Celebrating Taffy
Although it's hard to imagine the thirteen-year-old heroine of Nell Wise Wechter's beloved novel Taffy of Torpedo Junction ever growing up, Taffy Willis celebrated her 50th anniversary in print in the spring of 2007.
Taffy of Torpedo Junction has been a favorite of young and old alike since it was first published on May 9, 1957. It reaches the mid-century mark with seven paperback printings and nearly 21,000 copies sold from the University of North Carolina Press.
The book tells the thrilling story of a teenage girl who, with the help of her pony and dog, exposes a ring of Nazi spies operating in Hatteras Island, North Carolina, during World War II. Wechter, an Outer Banks native who died in 1989, was a widely admired author, storyteller, teacher, historian, and journalist. Taffy was her first -- and some think her best -- children's book. It won an American Association of University Women award for best children's book by a North Carolina author the year it was published.
As a schoolteacher in Buxton on Hatteras Island during World War II, Wechter could look out her classroom window and see ships being sunk by the Germans. Her story was inspired by these real events and the courage of the people who lived through them.
When the book's original publisher decided in 1995 that it could no longer keep Taffy in print, an outcry ensued, probably sparked by Raleigh News and Observer columnist Dennis Rogers, who wrote that the book was "perhaps the best piece of children's literature ever produced in this state" and that, "there must always be room for the adventures of a 13-year-old from North Carolina."
Rogers's column lamenting the loss of Taffy didn't go unnoticed by editors at the University of North Carolina Press, who contacted Wechter's daughter and literary executor, Marcia Wechter Kass, about the possibility of obtaining reprint rights. Shortly thereafter, the Press received a flood of letters from schoolchildren and even some prominent citizens like former Senator Terry Sanford. Local author Bland Simpson, who'd read Taffy as a schoolchild in Elizabeth City, offered to write a new foreword.
"I think it's really great that this book is still in publication, and Taffy deserves a big celebration," said Wechter Kass. "Mother would be tickled pink to know that Taffy, the story of a survivor, is something of a survivor, too."
For more features about World War II on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands' and other island news, please visit The Island Free Press.
For more information on Taffy of Torpedo Junction, please contact Gina Mahalek, Publicity Director, The University of North Carolina Press, at gina_mahalek@unc.edu, or call 919-962-0581.
