Kahle v. AshcroftPatricia Coombs' Dorrie series
originally submitted by Eli:
The Dorrie series is a series of illustrated childrens books about a little witch and her adventures that I grew up reading as a kid. However, all except one of the 20 some odd books in the series are out of print. The date of the first publish I can find for the first book in the series is ~1965. The different books have been published and republished by a hoard of different publishers including Harpercollins Library, Random House Childrens Pub, Harpercollins Juvenile Books, Clarion Books, Houghton Mifflin Company, "Dell, New York USA", "Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books", Bantam Books, and "A World's Work, UK". The only book for sale new out of the ~20 or so books is ISBN: 0618130535.
A list of the titles in the series is as follows:
1 Dorrie's Magic
2 Dorrie and the Blue Witch
3 Dorrie's Play
4 Dorrie and the Weather Box
5 Dorrie and the Witch Doctor
6 Dorrie and the Wizard's Spell
7 Dorrie and the Haunted House
8 Dorrie and the Birthday Eggs
9 Dorrie and the Goblin
10 Dorrie and the Fortune Teller
11 Dorrie and the Amazing Magic Elixir
12 Dorrie and the Witch's Imp
13 Dorrie and the Halloween Plot
14 Dorrie and the Dreamyard Monsters
15 Dorrie and the Screebit Ghost
16 Dorris and the Witchville Fair
17 Dorrie and the Witch's Camp
18 Dorrie and the Museum Case
19 Dorrie and the Pin Witch
20 Dorrie and the Haunted Schoolhouse
The cost of finding out who owns the copyrights on each different original print, re-print, audio print, etc. from all the different publishers over a 19 year period is burdensome to say the least.
Stifled uses
Eli:
Since 19 out of 20 of the books appear to be out of print and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future I am interested in making the stories available for free via the web in PDF/HTML/Flash format. It seems such a waste that current and future generations won't be able to enjoy the Dorrie series like I did as it appears to currently be lost to the nebulous copyright greysuck.
justin:
I loved those stories growing up. Even back then (mid 80's), some of these were impossible to find at the library.
On amazon, precisely one of the books is available new; the rest are not, and used booksellers are charging up to $50 for them:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author=Coombs%2C%20Patricia/
Edith:
I remember reading these books to my daughter and would now like to read them to her daughter. Perhaps a letter-writing campaign to one of the publishers might bring at least some of them back.
Pin:
There is a very small town in Illinois that has the whole series in their library. I personally would like to see the books reprinted, so that another generation can go to the Bizzare, become Dorrie's friend, and have a cat like Gink.