The Fighting Five, by Noel Sainsbury, Jr. (Champion Sports Stories Series)

NORTHEAST. 
Classic Young Adult Fiction. 

Noel Sainsbury, Jr., had a popular run in young adult fiction during the pre-World War II era when the form was called juvenile fiction and a flood of titles, ordered by way of “free catalogues”, arrived via post. Adventure, action, and detective stories were all popular themes; but so was sports, the genre’s volumes often serving not just as entertainment for youthful readers, but also as long-form life lessons on teamwork, upstanding moral character, fairness, etc. As far as we can tell, Sainsbury scored a huge hit with his Champion Sports Stories, which included books about baseball, football, and “The Fighting Five,” about a high-school basketball team in the NYC area. Sainsbury himself led an interesting life in and around the Navy, first as an aviator in World War I (when flying was still primitive by any measure) and then serving again during World War II. In between, he was pumping out “juvenile fiction.” His first run was directly informed by his WWI service, the adventures of aviators Billy Smith and Billy Bolton (separate series). This then led to his many sports-related volumes: “The Fighting Five,” released in 1934. It is an interesting plot: a championship team is kidnapped so that the kidnapper (cast as a type of evil genius) can play them against his own team, which he deems superior. A word of warning, in that this other team is made up of a derogatory term for Japanese at the time, even though the Asians (very much cast as the “villain team”) were mostly from Brooklyn. But it can be hard to find fiction of any sort from this era completely devoid of what by modern standards would be considered demeaning, crude, and often just cruel stereotypes and slurs. Sainsbury completed eight books in this series, some under his pen name of Charles Lawton … We were immediately taken by the fantastic condition of this book. Though its dustjacket is ripped and shows signs of age (wrapped as it is in plastic covering), the volume itself does not show its age in the least. A first edition, the binding is tight, hardcover a pristine orange with blue embossed titling, its inner pages still crisp with the top edges a colored “topstain” (a protective coating commonly applied in those days). A great find at an out of the way flea market, as usual we discovered a rich story waiting to be told. Now approaching a century old, this is a treasure for collectors of YA fiction. 

Condition: Used Very Good. 
YA Fiction. 
Noel Sainsbury, Jr. 
Cupples & Leon Company Publishers, 1934. 
Hardcover (First Edition), 201 pgs, 5.5 x 8” / 15 oz