresh look, and new covers were created “to convey all the fun that is in these novels.”

Betsy Byars.

Byars, who won the 1971 Newbery Medal for The Summer of the Swans, is also thrilled to have the Blossoms back. “These characters dominated my life for two years as I wrote the novels,” she recalls. The author says that, prior to writing this series, she had eschewed the idea of sequels, but felt compelled to do more with the Blossoms. “I was going to do just one book about them, but around the time I finished the first book, we were having some coyote problems here in South Carolina,” Byars says. “It occurred to me that if Junior Blossom knew that, he would build a coyote trap, and the second book just started unfolding. I really couldn’t stop.”

And the Blossoms kept her writing. After penning the fourth novel, Byars recalls, “I said that was enough of the Blossoms, but before long I realized I missed them and that there was yet another story to tell.” Like the other Blossom novels, the fifth came easily. “I had been to writers’ conferences and heard authors talk about how their characters did things that surprised them,” she says. “But I had never before experienced that with any of my characters—until the Blossoms. I never had to think hard about what they should do. They did things on their own.”

Byars is pleased that the Blossoms have landed at Holiday House and that she has reconnected with Cash. “Mary is a wonderful editor and I’m so happy that she cared so much about these books,” she says. “There is not one thing I would change about these new editions. It is so nice to have them back.”

And might the author ever again revisit the Blossoms in a new novel? “No, I don’t think I could,” she responds. “I had enormous energy when I wrote these books, but I will turn 80 this summer and I don’t have that same energy now.” Yet Byars, who has written more than 60 books for young readers and is currently working on a new Herculeah Jones mystery, clearly has plenty of energy left. As do those irrepressible Blossoms.