Talk:Pigeon Post

New York Times coverage

How was the Carnegie Medal covered in The New York Times? Here are some notes on search hits for "carnegie medal" library association in the ProQuest Historical Newspapers edition from 1936 (no hits) and 1937.

• no coverage of events prior to the 1936/1937 award cycle, such as proposal or establishment of the Medal
• 1937-05-31 p13, "Book Notes" — Pigeon Post is the winner, "best children's book published in England in 1936"; "will be published here by Lippincott late in July"
• 1937-06-13 p89, "Books and Authors" — PP to be publ Lippincott July 29; Medal to be "presented at the annual conference of the Library Association in June in Scarborough" by the LA president, the Archbishop of York. "This award is comparable to our Newbery prize, and [PP] is the first book to receive it."
• 1937-06-27 p84, "News and Views of Literary London", Herbert H. Horwill — "The first award has just been made ... in celebration of the Carnegie centenary. This distinction may be regarded as the English version of the Newbery Medal, as it is given for the best children's book of the year by a British author."
• 1937-08-22 BR10, "The New Books for Boys and Girls", Ellen Lewis Buell — PP is the first of four books reviewed; a positive review

2012-11-09. The latter has been a formal reference in the article since later that day, 14 August. No other NYT item is yet a formal reference, 9 November. Today I have revised this notice for clarity.

--P64 (talk) 18:53, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

continued: search for "Carnegie Medal", 1938 to 1942. It appears that NYT published simple notices of the awards for 1937, 1939, and 1941 (all in the literary London column by Horwill) and did not mention the awards for 1938 and 1940. --P64 (talk) 19:22, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Among other things today, I have expanded Pigeon Post#Critical reception using some more of the coverage in NYT 1937. I have presumed that there was in fact a presentation to Ransome in person, as reportedly planned. Horwill's notice after the event (June 27) does not clearly confirm that he was present.

Buell's review, last of the four 1937 articles, remains the only one formally cited.

The New York publication dates -05-31 and -06-27 may be useful to an editor with access to British newspapers.

--P64 (talk) 01:19, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

I have revised this Talk section for clarity. --P64 (talk) 01:05, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Metal ores

second of two edits

1. "a lost gold seam in the fells" — That is my link, instead of "gold seam". It's a guess. Is this "seam" (Ransome's term or ours?) a vein (geology) and/or a lode?

2. "they have found copper ore, pyrites." — That is my {tag} on old links. Does the sentence mean "copper ore and pyrite"? or that "pyrite(s)" is another name for copper ore? Our pyrites is a source for "copperas" but contains no copper.

--P64 (talk) 01:32, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Timothy refers to a vein so I have changed it to that as I can't see "seam" in the book. The ore they found was chalcopyrite (Cu Fe S₂) also known as copper pyrites. Dabbler (talk) 12:43, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Swallows and Amazons books not involving sailing

The introduction says "This book is one of the few Swallows and Amazons books that does not feature sailing." I think it is the only one that does not feature sailing. The possible other one would presumably be Winter Holiday if we don't consider sailing an ice yacht to be "sailing". I am minded to change this statement. But I notice that this article was featured in the "did you know..." in 2006, precisely because the quote did then say the "only" one. So someone has changed it from "only" to "one of the few", and I am raising the issue here before changing anything in case there is a controversy....Johnstoo (talk) 09:42, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Update: not too surprisingly, after nearly a month, no-one has responded. I have therefore taken it upon myself to edit the text to say "arguably the only..." with a parenthesis about Winter Holiday. I actually think it is correct to say "the only..." and would be happy if someone else wanted to edit to that effect, but my version seems to avoid taking a stand at the cost of slightly greater length.Johnstoo (talk) 17:10, 2 December 2020 (UTC)