Time at the Top by Edward Ormondroyd
Title: Time at the Top
Author: Edward Ormondroyd
Illustrator: Peggie Bach
Publication: Bantam Skylark paperback, originally published by Parnassus Press, 1963, now available from Purple House Press
Genre: Juvenile fantasy
Setting: 20th century, United States, probably New YorkDescription: One Wednesday in March, late in the afternoon, Susan Shaw vanished from the Ward Street apartment house in which she lived with her father. She reappears on Saturday wearing an old-fashioned dress and shoes, and has to stage a faint to get rid of the police and others trying to discover her whereabouts. In fact, after helping an old lady retrieve her hat on a windy day, Susan was given “three. No more!” in gratitude. She doesn’t know what that means but when she takes the elevator in her building later that day it goes past the top floor, 7, and deposits her in 1881. Susan isn’t completely sure what’s going on until she meets Victoria Walker, about her own age, who had wished urgently for help scaring off Mrs. Walker’s suitor and thinks Susan is the answer. With Victoria’s brother, they concoct a scheme to get rid of the fortune hunter. That doesn’t solve all of the Walkers’ troubles, however, and as much as Susan is enjoying herself in the past, she needs to return home because she knows her father will be anxious. Can she come up with a plan to help her new friends and herself?My Impression: What is it that suddenly reminds one of a beloved book, inspiring an immediate trip upstairs to find it? When I was about 10, my sister Clare and I went to visit our great aunt Ruth in Mount Vernon, NY. Naturally, I coaxed her to take us to the local library as in those days, before computerized card catalogs and Interlibrary Loan, it was always a treat to visit a new library that might have books we had not read. The children’s librarian was delighted, albeit puzzled, to meet two girls from Boston, and asked about our reading tastes before she made recommendations. She produced two winners for us: Time at the Top and The Children of Green Knowe. I don’t think I had read a lot of time travel then but I instantly loved Susan, an aspiring actress who is having the worst possible day when she encounters the old lady who will send her back in time. Susan is resourceful and clever, and was the first character I knew to pose the question: can you go back in time and change an outcome? Fans of time travel can debate this question endlessly, and I suppose the answer depends on the author!
They thought some more.
“Wait a minute,” Susan said. “You say he’s after your Mama’s money. What if he thought your Mama had lost it all?”
“Ah!” said Victoria, widening her eyes. “He’d show a clean pair of heels then! But why should he think that?”
“Well, I just thought we could give him the idea somehow . . . .”
I used to think Time at the Top was a well-kept secret but the paperback edition went through numerous printings so someone was reading it besides me!
Ormondroyd (born 1925) grew up in Swarthmore, PA and Ann Arbor, MI, reading Winnie-the-Pooh, Swallows and Amazons, and P.G. Wodehouse. After serving on a destroyer in the Pacific during WWII, he attended Cal Berkeley and wrote his first book, David and the Phoenix, which was published by Parnassus Press, a small publisher in Berkeley, later owned by Houghton Mifflin. He became a librarian and continued to write, producing just a handful of books. He wrote a sequel to Time at the Top called All in Good Time (1975).
Ormondroyd gives himself a cameo in this book as a fellow resident of the Shaws’ apartment building who hears all about Susan’s disappearance and resulting events (at least the ones she knows about!) from the cleaning lady. At the end, he says, “Maybe I’ll write a book about it.”
Source: Personal copy
Addendum: Marc Tyler Nobleman is writer/entrepreneur who worked at Abbeville shortly before I did in the 90s; I heard about him often from my coworkers and we met once at ABA. When I was looking online to see if Edward Ormondroyd was still with us, I saw that Marc had actually interviewed him in 2011. Thank you to Marc for sharing this experience! The entire interview is delightful but there are two things of particular note: one is that Muriel Fuller was involved in the publication of Ormondroyd's first book, David and the Phoenix (which I own but have not yet read). Her name has turned up before in books that came from my grandparents' house and I wondered if they somehow knew her; even asking my mother if the name was familiar. The other is this comment of Ormondroyd's: "By the way, my favorite of my books, Time at the Top, was made into a movie for TV by Showtime. When I read the script, I was so appalled at what had been done to my beloved story that I have never been able to bring myself to watch it." I guess I shouldn't go out of my way to find it!
4 comments:
This sounds delightful. I wish I had encountered it when a child. I would have loved it.
Speaking of visiting libraries, when I was around eight, I visited my grandparents who lived in a small town outside of Greenville, Ohio. The library was in an old house that had been converted to be a library. I am pretty sure I checked out a Henry Huggins book. Did I use my grandmother's library card? It was a pretty small town, so they may have just accepted my word that I was so and so's granddaughter.
Like Ruthiella, I would have adored this as a child. And I'm so glad you know what it was and own it. One of my favourite childhood books was a ghost tale set on a Scottish Island, a bit Brigadoon in flavour. But I can neither remember the title nor the author and it's grieved me for years. I found a 'possible' on Goodreads, The Far Island by M. Pardoe but it doesn't feel quite right. I need to find a copy and see if it's 'the one'.
Ruthiella, I am sure in a small library they knew your grandmother well and probably just wrote her name into the borrowing slips then used. By the way, were you sad when they stopped having library pockets? I found this upsetting, although I suppose it saves money and labor. My grandmother was a big reader but did not like books other people had read so bought a lot of books but I don't think used the library much. For this reason, although she brought us there she sometimes got annoyed after we went home because she would forget to return the books or maybe we left them all over the place, and she would get overdue notices. Oh well!
Cath, I recognize that title and it must have a following because I remember when Fidra Books republished it. It sounds very good. However, might your book instead be one by Mollie Hunter? I don't remember her books well enough to point to one in particular.
This sounds very interesting, with time travel. Why did I never run into these books? Of course, this was published when I was 14 or 15. But still. I did read a lot when I was young. I was the only one in my family that was into fiction. My father had lots of library books at home all the time, but all nonfiction to my knowledge.
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