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Junior Literary Guild

The Junior Literary Guild is a commercial book club. It began in 1929 as an enterprise of the Literary Guild. By the 1950s, the majority of their book sales were to public libraries. In 2004 they started listing their Junior Literary Guild selections at their own website. What we refer to as “winners” are their selections for different age groups.


Winners:

Courageous Companions (1929)

The story of an English lad who sails with Magellan around the world.

1929

Author(s): Charles Finger
Illustrator(s): James Daugherty

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Little Blacknose: The Story of a Pioneer (1929)

Early American railroading as seen through the eyes of the Dewitt Clinton, the first steam engine built for the New York Central Railroad.

Read online at archive.org

1929
1930

Author(s): Hildegarde Hoyt Swift
Illustrator(s): Lynd Ward

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The Adventures of Mario (1930)

Mario, the young hero of the book, helpless after the death of his mother and driven by an inner force as the animals are, grows up in the depths of the forest where he becomes one of the wild things.

1930

Author(s): Waldemar Bonsels
Illustrator(s): Kurt Wiese

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Early Moon (1930)

A collection of poems by the Prairie Poet.

1930

Author(s): Carl Sandburg
Illustrator(s): James Daugherty

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The Flight of the Heron (1930)

Ewen Cameron is out with the ’45 and encounters a British officer Keith Windham who becomes his best friend.

1930

Author(s): D. K. Broster
Illustrator(s): Helene Carter

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Kees (1930)

Kees lives in Holland and has a pet duck named Kleintje.

1930

Author(s): Marian King
Illustrator(s): Elizabeth Enright

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Red Horse Hill (1930)

Bud Martin decides to take his bulldog and try New Hampshire. He finds a warm welcome with Uncle John and Aunt Sarah.

Author(s): Stephen W. Meader
Illustrator(s): Lee Townsend

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Witch’s Maiden: A Historical Romance (1930)

Temperance, her parents dead and she only seven years old, is dispossesed by Cromwell’s officers as a Royalist and sent to live with the neighboring witch.

1930

Author(s): Mabel L. Tyrrell
Illustrator(s): Marie A. Lawson

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Alice and Thomas and Jane (1931)

Three children have adventures in an English seaside town.

1930

Author(s): Enid Bagnold
Illustrator(s): Enid Bagnold
Laurian Jones

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The Fairy Circus (1931)

Inspired by a human circus that performs in their meadow, the fairies put on a circus of their own for the woodland creatures.

1932
1932

Author(s): Dorothy P. Lathrop
Illustrator(s): Dorothy P. Lathrop

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The Gleam in the North (1931)

When the Jacobites call on Ewan Cameron’s honor, he must enter into the conspiracy again in this second installment of the Jacobite Trilogy that began with The Flight of the Heron.

1931

Author(s): D. K. Broster
Illustrator(s): Helene Carter

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Hail Columbia (1931)

A history of the United States of America from its discovery to 1931.

1931

Author(s): Marie A. Lawson
Illustrator(s): Marie A. Lawson

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Swallows and Amazons (1931)

The four Swallows receive permission from their sailor father to sail by themselves on one of the English lakes in a telegram: ‘BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN.’

Read online at archive.org. 

1931

Author(s): Arthur Ransome
Illustrator(s): Helene Carter

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Young Trajan (1931)

In this story of old Rumania, Frosina goes to school to learn weaving, but learns much more when she is called home again.

1931

Author(s): Elizabeth Cleveland Miller
Illustrator(s): Maud Petersham
Miska Petersham

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Auntie (1932)

Celia Jane spends a year with her Auntie, then when she is grown up and has a son of her own Auntie comes to live with her.

1932

Author(s): Maud Petersham
Miska Petersham
Illustrator(s): Maud Petersham
Miska Petersham

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Berta and Elmer Hader’s Picture Book of the States (1932)

A picture geography of the forty-eight states.

1932

Author(s): Berta Hader
Elmer Hader
Illustrator(s): Berta Hader
Elmer Hader

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How They Carried the Goods: From the Creaking Sleds of Pharaoh to the Swift Airplane of Today (1932)

A series of short vignettes describing how goods were carried in historical times.

1932

Author(s): Charles G. Muller
Illustrator(s): Gustaf Tenggren

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Little House in the Big Woods (1932)

In this, the first volume of her family saga, Laura Ingalls is living with her Ma and Pa, sisters Mary and Carrie in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, near Lake Pepin.

1932

Author(s): Laura Ingalls Wilder
Illustrator(s): Helen Sewell

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Snipp, Snapp, Snurr and the Gingerbread (1932)

On a visit to the baker, the triplets fall in the batter and are made into gingerbread men.

Read online at archive.org

1935

Author(s): Maj Lindman
Illustrator(s): Maj Lindman

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