This is a pretty good UFO primer for kids covering the usual midcentury narrative, from Kenneth Arnold and the Foo Fighters onwards to the Flatwoods Monster and the Condon report. Author Dale White references heavily from John G. Fuller's Incident at Exeter in an early chapter, but oddly enough doesn't mention Betty and Barney Hill despite covering a wide range of cases. White also goes over NICAP's involvement with the issue, Father Gill's sightings in New Guinea and other foreign reports, and explanations of strange weather phenomenon that can be mistaken as UFOs.
White's style is measured, and he does a fine job conveying the scale and layered contradictions of the subject. Good stuff! But the plot thickens: an online listing for the original hardcover edition reveals that White is a pseudonym for none other than Bigfoot authoress Marian T. Place!
Did she or original publisher Doubleday think young boys wouldn't read a UFO book by a lady? She didn't publish her Bigfoot work under a male pseudonym! Her papers are in a collection at Arizona State University, and offer some information on that front:
Place has written under her own name and under two pseudonyms. She recalls that "I began writing [about such subjects as] hunting, fishing, Forest Service and other state and federal fish & wildlife, grazing, [and] water projects, to mention only a few. I studied my markets before submitting and observed [that] the kind of ... subjects I was interested in were done by men. So, I chose to use the pen name of Dale [my uncle] and White [a portion of my middle name, Whitinger]. For about 10 years or more I was known as Mr. White. The other pseudonym, R. D. Whitinger, was used briefly only for westerns - i.e. bang-bangs, pulps. I was experimenting with several kinds of writing, and this one was not for me."
That online listing for Is Something Up There? also includes some promotional writing on Place, dating to the early '80s:
Scholastic Book Services, 1969 (original pub. 1968)
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