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Sunday, August 08, 1999 By Bob Hoover, Post-Gazette Book Editor
University presses typically confine their output to titles with an academic bent, so it was a rare event indeed when the University of Pittsburgh Press announced its new line of children's books.
Called Golden Triangle Books, the new publishing venture kicks off next month with "Three Golden Rivers" by Olive Price and "Duffy's Rocks" by Edward Fenton. Three more titles will follow next year.
They're all reprints, not new books, and are aimed at "middle readers," children from fifth to eighth grade. And as the those two titles indicate, the common denominator is the locale -- Western Pennsylvania.
Editing the series is Margaret Kimmel, a longtime specialist in children's literature and professor at Pitt's Library and Information Sciences Department.
"I had been tossing around the idea [of a local children's series] for a long time, but the university press wasn't interested," she said. "Finally, [press director] Cynthia Miller decided that the series would fit right in with the press's regional series."
On the strength of the first books, Kimmel called the venture "really exciting. These are books that resonate for all of us, whether we live here or not. This will be a wonderful new adventure for the press."
While Kimmel was familiar with "Duffy's Rocks," it was Pitt library preservationist Sally Buchanan, a native of Toledo, who suggested "Three Golden Rivers."
"She told me it was her favorite book while growing up in Ohio," Kimmel said. "I had never heard of it, but after reading it, it was perfect."
The tale of four orphans who live in a shanty on the slopes above the South Side in the 1850s is full of historical characters and offers a rare glimpse at one of Pittsburgh's original industries, glass.
Author Olive Price was a Mount Washington native who published the novel in 1949 after moving to New York, where she worked in publishing and wrote radio plays and biographies.
Passing through the book are Charles Dickens and Jenny Lind, who really stayed at the Monongahela House while touring America, Stephen Foster and a young messenger boy known as "Scotchie." He is, of course, Andrew Carnegie.
"The book is so well researched," said Kimmel. "There's so much information on how people lived in those days, how they ate, dressed and worked. It's a history lesson."
Pittsburgh was in the midst of expansion in those Industrial Revolution days, but it's a different city in "Duffy's Rocks," a story of Depression-era struggles of a young man on the brink of adulthood.
"The setting is really McKees Rocks," said Kimmel, "and it makes for an entirely different kind of book. It's a tough-minded book, full of Pittsburgh lore."
The book was published in 1974. Fenton, who died four years ago, spent most of his life abroad as a translator, but apparently visited McKees Rocks for a friend's family wedding.
His hero, Timothy Brennan, is torn between strengthening his family ties and breaking away from family's bigoted, narrow view of life.
These books will be in stores after Sept. 1 when the Golden Triangle Web page debuts at www.pitt.edu/~press/goldentrianglebooks. The page will be a forum for readers, parents and teachers and provide links to historical reference sites and other material.
Kimmel hopes the series will provide classrooms with a way to learn more about American history, both by reading and by using the Internet.
The titles planned for next year are:
Kimmel plans to release a book every year after next year's three titles. "There's a richness of literature in this area," she said. "It will be a while until we run out."
Peter Blair, the Pittsburgh poet now living in Charlottesville, Va., is the winner of the Washington Prize for his latest collection, "Last Heat."
The prize is $1,500 and publication by WORD WORKS, a poetry publisher in Washington, D.C.
Blair has been a steelworker and teacher. He now teaches at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
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"Greenhorn on the Frontier" by Anne Finlayson. It's set during the French and Indian war and includes Simon Girty among its historical characters.