I’ve been enjoying the 20 book covers event (#BookChallenge) on Bluesky. It got me looking through some of my old books. In the process, I came across what I remember to be the first book I ever bought for myself. It’s called The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key. Published in 1965—I think I was in 4th grade then—it’s the story of an alien boy who falls through a long-lost technological door on his world and winds up on Earth. My first sci-fi story. I’m surprised I’ve managed to hang on to the original copy for 60 years now.
I had not thought about the book since 1997 when a story about a “spooky passageway” discovered on the National Institutes of Health campus appeared in The NIH Record, a biweekly newsletter for staff. The campus had been the site of old homes and mansions in Bethesda so, it was not difficult to imagine there might be long-forgotten tunnels, rooms, cellars, passageways, etc., connecting the various properties. Numerous people suggested the mysterious room was an old wine cellar, a servants’ entrance, a hillside garage, and the entrance to a former darkroom. I suggested—tongue in cheek—that it was author Key’s Forgotten Door. “It was astonishing at that moment to find himself falling swiftly into the hill…there had been a cave-in over the old Door-the Door that led to another, the one that had been closed so long.”
The mysterious campus doorway turned out to be part of an old pumphouse that once supplied water to the Wilson estate before it became the site of the NIH in 1938.
My 45-cent paperback was published by Scholastic Book Services, which used to have classroom book clubs where students could find and buy books to read on their own. There’s a website called, “Nostalgia for the Scholastic Book Club, circa ’60’s & ’70s” showing book covers from back then. And this website presents the history of Scholastic books and their magazine.