The Solitary - Lynn Hall

I haven't read this book in about twenty years. I'm going to rectify that ASAP though.

Sometime when I was about twelve or thirteen, one of my regular hospital outpatients appointments (to monitor severe scoliosis, which I've had since I was a baby) happened to fall in the week before Christmas. After I'd been in to see my consultant, a nurse presented me with a paperback book; they had bought books as small gifts for each child that was in the clinic that day, and as we were all different ages each one had been chosen specially for us.

The book that I was given was Lynn Hall's The Solitary, which I believe is now out of print in this country at least. It is available secondhand from Amazon. I can recommend that you buy it.

The Solitary tell the story of Jane, an American high-school graduate who returns to her parents farm to try to make a living for herself. When she was a child her mother had murdered her father, so Jane went to live with her cruel aunt and uncle; for the past two years, whilst her schoolfriends party and prepare for college she has carefully planned how she could manage on her own. She decides to farm rabbits for a living, and as she faces up to each problem that arises she grows in self-belief. She's completely on her own at first, and she's frightened, and there's no-one who shares her experience, but she doesn't give in.

Another reviewer elsewhere on the web states "The most important aspect of Jane as a role model is that she accomplishes her goal of living according to her own design. In the last few chapters there is evidence of happiness, satisfaction, and dignity. The details used to describe Jane's physical and mental metamorphosis makes it possible for readers to see how they might follow her path."

Giving this inspirational book to a young teenager who has had to grow up following an unusual and often lonely path was a fucking masterstroke. Bravo, anonymous RNOH Outpatients nurse.

The Big Big Sea - Martin Waddell, illustrated by Jennifer Eachus

This gentle, quiet book for very young children is utterly enchanting. A little girl is taken out by her mother in the middle of the night and they go paddling in the sea in the moonlight. It's about special bonding times between parents and children, and creating quiet moments in which to enjoy peace.



Far far away
right round the bay
were the town
and the lights
and the mountains.
We felt very small,
Mum and me.

We didn't go into town.
We just stayed for a while
by the sea.

And Mum said to me,
"Remember this time.
It's the way life should be."



The artwork by Jennifer Eachus beautifully captures the spirit of the book in subdued, moonlit tones. As an adult, it makes a wonderfully calming bedtime story.

The Stone Book Quartet - Alan Garner

If I could write well and I wanted to write a children's book, this is the book I would write. The Stone Book Quartet is a collection of four short stories in which Alan Garner brings his own Cheshire ancestors back to life with such vibrancy that some of his family were apparently pissed off with him for exposing their secrets. It's wonderful reading for anyone who is into genealogy (as I have been for 25 years) and who enjoys beautiful prose.....the stories are a work of art, with no superfluous language at all.

The stories are linked by time and real-life events over a period of about a century and if you get the Harper Perennial edition there are appendices which give more information about Garner's family and his thoughts on the book.

I know I'm not a great book reviewer anyway but I'm likely to break down and just gibber about this one because I think everyone should read it and I'm at a loss for words to describe why else, except that it is amazing!

Old girls' annuals: Bunty for Girls 1982, Tammy Annual 1982

I've always loved the old picture-story papers for girls that were produced years ago: Bunty, Judy, School Friend, Tammy etc. They first became popular in the post war years but sadly died off in the late 1990s, with the last bastion, Bunty, finally giving up the ghost in about 2000. I think this is a sad loss, even if today's little girls are supposed to prefer boybands and fashion to picture stories about ponies and ballet schools.

I always particularly liked the artwork used, and as you could recognise some distinctive personal styles I had my favourite artists too; it's sad that they were anonymous. It's fascinating to spot the same artist's work in a late 1960s School Friend right through to an early 1990s Bunty. For a girl who enjoyed drawing, they were quite inspirational.

I've acquired various annuals over the years, some of which were my mother's, some of which were given to me as Christmas presents, and others which I picked up at jumble sales either as a kid or later on. They're still great fun! Recently I visited my mum and collected a couple of them from her house: Tammy Annual 1982, and Bunty for Girls 1982.


Out of the two, I prefer Tammy (published by Fleetway/IPC Media). The stories seem more sophisticated somehow, and there was a longrunning strip called "Bella" about a gymnast which always featured incredibly well-studied pictures of a girl doing gymnastic poses. Bella gets in trouble with the law at times and has been known to live in a squat, which seems a bit gritty for a girls' paper but maybe that's why it's quite enjoyable to re-read as an adult!

Other picture stories in Tammy 1982 include "Molly Mills", about a 1920s maidservant (drawn by my fave artist - possibly called Douglas Perry); "Backhand Billie", an extra-long story about a rude girl pupil at a tennis academy; various spooky "strange stories"; and a Bessie Bunter comic strip, which is a hangover from June which was taken over by Tammy in the 1970s.

Bunty 1982 seems a bit silly in comparison, and a lot of the stories seem to be written around contrived names: "Belle of the Ball" is about a girl called Belle who has acquired an alien ball which bounces around observing human life; "Girl Friday" is about Fran Friday who sorts out problems in a hotel; "Try-It-Out Terry" tests products for a local newspaper and "Rambling Rose" is a scatterbrained schoolgirl. They're not bad stories, but there are better ones: "Catch the Cat" is about a schoolgirl resister in wartime France and "Maid Marian" takes command of the Merry Men as effectively as Robin Hood ever did.

I really have to mention "Wendy's Wonder Horse" because it's an absolute hoot:




How fabulous is that?? Coming up with these stories for a living must have been the best job EVER.

Pleasure Trove - Jennifer Curry

This is an old paperback of mine from the mid 1980s, given to me by a kind friend of my mum's when I was in hospital for 6 weeks when I was ten. The cover looks promising - nice and colourful with a pirate treasure chest with lots of goodies spilling out of it, and this encouraging blurb:

Stories....riddles....poems....limericks...things to make and do, all collected for your delight!

Sounds great doesn't it? Unfortunately this book is very hit-and-miss. Mostly miss, to be honest. As a ten year old it completely bemused me. Here are some of the random poems and things that it contains:

- An extract from On Gardens by Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
- Little Things by James Stephens, a poem about "little things that run and fail, and die in silence and despair..."
- An extract from Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
- Parts of the Book of Revelation and Ecclesiastes from the Bible
- A Lyke Wake Dirge, a traditional English song that tells a Christian tale (although the ideas and the imagery may be pre-Christian) of the soul's travel, and the hazards it faces, on its way from earth to Heaven. Told in an old form of Yorkshire dialect from the 1600s.
- A rambing bit of prose by JB Priestley about "the delights of making stew"
- An extract from a medieval book of etiquette that was probably written for the Princes in the Tower

Even as a ten year old I remember thinking "this person really has no clue about what kids actually enjoy". All of the above are wonderful and I really adore A Lyke Wake Dirge nowadays, but as a kid lying in hospital I can remember listening to my uncle read it to me from this book, and thinking "wtf is he going on about". It's not that I was a thick kid either....just that my idea of pleasure was not grappling with a symbolic poem about the soul's travel written in seventeenth century Yorkshire dialect.

Such a shame, the editor obviously really wanted to make something kids would treasure but I actually prefer it now I'm 35.

My Side Of The Mountain - Jean George

This book was a recent charity-shop discovery of mine, although it was first published in 1959 and is still available today as a Puffin Modern Classic. It's the tale of a young boy who leaves his New York home to try living off the land in the Catskills Mountains at the site where his great grandfather once owned a farm. He makes a few mistakes but is largely successful, making a house by burning out the hollowed insides of a Hemlock tree and raising a peregrine falcon chick to hunt with. His existence isn't made out to be easy or straightforward; he suffers from cold and loneliness at times, and occasionally feels real fear, but he gains companionship from the animals that share his neighbourhood and experiences pure triumph when he achieves something through his own resourcefulness.

My Side Of The Mountain is very vividly drawn, and I think a lot of this is down to the fact that Jean George did many of these things herself in her youth. Her father was an entomologist and the whole family spent months living in the wilderness, where they lived off a wild harvest and trained their own birds of prey.

The story appeals to the adventurous outdoorsy streak in me, and surely there are kids today who would love this book despite the fact that they could never have a similar adventure. It would have been impossible for my generation back in the 1980s, even though we had a lot more freedom then compared to now. Today's kids may not be allowed to go off on their own exploring the local fields like we did but I bet there are still plenty of adventurous children who wish they could! I find an interesting parallel in the fact that back in the 1980s my best friend was a massive fan of Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons, despite the fact that it was first published in 1930; like my recent reading of My Side Of The Mountain, this was a fifty year old book being enjoyed even though there was no chance of her running wild or sailing her own boat. Both books may be dated in a lot of ways, but I think the spirit of adventure within them is timeless.

A Child's Garden Of Verses - R L Stevenson

Oh noes! You may want to leave this blog in disgust RIGHT NOW. This is because I am about to slag off Robert Louis Stevenson. Actually, that's not quite true; I'm going to slag off A Child's Garden Of Verses, or rather, it's suitability as a book for children today.

ACGOV was published in 1885, and I got given a copy at my seventh birthday party nearly 100 years later, by the daughter of the snobbiest lady in the village. She probably thought it was a lovely gift for a child. According to a lot of the internet it's a "timeless classic" full of "cherished" poems that would "last a lifetime". Shame I was given the Puffin paperback copy that has long since fallen to bits (not through being loved to death, might I add).

Once again, I've recently picked up the twin of my childhood book in a charity shop. I can remember, at seven, being vaguely bemused by the old-fashioned poems. There weren't any that I particularly liked, which was a shame because I did really like some poetry at this age, and was inspired to write my own - my teacher even gave my best friend and myself special exercise books just for this purpose, which other kids in the class weren't given. Hooray for Mrs Brooks! She was the most inspirational teacher I ever had.

ANYWAY. I am putting off writing about A Child's Garden Of Verses. I don't want to dislike it; it's a product of its time and I'm sure my great grandmother (born 1884) would have loved it. I'm also sure Robert Louis Stevenson didn't forsee children reading it over a century later. But please, kindly, well-meaning, snobby middle-class mothers, buy a copy of Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes instead of this outdated naffety next time you come to buy something for little Naomi to take along to her common little schoolfriend's birthday.

Overt moralising will always grate, and children do come fitted with a large bullshit detector these days. This sort of poem annoyed the hell out of my childhood self, and that was back in the 1980s!:-


Whole Duty Of Children

A child should always say what's true,
And speak when he is spoken to,
And behave mannerly at the table:
At least as far as he is able.


On second thoughts, I can't believe even my great-gran would have enjoyed this sort of thing. Good thing she couldn't actually read.


Good and Bad Children

Children, you are very little
And your bones are very brittle;
If you want to grow tall and stately,
You must learn to walk sedately.

You must still be bright and quiet,
And content with simple diet;
And remain, through all bewild'ring
Innocent and honest children....


There are several more verses of that one. Ick. On the next page is that poem about foreign children ("Oh! Don't you wish you were me?") though to be fair it is surprisingly not as patronising as it could be. Never mind, this one makes up for it:


System

Every night my prayers I say,
And get my dinner every day;
And every day that I've been good
I get an orange after food.

The child that is not clean and neat,
With lots of toys and things to eat,
He is a naughty child, I'm sure -
Or else his dear papa is poor.


Ouch.

I am being very harsh, because the book isn't composed purely of po-faced Victorian moralising. There are some nice poems which are quite pleasant to read as an adult: "Where go the boats?" is one, "My Shadow" is another. Sadly, as a child these poems just made me go "meh". They're all rather introspective, with none of the fun and vibrancy of A.A. Milne's Now We Are Six or Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense Poems:


The Cow

The friendly cow, all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple-tart.

She wanders lowing here and there,
And yet she cannot stray,
All in the pleasant open air,
The pleasant light of day;

And blown by all the winds that pass
And wet with all the showers,
She walks among the meadow grass
And eats the meadow flowers.


Zzzzzz. So there you are....I expect the RLS society (I presume there is one, somewhere) will have a price on my head now. I'll try to atone by doing a review of Treasure Island sometime, though I'll have to read it first, because sadly ACGOV put me off reading any more Stevenson if I could help it.

Witch Child - Celia Rees

Witch Child is a novel for older children/young adults that was first published in the UK in 2000. I bought a first edition back then and have reread it many times; I enjoy historical fiction set during the seventeenth century anyway, and this immediately appealed as soon as I picked it up in the bookshop.

After her grandmother is executed as a witch, Mary Newbury is forced to flee first to the countryside and then across the sea to the New World in order to escape persecution. Mary and her grandmother had made a living as healers using age-old skills and knowledge of herbalism to look after the people in their village, and it was this knowledge that had led to their accusation. When things start to go wrong in America Mary is again forced to flee, but she falls in with some natives and is honoured by them for her skills as a healer rather than despised. The contrast between the life of the settlers and the life of the Native Americans is fascinating and the tensions between the two are beautifully drawn, with Mary moving from one life to another.

Witch Child is an absolutely beautiful book, as is the sequel, Sorceress, which deals with a modern-day girl who is intrigued by Mary's life. I'm now a big fan of Celia Rees's novels and have been buying the hardback editions as soon as they are published - it's not possible to be patient for the paperbacks! I have to admit to being a massive fan of the photograph on the original cover (above); it was the perfect choice as you can believe that this girl really could be Mary, and indeed reference is made to this picture by the protagonist of the sequel so apparently Celia Rees was suitably impressed too!

Sunshine Book - Enid Blyton

This book is one of the "Deans Popular Rewards" series of Blyton books that were published in the UK in the 1960s. There were 48 brightly-coloured hardbacked books in the series, and many children of the 1970s had a small collection of these on their bookshelves - if their parents weren't too right-on to let them have them, that is!

Looking back at all the Blytons I read as a child, I remember them as very moralising, very focused on class and probably too archaic for me to consider them as good reading material for children today. From the books I read back then, I think perhaps only The Magic Faraway Tree series (which is extremely inventive and magical) really stands up alongside the wealth of children's literature being produced today.

Sunshine Book was one of the Deans Rewards series that my sister owned as a child, and I thought it would be interesting to re-read the stories and see what I thought as an adult. I picked up this particular copy in a charity shop. It has a jolly picture of some children catching tadpoles on the cover and a bored child has coloured in some of the line-drawings inside with a variety of crayons and felt-tips. Reading it was like nursery-food for the brain; there was something quite comforting about being tucked up in bed re-acquainting myself with these old stories even if half of them are about pixies and I did feel like a bit of a berk. I reminded myself that I do have a Classics degree, and have the latest Helen Dunmore on order from Amazon, and then got over myself.

So! On to the stories. By far the most interesting and inventive was Father Time and his Pattern Book. A young boy, Robin, hears footsteps outside late at night on New Year's Eve, and finds that it is Father Time himself, calling round the houses to pick up the "patterns" which everyone creates, year on year, the design of which depends on the individual's behaviour. Robin asks to see some so Father Time whips out the patterns of various friends - brother Lennie has a beautiful pattern because he is kind, nasty Harry from next door has an ugly pattern, etc. Robin's own pattern is generally lovely but has ugly smudges which show that he told some fibs, so he resolves to make a better pattern next year. It's as moralising as many other Blyton tales, but somehow this story manages to do so without grating. The concept of people creating patterns made me wonder if Blyton had pinched it from folklore - I need to do more digging. Certainly another of her stories in another of the Rewards books (not sure which, I read it nearly 30 years ago!) has a fairy living in a hut that runs around on legs, which is very very similar to Baba Yaga's hut on fowl's legs which appears in Slavic folklore.

Another nice little story is Prince Rollo's Kite. A wicked wizard kidnaps Prince Rollo and hides him in a hut far away. Luckily he has his kite with him, so he writes a message describing his whereabouts on its tail and then lets it fly away, allowing the person who finds it discover where he is being held.

I'm a big fan of the countryside, so theoretically I should have enjoyed the two factual pieces called A Country Walk in England(Spring/Summer) and A Country Walk in England (Autumn/Winter). Sadly the conversational style made me want to heave: "Oh look, what do we see here? It is a Germander Speedwell. How pretty! Let us go and look at the old pond" and so on. It seems horribly twee and patronising, but I suppose they could have been written for poor towny kids who have never even seen a cow before (cf Benjy in the Happy House stories at the end of the book). Thank god for the internet, for books containing colour photography, and for actually being able to travel to the countryside.

There are some poems in the book too. Ugh, Ugh. I can remember hating them as a child as well, so this isn't just me being snobby about them as an adult. One of them is about pixies sleeping in rose beds and is suspiciously like The Old Man's Beard Fairy poem by Cicely Mary Barker, only without the charm.

Well, there we are. I am fascinated enough to want to read more of these books now, and they do look colourful on my bookshelf. Deans Rewards have become extremely rare to find in charity shops though, so it might take a while. I wonder what the original owner of my copy of Sunshine Book would think of it.....her name was written in the front, and I've actually just managed to find her profile on Facebook (she now has two kids of her own and is listed as having been to school eight miles from here). It is a very different world today, indeed.

Ludo and the Star Horse - Mary Stewart

First published in 1974. This has to be the first book in this blog, because it had a massive impact on me as a child. I'll review it when I am able to get hold of my copy again.