Just before publication of "The Twenty-One Balloons," my publisher noted a strong resemblance between my book and a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald entitled "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," published by Charles Scribner's Sons. I read this story immediately and discovered to my horror that it was not only quite similar as to general plot, but was also altogether a collection of very similar ideas. This was the first I had heard of the F. Scott Fitzgerald story and I can only explain this embarrassing and, to me, maddening coincidence by a firm belief that the problem of making good use of the discovery of a fabulous amount of diamonds suggests but one obvious solution, which is secrecy. The fact that F. Scott Fitzgerald and I apparently would spend our billions in like ways right down to being dumped from bed into a bathtub is altogether, quite frankly, beyond my explanation.
This explanation is signed and dated Jan. 16, 1947. It did not stop the book from winning the Newbery Medal.
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