Tag: Children’s Classics

Goodnight Mister Tom – Michelle Magorian (Puffin 1981)

On By philshanklinIn Kid-Lit1 Comment

Puffin have celebrated the 40th anniversary of this enduring children’s classic by issuing it in a new edition which also contains a story of the young Tom and lyrics Magorian wrote for the musical adaptation.  I had always thought I had read this book before but I hadn’t.  I have also never seen the acclaimed TV version which starred John Thaw.  It was one of those books where my vague ideas about it had cemented into what I believed was fact but I was often wrong.  I knew it was a tearjerker but what I had always thought occurred never actually happens.  The twists and turns of the plot were quite a revelation for me.

Will is sent from Deptford, South London, just before the outbreak of World War II, as an evacuee to the rural environment of Little Weirwold where he is allocated to Tom Oakley, an elderly widower who lives a very self-contained life with his dog Sammy.  Will’s arrival disrupts this but the malnourished, poorly treated Londoner wins Tom over from the start and the youngster begins to thrive under his care.

The country scenes have a direct line to earlier children’s classics such as “The Railway Children” where nothing much happens but it is still a ravishing read.  It’s a boy finding his feet amongst a new environment and new friends and the challenges he faces, a common enough theme in junior fiction but it is when the book reverts to London with a grimness which is shocking compared to what we have read before that it is elevated to another level.  Following this, with the war established in both town and country Magorian pulls no punches and conveys the sense of not knowing what is round the corner brilliantly.  As the war disrupts the lives of those in the country there’s a tension between adapting to the new events and wanting their lives to go on as before.

I loved this book.  I loved the characters and the plot.  I enjoyed the short story “Rachel And The Paintbox” which would be a lovely back-story read for long-standing fans of this book.  The song lyrics were inessential but there again would be appreciated by those who have had this book in their lives for decades.

I cannot believe it has taken me this long to get round to it.  My advice to you is to celebrate its special birthday with me by discovering it for yourself, re-reading it or buying a copy for a younger member of the family.  This is a great read.

Originally published by Kestrel in 1981, the first Puffin paperback edition arrived in 1983 and this edition with the additional material was published in the UK on May 6th 2021. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the review copy.

Amazon Adventure – Willard Price (1951)

On By philshanklinIn Kid-Lit1 Comment

Whilst in the stacks of withdrawn-from-the-shelves books at Library HQ the other week I discovered a set of Willard Price which took me back over 40 years.  When I was 10 or 11 in the mid 70’s these books were very popular.  As friends raced to read the whole series I don’t think we realised they stemmed from the generation before us.  Paperback editions were given thrilling contemporary covers but the most evocative were the hardback editions we borrowed from the library with cover art and inky illustrations by Pat Marriott.

I can remember being asked to bring in a book for my first day at secondary school.  I took in one of these (not sure which one) as did, it turned out, a significant section of the class, all new to me from my junior classes.  It gave me an immediate sense of belonging and it felt like secondary school might not be so alien after all. (I might have judged this too early!)

Over the years the Willard Price Adventure series have been in and out of favour.  I remember a resurgence in popularity when I started teaching, probably from the next generation whose parents had fond memories and recommended them.  I’m not sure if there haven’t been revised editions to tone down some of Price’s ideas but I’m pretty sure the edition I have just read, in hardback from 1978, would have been as the author wrote it.

A later edition

Canadian born Willard Price (1887-1983) published this first in the series “Amazon Adventure” in 1949 (it must have taken a couple of years to arrive in the UK) and finished the 14th book in 1980 which illustrates the continuing appeal this series must have had.  This debut, as could be anticipated by the title, was very much of its time and I did wonder how I would feel on re-reading it.

What struck me most was considering how the 10 year old me would have responded.  Putting Price’s viewpoints to one side- that the white Americans have a right to pillage the Amazonian rainforest to collect wildlife for zoos, I’m not sure how the me who couldn’t watch TV/films with animals in them without feeling anxious and tearful in case they die (still can’t) would have responded to these tales of hunting and plunder.  Price actually deals with some grim perils which suggest we must have been made of sterner stuff back then.

The extraordinarily capable and knowledgeable teenager Hal accompanies his father on an expedition to the Amazon to collect animals.  Little brother Roger comes too, only a couple of years younger but obviously a victim of second son syndrome as all the expertise father has passed on to Hal hasn’t got to Roger, whose predilection for pranks is often downright foolhardy.

It is so implausible but Price knows how to grip his young audience and despite all my objections to the motives behind this I found myself as drawn in as probably the 10 year old me was.  I would never recommend certainly this first in the series to a young reader, (I’m not sure if they become less controversial) but I liked the amount of difficulty Price heaped onto his young characters, not everyone comes out of the experience alive and the plot device of the raft of animals sailing down the Amazon was at times reminiscent of “Life Of Pi”.  As an exercise in nostalgia I was very involved, enough to consider borrowing the next in the series “South Sea Adventure”.

Amazon Adventure was first published in the UK in 1951.  I read a Jonathan Cape hardback edition.

The Child That Books Built – Francis Spufford (2002) – A Real Life Review

On By philshanklinIn Books About Books, Real LifeLeave a comment

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Francis Spufford has featured on my “Must Read” list since his debut novel, the historical “Golden Hill” took a Costa Award in 2016.  For some reason I still haven’t got around to it, although I am convinced I’d enjoy it very much indeed.  On the New Non-Fiction shelf at the library I discovered this with its by-line of “What would you find if you went back and re-read your favourite books from childhood?” Still slightly reeling from the sheer joy of Lucy Mangan’s trawl through the books in her past in “Bookworm” I thought this couldn’t be delayed until I got round to Spufford’s novel.  I was intrigued and couldn’t wait to read it.

I wasn’t that far through it when I realised it didn’t feel as up to date as I was expecting a book sat on the New Non-Fiction shelf to be.  After a little research (turning to the front of the book) I discovered that this was first published by Faber back in 2002 with 2018 being the date this paperback edition (made to look like “Golden Hill”) arrived.  So the image I had in my head of both Spufford and Mangan revisiting their childhood concurrently was a bit out of synch as he did this sixteen years ago.  Then I sensed a whiff of a cash-in.  This has obviously been republished because of the success of “Golden Hill” and probably “Bookworm” too.

The back cover is a tad misleading.  It had led me to think we would be in Mangan territory but with a slighter older male perspective.  It is considerably more complex than this.  Spufford is revisiting his childhood to see how his reading choices impacted upon him and how it formed him developmentally.  He is much more interested in the person rather than the books.  They are important for their impression they left giving it a stronger psychological basis and feel which basically I enjoyed much less than Mangan’s “joy of reading” approach.

Spufford did use books to escape (family ill-health mainly) but seems to have read with a fury which at times I felt a little unsettling and that I was being intrusive.  He was, despite being virtually the same age, a very different child from me anyway.  The first book he read alone, aged 6, confined to home because of mumps was “The Hobbit” a book I grappled with probably five years later (which looking back I still feel was too young).  From here we get the stages of his development through Narnia (which he, like most children of our generation was obsessed by, although for me it was largely just “The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe”).  Naturally, we did have many books in common and I was pleased to recall “Marianne Dreams” by Catherine Storr which has largely edged back into the mists of history but had a lasting effect on both of us (ie: it was terrifying!).  Spufford exhausted much of what children’s literature had to offer before finding Sci-Fi which filled that transition period (never really did it for me) to Ian Fleming (whilst at boarding school) and perhaps inevitably on to porn at the end of his teenage years.

His focus is very much on development.  Good old Jean Piaget is referenced often (taking me back to my Theory of Education days) and Spufford opts to see these developments in physical terms (forest, island, town, hole).  I didn’t follow all of his arguments, in fact it did often remind me of what he pinpoints as one of the memorable stages of learning to function as an independent reader when you pick out what you can as you go along to get the general gist.  (Spufford perceptively says we do this in early years and then again when we discover classic novels.  Well, I found myself doing this quite often here!)

Where this is strongest is when he lets the books take centre stage.  There’s a good section on Laura Ingalls Wilder where I felt totally involved, for example.  I would have liked a list of the books he revisited to really get those nostalgic juices flowing.  I think I’m being largely niggly because this book wasn’t quite what I thought it was going to be and so there was an underlying disappointment throughout.  At one point I was concerned that it might put me off reading “Golden Hill” but I think, having now finished this, that desire is still intact.

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The Child That Books Built was published by Faber & Faber in 2002.  I read the 2018 paperback version.

100 Essential Books – Bookworm: A Memoir Of Childhood Reading – Lucy Mangan (Square Peg 2018)

On By philshanklinIn 100 Essential, Books, Books About Books, Uncategorized6 Comments

 

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Thank you, Lucy Mangan. This book has brought me so much pleasure. I have relished every word, laughed out loud and been bathed in a warm, nostalgic glow which has made me late back from tea breaks and almost missing bus stops. I found myself yearning for a “snow day” so I could just stay at home and fully immerse myself in the author’s childhood.

Lucy Mangan truly deserves the title “Bookworm”. Reading, as a child, at every opportunity, eschewing social situations and getting through vast numbers of books makes her a true authority on children’s literature from a child’s perspective. I didn’t think I read as much when I was young as I do now but I realised I must have done as a sizeable number of books Lucy devoured I had also read. She is a few years younger than me but the world of juvenile publishing did not move as fast as it does today and many of the books in our libraries and schools in the 70’s had been published a generation before. I didn’t come from a home with a lot of books and whereas Lucy’s Dad provided her with a regular supply from when she was quite young, my Dad tended to do the same for me with comics. I have two older sisters so much of their abandoned reading material became mine, because as Lucy rightly points out as a child the bookworm will read whatever is available, so my knowledge of books involving characters such as “My Naughty Little Sister“, or set in girls boarding schools or about girls with ponies (the last being my sister Val’s staple reading diet) is probably greater than most of the men who will read this book.

Lucy is lucky enough to still possess her childhood books. She obviously didn’t have a mother so keen to donate “treasures” to jumble sales to either be sold for a few paltry pennies or occasionally bought back by myself.

Her memoir reinforces the importance of libraries. I can still remember the very first library book I borrowed, (it was a picture book version of “Peter And The Wolf” with a yellow cover. I took it out many times) so that experience obviously firmly imprinted itself in my West London mind as much as it did for Lucy on the South of the River in Catford.

Some of the titles alone brought back great memories – “Family From One End Street”, “Tom’s Midnight Garden”, “The Saturdays” “The Phantom Tollbooth”, “The Secret Garden”, “Charlie & The Chocolate Factory”, “Lion Witch & The Wardrobe”, The “William” novels were all great favourites with both Lucy and myself. (No mention of a couple of others I was obsessed by “Emil & The Detectives” and “Dr Doolittle”, maybe they were moving out of public favour by Lucy’s time).  She shares her strength of feelings against certain things, she had a limited tolerance of talking animals and fantasy (which saw off both “Babar The Elephant” and Tolkien) and does so in a way which is both stimulating and very funny.

Through the books she read we learn much about her family life which brings in a whole new level of richness into the work. I’m also totally with her on the subject of re-reading, which in my teaching days was often a bugbear for some parents who wanted their children to forge ever onwards to “harder” books. She puts this over masterfully;

“The beauty of a book is that it remains the same for as long as you need it. It’s like being able to ask a teacher or parent to repeat again and again some piece of information or point of fact you haven’t understood with the absolute security of knowing that he/she will do so infinitely. You can’t wear out a book’s patience.”

As well as examining the past she looks to the future and to her own young son, not yet so fussed about reading and announces: “It is my hope that our son will read our amalgamated collection and become the world’s first fully rounded person.” I love that!

Expect perceptive insights on all the major players and books from the period – from the still very popular Enid Blyton (“She was national comfort reading at a time when mental and emotional resources were too depleted to deal with anything more complex”), the religious elements (which also completely passed me by as a child) of CS Lewis (“no child ever has or will be converted to Christianity by reading about Cair Paravel, Aslan, naiads, dryads, hamadryads, fauns and all the rest. If they notice it at all, they are far more likely to be narked than anything else. And they probably won’t notice it at all.”), the development of the first person narrative dating from E Nesbit’s “Story Of The Treasure Seekers” to her 80’s obsession with “Sweet Valley High” (that whole publishing phenomenon passed me by as I was no longer a child by then).  Her thoughts on the joys of reading pile up one after another in this book. I cannot imagine enjoying a book about children’s literature more. It is an essential read for all of us who like to look back and who like to feel we are still young at heart!

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Bookworm was published as a hardback by Square Peg in March 2018 . Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the review copy.

Charmed Life- Diana Wynne Jones (1977) A Kid Lit Review

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I’ve come to the conclusion with children’s literature that the books you read at just the right time in your development as a reader are the ones that really stay with you.  I recently saw an article in the Telegraph ( I think) on children’s fiction where the writer (not sure who… sorry) had picked out 10 Books every child should read.  I had heard of Diana Wynne Jones but not of this book which was claimed to be a novel suffused with magic and superior to Harry Potter.  My interest was piqued, especially as this is a book which dates from the mid 70’s and so I sought out a copy.  (My library service had it available as an E-book).  I think the author of the article (which could have been Lucy Mangan who has just produced a book on children’s fiction which Netgalley have just approved me for review, so if it is I’ll let you know) must have read this book at an impressionable age as given the build-up this was all a little disappointing for me.

 This is the first of seven volumes in the Chrestomanci series.  In this book Chrestomanci is an enigmatic Willie Wonka type character, who may be an enchanter of great power and who certainly has the habit of turning up as soon as his name is said.  He takes on the upbringing of two charges, Gwendolen and Cat, after their parents are killed and the children go to live at Chrestomanci Castle with his own two offspring.  Gwendolen has precocious powers of witchcraft and thinks very highly of herself; her younger brother Cat struggles with self-doubt and is the endearing central character.  It is a tale of magic and parallel worlds as the children come to terms with their new lives in the Castle.

 Books for children of this vintage and older do not seem as plot-driven as modern fiction and once the children are in ensconced in their new home the pace gets a little slow and there are quite a few scenes which ramble a little and are not especially eventful, particularly meal times between the four children, who do not see eye to eye.  It is, however, quite entertaining throughout and may appeal to those who have got through the first couple of Harry Potter novels and are not yet ready for the demands the later instalments of the series place on the reader, but I do feel that many Potter fans will find Jones’ style dated.

 Diana Wynne Jones was a prolific writer who died in 2011.  She is most revered for her Chrestomanci novels (I still don’t know why I have not heard of these before) and “Howl’s Moving Castle”.  “Charmed Life” was the winner of the 1978 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.  She is held in great esteem by many fantasy writers for both her children’s and adult novels.  She did suggest that the 4th book of the series, the Carnegie Medal commended “The Lives Of Christopher Chant” (1988) be read as the follow-up to this.  I would be interested to see where she goes with the characters she introduces in this series opener.  This book alone does not attain the status of children’s classic as far as I am concerned, but as a whole the series may still have potential.

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Charmed Life was originally published by Macmillan in 1977.  I read the Harper Collins edition which was republished in 2007.

Victorian Fairy Tales – Edited by Michael Newton (OUP 2016)

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Oxford World’s Classic have produced a new collection of less familiar tales from British authors writing in the Victorian period.  Lest we think fairy tale writing may be deemed an inferior genre there are some literary heavyweights on display here- John Ruskin, WM Thackeray, Ford Maddox Ford and Oscar Wilde who join the more child-centered writers such as E. Nesbit, Kenneth Grahame, Rudyard Kipling, Andrew Lang and a number of authors whose works I had not encountered before.

Following a thought-provoking, academic introduction by Michael Newton we are offered a prologue, a story each by the champions of the genre, the Brothers Grimm’s “Rumpel-Stilt-Skin” (first British publication in 1823) and Hans Christian Andersen’s “Princess And The Pea” (1846).  These well-known tales are offered as a starting point as they largely rekindled the British love for the traditional fairy story and these translations quickly permeated into the everyday life of the Victorians.  Following this short prologue we get fourteen tales of differing length (and if I’m being honest of varying appeal to this reader).

First up is a tantalising, although not fully familiar choice.  “The Story Of The Three Bears” in its first written British publication (it being a story with a strong oral tradition) by poet Robert Southey.  His prose tale establishes the builds and rhythms which we are familiar with but is fascinating in its deviation by having an old woman break into the bears’ house.  It’s a story with no real beginning nor end.  It is not clear why she does what she does and her fate is somewhat ambiguous, but because she is not that appealing a character the story does not come alive.  What it needs is a young girl to do the porridge eating………………….Cue, firstly, Silver-Hair (attributed to Joseph Cundall in an 1849 collection- 12 years after Southey) and it wasn’t until after the Victorian Era (around 1904) that young Goldilocks made her first entrance into the cottage in the woods.

So far, so familiar.  There are a  couple of stories I can remember as stand-alone children’s classics from the local public library shelves of my childhood.  Thackeray’s “The Rose and The Ring”, Ruskin’s “King Of The Golden River” and Oscar Wilde’s “The Selfish Giant”.  Of the rest, I was drawn in by Laurence Housman’s tale of outsiders, “The Story Of The Herons” which deals with the Andersen-ish notion of desiring a human soul and then when that has been achieved desiring to return to the non-human form.  Newton in his introduction suggests Housman’s tale is “a coded account of homosexual love” yet it works well as an imaginative, poignant tale.  E. Nesbit and Kenneth Grahame are represented by stories which fit in nicely with the quality of their more famous work.  Rudyard Kipling’s “Dymchurch Flit” doesn’t – it making no impression upon me whatsoever.  I liked the tone of master fairytale collector and anthologiser Andrew Lang’s “Prince Rigio” which is enough to suggest I should investigate further the Delphi Classic collection of his Colour Fairy Tale books I have languishing on my Kindle.

There are less fairies and more politics in this book than you would imagine.  In fact, actual fairies are few and far between.  There’s a strong emphasis on what might be deemed political satire and there’s a number of appendices which explore what is meant by a fairy tale from some of the authors included in the collection. (These are a little dry). Michael Newton in his introduction probably sums this up best;

“…all the stories in this book, both provide places for thinking and reflection, and simultaneously play upon our feelings and exercise our capacity for compassion.  Reading them is a serious delight.  They introduce us to an already familiar strangeness, and through the resources of art grant a space to make believe.”

It is this “familiar strangeness” which most appeals to me.  This book is intended for an adult audience (with fairly good eyesight, I found the print size and font an occasional struggle) wanting to rediscover some of this “space to make believe” and perhaps sharing them with a younger generation.

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Victorian Fairy Tales is published by Oxford University Press in June 2016

Krindlekrax- Philip Ridley (Red Fox 1991)- A Kid-Lit Review

On By philshanklinIn Kid-Lit7 Comments

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Earlier this week I was reminiscing on this blog with Cleopatra Loves Books  (see the 22 Letters post for the discussion) about the end of the afternoon story time at Primary School and how much these books meant to us.

When this book was published I was working as a Primary School teacher and there was nothing better for forging a relationship with the class and for turning them onto books than the carefully selected novel read in instalments. Nowadays, with the over-crowded curriculum I understand that this practice is much less common, which is tragic. My all-time favourite book for reading to the children was “Krindlekrax”.

We are taken to Lizard Street, a location which seems very real and yet dream-like. Ridley uses repetition so effectively to build up an almost hypnotic effect. This creates, as in many of the best children’s books, a kind of skewed reality. The superb cast of characters all have some identifying quirk and/or a catchphrase (“Oh Polly-Wolly-Doodle-All- The-Day”!) or sound effect which are used and built upon sublimely in the telling of this story.

It is the tale of Ruskin Splinter, the boy who wants to be the hero in the school play and tame the dragon and who is denied the chance because of his unheroic appearance in favour of Elvis Cave, who menaces the whole of Lizard Street with his football (Da-Boing!), breaking windows even at night whilst sleepwalking. Ruskin’s only friend is Corky, the school caretaker, an adorable character who regularly gets my eyes misting up. Ten years before there had been an incident on Lizard Street which had turned Corky’s hair white and given him a limp, caused cracks in the pavement and the bricks to go dark.

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Like the best traditional tales the plot is simple and yet runs very deep and you find yourself responding in the same subconscious, intuitive level as to the best and earliest stories. There’s issues on self-esteem and self-image, bullying, coping with death, separating fantasy from reality, being judged by appearances and the realisation that time existed and things happened before you were born; all dilemmas likely to be faced by the child reader and reaching some resolution here.

The use of sound is exceptional. The creaking pub sign “Eek!”, the drain cover “Ka-Clunk!”, the football “Da-Boing!” gets children anticipating and joining in. I had second language children with very little English who loved this book and begged to take it home. These sounds, together with the characters identifying phrases and gestures helps the story to build up and children experience the same chills as in those classic games “What’s The Time Mister Wolf?” and “In A Dark, Dark House.” Ridley doesn’t cop out with the climax, it’s every bit as scarey as the build up suggests.

Twenty-four years after its publication this book still reads extremely well. It is a relief to find a book directed at this age group that doesn’t rely on underpants, snot or pooh for its humour. I never read aloud a book (with the exception of Michael Rosen’s poetry) that was such a huge hit. Year 3 classes adored it and when on one occasion I taught a Year 5 class who I’d also had as Year 3, they were clear they wanted to be re-read this and enjoyed it as much (if not more) the second time. I hope these children are reading this to their children now.

“Krindlekrax” won The Smarties Prize in 1991 and WH Smith Mind-Boggling Book Award. The author has written a number of other children’s books which didn’t quite have the same magic for me (although I am very fond of “Kaspar In The Glitter”). Philip Ridley is one of those multi-talented in many fields individuals. He has written adult novels and plays, plays for children, poetry, screenplays, directed films and is a photographer, artist, songwriter, musician and has written an opera. He is an exceptional, under-rated British talent, and this book, which was for a number of children I taught “the book” that springboarded them into reading and could very well be his finest work.

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Krindlekrax was published in 1991 by Red Fox

The 22 Letters – Clive King (Puffin 1966) – A Kid-Lit Review

On By philshanklinIn Kid-Lit9 Comments

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Question – Have you ever had a book that you have held on to for years and years, which has been taken with you from new home to new home and yet remains fairly neglected and seldom taken off the shelves?

Meet my copy of “The 22 Letters”.

I read this book when I was about 10 years old and must have really enjoyed it because it remained on my bookshelves, staying at my parents house when I was at college but then coming with me and staying on my shelves for a considerable number of years (ok it’s 40+). The vast majority of my collection of Puffin books ended up in various charity shops, jumble sales or were given away but for some reason this stayed and I just never got round to reading it again.

Clive King is most famous for his “Stig Of The Dump” and this book for a time was a fixture in Primary schools where I taught for many years and it is still a well-loved children’s book and one I knew well. But it wasn’t my copy of “Stig” that hung around, it was this. Recently, curiosity got the better of me, why couldn’t I throw this book away? Why had it survived every book cull? It certainly wasn’t for the murky cover illustration.  I had to re-read it to see why it was that I had this intuitive need not to part with it. My memories I had of it were that it was quite a demanding book for me as a young reader. I read it quite slowly, it seemed to be my “reading book” for quite some time. At that age I was keen on adventure and authors such as Willard Price, Malcolm Saville peppered my reading alongside my much loved children’s classics, a number of which have already featured in this blog, so I reckoned that it must have been a book that I was particularly thrilled by.

Children’s adventure books tend not to have dated very well. There’s Enid Blyton of course, but they seemed dated when I read them and their continuing popularity is curious, but do children still read Willard Price whose books entitled “Safari Adventure”, and “Amazon Adventure” are likely to read very differently now with our very different world view? I was a little concerned what I would find in the pages of King’s 1966 book. I checked Amazon – was it still, like Stig, even in print, or had it been quietly withdrawn as tastes changed? Well, it’s no longer in print but copies are around of a similar vintage to my own.

First surprise was the dense and highly descriptive text, which just doesn’t appear in books for children of this age today. It wasn’t going to be the thrill-a-minute I had anticipated. Three brothers leave their home in Gebel (modern Lebanon) around 1500BC for different reasons. One of the brothers, a soldier, discovers horses can be ridden, one, a sailor, discovers navigation by stars and the third, a young scribe, is ultimately responsible for the early alphabet (not a plot spoiler because the clue is in the title). This is one talented family!

Pace-wise, for much of the book it is surprisingly leaden with separate chapters devoted to each of the brothers (and to their sister, who, – remember it is written in 1966- stays at home). It is very much helped in the last third by a dramatic earthquake and volcanic eruption which seems to be, for the characters involved, the end of the world. The pace is certainly upped here and the persevering reader is rewarded. Although I do not remember this section it must have been this which made that subconscious impression which kept the book on my shelves for my 20s, 30s ,40s and (yes, I know…….) beyond. But sadly no more………………..

As I was reading it the book began to fall apart. After decades of being ignored the experience of being re-read proved to be too much for the book. The cover fell off, the glue parted company with the spine (Puffin! Are your paperback books not designed to last 40 years! Shame on you!) and by the time I finished with it the only place for it was, sadly, the bin. I did feel that the book let me down, both physically and emotionally but I will forgive Mr King and may very well seek out “Stig Of The Dump” for a re-read. I’m sure that many of you reading this will have had experiences of books that do not fulfil the reverence we gave them when young. Let me know these experiences, only don’t tell me that Leon Garfield was not what he was cracked up to be as that might be one too many childhood dream shattered!

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“The 22 Letters” was published by Puffin in 1966. Interested readers can currently pick up a second-hand copy from Amazon (but look out for the glue on the spine) from 65p.

100 Essential Books – Winnie The Pooh – A A Milne (1926)

On By philshanklinIn 100 Essential5 Comments

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Some days just feel like Pooh days, and more often than not they are pooh days in every sense as they are the times I feel like escaping from the realities of the world we’re living in and retreat to the Hundred Acres Wood for a bit of sanity, Winnie The Pooh style.

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I’m not sure AA Milne knew exactly what he was unleashing when he decided to put together the bedtime stories he’d been telling his son using his toys as characters and that almost 90 years later this publication would still remain one of the greatest children’s books ever.  In fact, the philosophies of Pooh and his friends expounded in this book and its follow-up “The House At Pooh Corner” (1928) (which introduced the irrepressible Tigger) makes it an essential also on every adult bookshelf.

I certainly read and had read to me this book as a child but I was a greater fan then of the Disneyfication of Pooh and it wasn’t really until I hit my late teenage years that Milne’s original creation became dominant.  Whilst at college I had quite a little collection of EH Shepard’s illustrations on mugs, towels, postcards etc and was well versed in the wisdom of this extraordinary little bear and his pals.  In 2003 the BBC Big Reads survey (still the definitive list of what is good for us combined with what we enjoy in our books) placed this at number 7, so it is a book held dearly in a lot of hearts.

On every read I become totally captivated and surprised by how much stays with me.  I also feel this way about Milne’s children’s poetry collection “When We Were Very Young” (1924).  Luckily, it was not just Christopher Robin Milne who benefited from these wonderful stories and characters as generations will have come to love Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit, Owl, Kanga and Roo.  As each character is introduced in the book a warm feeling envelopes the reader and it was a sheer delight once again to experience Pooh getting stuck in Rabbit’s doorway, Eeyore losing his tail and celebrating his birthday miserably and Piglet getting flooded in.  Magical stuff!

I’ll leave you with two examples of the logic of Pooh in case you’ve not read this for a while;

“It’s like this,” he (Pooh) said. “When you go after honey with a balloon, the great thing is not to let the bees know you’re coming.  Now if you have a green balloon, they might think you were only part of the tree, and not notice you, and if you have a blue balloon, they might think you were only a part of the sky, and not notice you, and the question is : Which is most likely?”

“Wouldn’t they notice you underneath the balloon?” you asked.

“They might or they might not,” said Winnie-the-Pooh. “You can never tell with bees.”  He thought for a moment and said: “I shall try to look like a small black cloud.  That will deceive them.”

“Then you better have the blue balloon,” you said and so it was decided.

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And there’s Piglet surrounded by water and putting into early practice one of the tenets of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy of modelling your actions on someone who would be successful at a problem;

“There’s Pooh, “ he thought to himself.  “Pooh hasn’t much Brain, but he never comes to any harm.  He does silly things and they turn out right.  There’s Owl.  Owl hasn’t exactly got Brain, but he Knows Things.  He would know the Right Thing to Do when surrounded by Water.  There’s Rabbit.  He hasn’t Learnt in Books, but he can always Think of a Clever Plan.  There’s Kanga.  She isn’t Clever, Kanga isn’t, but she would be so anxious about Roo that she would do a Good Thing to Do without thinking about it.  And then there’s Eeyore.  And Eeyore is so miserable anyhow that we wouldn’t mind about this.  But I wonder what Christopher Robin would do?”piglet

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Winnie The Pooh was published in 1926.  Egmont produce a classic edition with the unforgettable illustrations by E H Shepard.

 

 

The Just So Stories – Rudyard Kipling (1902) – A Kid Lit Review

On By philshanklinIn Kid-Lit2 Comments

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When I was about eight or nine years old I entered a competition from the back of Kellogg’s Rice Krispies. It took a while to get the requisite number of box tops and my entry was sent off just before the closing date. I won the competition and was thrilled when a few weeks later the prize arrived. It was called a Show And Tell – which would be an early version of a multi-media device. It was basically a tv type screen with a record player on top and a slot. It came with a selection of stories – you put on the record, read along with the book and slid a set of slides into a slot which appeared on the screen as you listened along. It was sort of, I suppose, like a big View Master with a record player. I absolutely loved it. (I’ve looked for an image for it online but cannot find one, so probably it wasn’t around for long). One of the sets of stories were “The Just So Stories” and I became very familiar with these because of this. I have read other versions of these stories over the years, simplified children’s versions or in picture books but I don’t think I have ever read Kipling’s actual words. When I thought about it I don’t think I have ever read any Rudyard Kipling at all, despite his prolific output and me having quite a few of his books hanging around on my bookshelves for years. This was the first one to make it from the To Be Read pile.

As well as being the most familiar of the stories to me “The Elephant’s Child” and “The Rhino’s Skin” are the most successful. These stories seem to be imbued with an authentically primitive feel and read like the earliest stories passed down from generation to generation. Some, however, seem to be too contrived for our modern tastes (“How The Alphabet”) or just dull (“The Crab That Played With The Sea” springs most to mind). Kipling proves to be something of an all-round entertainer incorporating annotated illustrations (I love the one of the cat walking through the trees which was also the cover image of the copy I read) and supplementing the stories with poetry and songs (these have not dated well). Kipling comes across as having a good sense of mischief and my first experience certainly hasn’t put me off reading more by him.

I have noticed that Jessica over at The Bookworm Chronicles has recently reviewed “The Jungle Book” – I have never actually read this (despite having grown up with the Disney film). She was surprised (as I was although once I read her words I remembered) that this is also a set of stories and not an actual novel. Maybe I should start with that before moving onto a Kipling novel. I do know I have a copy of “Stalky And Co” somewhere on my shelves.

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The Just So Stories were originally published in 1902. I read the Penguin edition.