If your idea of the perfect afternoon involves a vintage bookshop, a slice of cake, and then another bookshop, then I hope that this blog is your jam (and your sponge). I review vintage children’s literature, picture books, adult non-fiction and everything in between. My specialist area is the boarding school story so if you’re after some Brent-Dyer or Blyton, then you’re definitely in the right place. I’m delighted that you’re here!
The Answers to The Sixth Ever Quite Niche Children’s Literature Christmas Quiz
Answers! Get your answers! (And if you’re looking for the original quiz itself, then here you go).
Round One: Lucky Thirteen!
- Room 13 = Robert Swindells
- The Secret of Platform 13 = Eva Ibbotson
- The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear = Walter Moers
- 13 Secrets = Michelle Harrison
- The 13-Storey Treehouse = Andy Griffiths
Round Two: Trilingual Translations
- The Chalet School Wins the Tour = The Chalet School Wins The Trick
- A Headmaster of the Chalet School = A Leader in the Chalet School
- The Chalet School Repeats the Violation = The Chalet School Does It Again
- The Bride Runs the Chalet School = Bride Leads the Chalet School
- The Transition to Adulthood at the Chalet School = The Coming of Age of the Chalet School
Round Three: Name That Mountain
- Jon Thrice =Tiernjoch
- Cents Sondheim Zip =Mondscheinspitze
- Be Of Prank =Barenkopf
- Cozen Snipe Thinness=Sonnenscheinspitze
- Badman Blare=Barenbadalm
Round Four: Hot Doctor Said What?
- “Right! Move back, [NAME]! [NAME], secure the rope round the axe. What’s that? Climbing-net? Good! Give him to me!” = Dr Eugen Courvoisier in Summer Term At The Chalet School.
- “Have your lemonade and take a Leckerli each. You girls are rotten bad hostesses. Here’s poor [NAME] standing looking longingly at everything and you can’t even offer her one little cake!” = Dr Jack Maynard in The Chalet School and Richenda
- “I think you will all like to know that the dolls’ house has netted twenty-five pounds five shillings” = Dr Frank Peters in Carola Storms the Chalet School.
- “…I will take a lantern now and go as far as I dare by its light, but I doubt if we shall find anything until the morning.” = Dr Gottfried Mensch in Eustacia at the Chalet School.
- “I thought perhaps the poor thing was shy of promenading down the aisle with everyone staring at her and I was trying to encourage her.” = Dr Laurence Rosomon in Joey Goes to the Oberland
Round Five: Name that animal book!
- Name that pony book: “The spotted circus horse with a back as flat as a table from years of being danced on by ladies in spangles and rosined shoes” = Stranger at Follyfoot by Monica Dickens
- Name that dog book: “[NAME] was outpaced by a man in a bowler hat and dark suit, carrying a briefcase. He had walked from Tooting and was going to his office in the City, where he liked to be at his desk by half past eight in the morning. He did this every morning – he was not a married man.” = A Dog So Small by Philippa Pearce.
- Name that cat book: “It gratifies me to see how mighty you have become, my familiar…” = The Alchemist’s Cat by Robin Jarvis
- Name that bunny book: “…but my yellow-and-blue-and-orange-and-pink spotty wellies are what I love best! I never take them off, not ever” = Martha and the Bunny Brothers I ❤ School by Clara Vulliamy.
- Name that bird book: “As he stared at the giant bird hovering over the fells, [NAME] remembered the thing Mum had said once. “We all come back as birds, [NAME]! Isn’t that a lovely thought? All the lost souls of our loved ones come back with wings.” = Bird Boy by Catherine Bruton
Tiebreaker: Ceci N’est Pas Une Author!
The Sixth Ever Quite Niche Children’s Literature Christmas Quiz
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Yes, the one where I try to desperately avoid making typos and hope that I’ve not messed up (apologies in advance if I have….) – it’s the Christmas quiz!
If you’re new here, I’ve done a Christmas quiz of a Very Niche Literary Nature over the past few years (here’s the archive). I publish the quiz itself on Christmas Eve and you get the answers on New Year’s Eve. It is a thank you to you and yours for all your support over the year. I am a small, happy fish within the world and it’s all down to people like you. Thank you! Please get at least one point!
There are five rounds of five questions each and a bonus tiebreaker round. Good luck!
Round One: Lucky Thirteen!
Please name the author of….
- Room 13
- The Secret of Platform 13
- The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear
- 13 Secrets
- The 13-Storey Treehouse
Round Two: Trilingual Translations
These Chalet School titles have been translated from English into French and then into German and then back into English with the help of Google Translate. Name that Chalet School book!
- The Chalet School Wins the Tour
- A Headmaster of the Chalet School
- The Chalet School Repeats the Violation
- The Bride Runs the Chalet School
- The Transition to Adulthood at the Chalet School
Round Three: Name That Mountain
The Chalet School girls loved nothing more than falling off a mountain or getting stuck on top of one – so can you figure these anagrammed mountains? (Some of them, I think, might be more “alpine passes” or “alms” or “hills” then actual “mountains” but I am not a “geographer” so let’s just let that moment of doubt add a bit of frisson to this round…).
- Jon Thrice
- Cents Sondheim Zip
- Be Of Prank
- Cozen Snipe Thinness
- Badman Blare
Round Four: Hot Doctor Said What?
We are on a Chalet School theme, I know, but what else can you do when there’s a hot doctor on the loose….SO. Which hot doctor said the following? And in which book? (I was terribly tempted just to put “hello” in this, but I am a merciful quiz mistress and have not…)
- “Right! Move back, [NAME]! [NAME], secure the rope round the axe. What’s that? Climbing-net? Good! Give him to me!”
- “Have your lemonade and take a Leckerli each. You girls are rotten bad hostesses. Here’s poor [NAME] standing looking longingly at everything and you can’t even offer her one little cake!”
- “I think you will all like to know that the dolls’ house has netted twenty-five pounds five shillings”
- “…I will take a lantern now and go as far as I dare by its light, but I doubt if we shall find anything until the morning.”
- “I thought perhaps the poor thing was shy of promenading down the aisle with everyone staring at her and I was trying to encourage her.”
Round Five: Name that animal book!
All of the following are quotes from a children’s book about or heavily featuring a particular animal. Your job is to name that book and the author…
- Name that pony book: “The spotted circus horse with a back as flat as a table from years of being danced on by ladies in spangles and rosined shoes”
- Name that dog book: “[NAME] was outpaced by a man in a bowler hat and dark suit, carrying a briefcase. He had walked from Tooting and was going to his office in the City, where he liked to be at his desk by half past eight in the morning. He did this every morning – he was not a married man.” (god what an AMAZING bit of writing this is)
- Name that cat book: “It gratifies me to see how mighty you have become, my familiar…”
- Name that rabbit book: “…but my yellow-and-blue-and-orange-and-pink spotty wellies are what I love best! I never take them off, not ever”
- Name that bird book: “As he stared at the giant bird hovering over the fells, [NAME] remembered the thing Mum had said once. “We all come back as birds, [NAME]! Isn’t that a lovely thought? All the lost souls of our loved ones come back with wings.”
Tiebreaker: Ceci N’est Pas Une Author!
It’s an icy night and the magritter’s out – the only problem is that they’ve magritted some authors. Your job is to see beyond the apple and name that author!
The Village by Marghanita Laski
The Village by Marghanita Laski
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
There is something beyond delicious about finding a new author whose every word on every page is simply good. The Village by Marghanita Laski was something I picked up almost by accident, attracted more by the copy of Dimanche and Other Stories, and then chosen simply for the buy one get one free offer that the shop had on. But oh, what a treat such moments are, such little twists of fate when they give you an author whom you know nothing about and whose pages just give you the good stuff from day one, such small, immense moments!
The Village is the story of a reckoning. It is the end of the war and the inhabitants of Priory Dean are about to realise what it means to live at peace, marked by the wild shift in social dynamics and life-living that have characterised the war years. It begins with a cast of characters (to which, I must admit, my heart sunk: I can never keep track of people before I’ve met them) and then it moves swiftly on to introduce our key players: the Trevors and the Wilsons, polar opposites of the class spectrum and about to have their lives intertwined in an enormously unimaginable way.
This is one of those novels where you have to confess that nothing enormous really happens but in a way, that’s underselling it because ‘class’, in this society, is enormous. It marks everything and everybody in Priory Dean and god, small village life, I adore it. I adore the minutiae of this book and the way that Laski knows that things happen in villages which can leave an impact for years – the way that ‘so and so’ did this thing and so they’ll be known by that for generations, the way that lives are so very carefully managed outside the front door, the way that gossip will flow around these communities as easy as water down the stream. It is intimate and precise and very elegantly done. Laski’s a smart, smart writer and every inch of this is a treat.
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That was the year that was: a 2025 reading recap
Goodreads tells me I’ve read 114 books this year and so achieved my “target” of 60. Hurrah? I think? Look, I always find the target thing a bit funny with Goodreads and so I always sort of pick something a bit at random. One hundred! Twenty-three! Honestly, it means very little (unless you’re doing the Summer Reading Challenge and then it means EVERYTHING, have you seen those prizes??).
(Also, it’s going to be 115 by the year end: I’m halfway through the divine The Village by Marghanita Laski which I shall commend to you entirely now and do so again once I write the actual review).
So! We’ve got a year’s worth of reading here and I’d like to pick out some of my favourites for you, just in case you missed them first time round. Also, it’s not too late to buy yourself a bonus present for Christmas. You should do that. I’ll write you a note.
On a fashion history note I was very taken with British Vogue: The Biography of An Icon by Julie Summers, not only for how well researched it was but how it constantly sought to find a link between Vogue’s world and that of its readers. It really feels very much how a good non-fiction book should think about its topic. Similarly 1939: The Last Season by Anne De Courcy was a wild delight and something that I think would be rather wonderful adapted to screen, as would Supper Club by Lara Williams (feminine anger is something I think we’re yet to get right on screen).
Film reading encompassed David Niven’s incomparable autobiography Bring On The Empty Horses, the rather brilliant Women Vs Hollywood by Helen O’Hara (I am using it for research for a Mysterious Project as we speak), and several books which were turned into powerful films including: Killers of the Flower Moon by David Gann, the unsparingly detailed Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden, and Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Kenneally. I had an enormous amount of time for Tony Curtis’ rawly honest (and often quite unflattering) memoir American Prince and also enjoyed Kiss Me Like A Stranger by Gene Wilder despite its rather careful edges.
Unexpected discoveries have characterised a lot of my reading this year. I was delighted to discover A Day in the Life of a Caveman , a Queen and Everything In Between and Battler Britton was a slightly hysteria-inducing find (subtle is not his middle name…). I also finally came across some long looked for reads: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee details a profoundly awful story on almost every page but it is, I think, a profoundly important read.
For comics, we’ve got the remarkable Woman, Life, Freedom which was both fiercely illuminative and fiercely humbling. In many ways I’m yet to find the words for it but I’d give it to you in a heartbeat. I also loved the sparkily distinct Boss of the Underworld: Shirley vs the Green Menace; and a return to the ever glorious Corpse Talk with Ground-Breaking Rebels (perfect, although I do wonder when we’ll retire ‘rebel’ in titles). I adored every inch of Phoebe and Her Unicorn (perfect for your pony obsessed little ones. And big ones. And also everyone), and Loki was everything everybody said it was.
Favourites from the year? Well, as I look down the list and cross check it against my “perfect” shelf, we’ve got a couple of Shirley Hughes’ – An Evening At Alfie’s and Alfie’s Feet. Fingersmith, a book I seem to read every ten years or so, is there as well, as is the sweetly heartbreaking-yet-also-perfect Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat, the previously mentioned Phoebe and The Unicorn (divine), and the graphic novel adaptation of Lord of The Flies. In terms of perfect covers, well it’s Spent by Alison Bechdel; How to Kill A Guy In Ten Ways by Eve Kellman, and the iconic Riders by Jilly Cooper.
It’s been a good year. A varied one. I like Lord of the Flies existing in the same space as Alfie (and I think that it might find some rather interesting common space with Riders…). I am yet to write a picture book or comic of my own but find myself yearning to do so. Perhaps this time next year? Fingers crossed!
(And just a reminder: The Village – Marghanita Laski. Divine. Small villages, nuanced class discussion, set at the end of WW2, a society in flux, deliciously quiet, fiercely acute, a general dream).
Spent by Alison Bechdel
Spent: A Comic Novel by Alison Bechdel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I just loved this. It’s been a while since I’ve read Bechdel’s work and I was delighted to come across this in the library and that feeling did not diminish one iota upon reading. Bechdel is wrestling with the world and her position in it and the fact that everything is pretty messed up. And yet it isn’t; she is part of a loving, deliciously funny, passionate, quirky, glorious space within the world and Spent tells the story of it. Alison’s pygmy goat sanctuary. Her friends’ experimentations with polyamory. Sex. Relationships. Moving from the margins to mainstream visibility due to the success of her work and TV adaptations. Becoming seen. Having her partner go viral with wood-chopping videos. Making content. Living, really, in the moment and loving who you’re with and what you’re doing.
It’s a witty, self-deprecating thing this, told in the third person by a wryly omniscient narrator about “Alison” and the art is just luscious: thick, rich colours, smart little visual jokes; GOATS, everything. It’s just so clever and so good and so palpably rich and full of such, such love for people and all of the ways that they can live their life. The thread about polyamory, including full and frank representation of their sexual relationship, is one of the more powerful threads for me and done with such grace and fun and honesty. Forgive the pun, but there’s an awful lot of love in this book.
There are characters here that Bechdel has already featured in previous work but honestly, I think you can come to this fresh and just enjoy a story of people peopling in complicated times. It’s lovely and I enjoyed it enormously.
British Vogue: The Biography of an Icon by Julie Summers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A well-written, purposeful biography of a century at British Vogue (or “Brogue” as one character refers to it), this is a real pleasure to read. We trace the beginnings of the magazine at the turn of the century, throughout the wild-horrors of two world wars, and then into the tempestuous rises and falls of more recent decades, and throughout all of this Summers maintains a firm respect for her subject and what it does. I welcomed this a lot; the book does not minimise the achievements of a popular magazine and its relevance towards its readership – each copy often being read by dozens, if not more, of people – and how it sought to speak both for and to the women of Britain.
There’s a noticeable strength here when Summers writes about the war years and in particular, the editorship of Audrey Withers. I was not surprised to see that she has written a book about Withers (Dressed For War: The Story of Audrey Withers, Vogue editor extraordinaire from the Blitz to the Swinging Sixties) and have added that to my list of things to read. I was also rather delighted by her work around iconic figures such as Cecil Beaton and Lee Miller and their remarkable work for the magazine.
What Summers does well is recognise that little frisson of excitement that comes with archival material; that when you are looking through something and forming connections with it in order to create a story, a narrative. It’s exciting because you start to trace the bigger pictures, the ones which move across years and you start to find patterns and echoes. I was particularly interested in the treatment of royalty; from the accidental scoop of Princess Diana’s engagement through to the Duchess of Wales’ editorship and cover photo, the purple covers on mourning and the genuinely joyful coverage of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.
It’s a thoughtful, comprehensive and well-made thing this. Summers manages to delicately point out some of the problematic aspects of the magazine and although I’d have welcomed some more of this (and in fact, I’ve heard the author speak thoughtfully about some of these issues in an event), I think it does what it can considering its context. For me, the greater strengths of the book come in those early years because we have that distance between author and subject and so some of the digging can happen a little clearer, a little cleaner.
I liked this a lot, I really did. There’s something so delicious about it. And that cover!
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Jean of Storms by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer
Jean of Storms by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I have been thinking about Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s approach to romance, for she was never the most romantic of authors to begin with. She could write romance and beautifully too; that subtle, underplayed need for each other, that quiet recognition that you are not whole without somebody else at your side, but also – she could not. She could be as subtle as a brick, as delicate as mud, and she could write the sort of engagement that might want you to throw your book across the room and though I shall not name the moment, you all know the one I mean.
But then there’s this, a serialised novel for adults first published in the Shields Gazette in 1930, a kind of proto-Young Adult novel in which a hot doctor hovers on the edge of a girl’s life and we all know what’s going to happen at the end of it because a hot doctor only has one destiny in a Brent-Dyer book. It is not subtle and yet, I always find some delicate grace in this firm belief in the goodness of doctors and their eternal strength of character and reading this against Brent-Dyer’s own life always makes me find connections between the (by all accounts horrible) death of her brother and how perhaps in a powerless situation, there is power to be found in the redemptive mark of pen and paper.
There is a lot of heart in Jean of Storms although it suffers from a few too many characters being written in accents (I cannot ever describe this coherently but I hope you know what I mean – I deeply dislike it) and the stereotypes of the day have aged terribly poorly. If you come to this with a young Chalet School fan, it is one worthwhile reading yourself beforehand because they will have questions and rightly so.
I found a rather tender love for the North East in it, a rarity in Brent-Dyer’s other work that I’ve read, and some rather beautiful writing about the sea and life on the edge of the world, being part of it. It is sometimes rather lovely and sometimes rather awful and yet there are moments here that speak far beyond themselves. But then, that’s the Brent-Dyer way isn’t it? Sometimes she’s very good and sometimes she’s very bad and sometimes she’s all of that wrapped into one.
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Battler Britton (volume 2)
Battler Britton, Book 2 by Anon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I was thinking the other day about how to write “funny” (stay with me, this will make sense soon I promise…). For me, funny books have to have a sense of utter conviction about them. You have to believe in every inch of them and the “funny” needs to be legitimately earned and unremarkable, in a way. It’s the kind of thing that if you turn to the viewer and point it out, then you lose it. If you do a knowing little wink when it happens, you lose it. What you have to do is believe in it and the world that you have created and know that what you’re having there is simply what happens in this space. And when you have that conviction, that belief, that truth then what you get is an elasticity of a sort which allows the funny to happen, the outlandish to occur, the whimsy to – whim.
And all of that came to mind when I was reading Battler Britton because this book believes every inch of what it is and what it is is remarkable. It is genuinely one of the best things I have read for quite some time and although I don’t want you to think that it’s the highest piece of literature out there (for it is not), I want you to know that this book does, in the vernacular, know itself. It knows every inch of what it is and what it wants to be and because of all of that faith in what it is, you get something rather brilliant. This puts the “gung” in “ho”, the “pat” in “patriotic” and gets you home in time for tea. If you read this to a class at school, back in the fifties, I would not have been surprised to see them scaling the ramparts and attacking the canteen by the close of the day. It is feverishly patriotic, utterly determined in its righteousness, and massively, utterly beguiling because of that.
Robert Hereward (I mean, amazing) Britton is known as “Battler” by his chums and is an ace of air, sea, foot, and everything in between. This compilation sees old Battler (I can’t) fly a plane when its rotor falls off; lassoo another plane in mid-flight so that it can tow his glider (I am not making an inch of this up) and break into a prison camp so he can break out again.
This volume is a mixture of comic strips and prose fiction, with the occasional non-fiction article about planes thrown into the mix. If you imagine an old copy of Eagle, you wouldn’t be far off in the tone and style. The art is all firm chins and purpose and “you’ll never make it Battler” and “I will, by jove” and there’s a bit where he lobs a cricket ball and explodes a bridge and another where he crashes a plane onto a ship and then stands on top of the plane and says “Up and at em, Lads! Remember Nelson!” and I am content in the fact that I am not making any of this up.
I was trying to figure out the difference between Battler and Biggles and I think that, somehow, it’s that air of belief in Battler that works for me (there’s far too many b-‘s in that sentence but I’m going to leave it). Battler Britton knows exactly what it is: a firm reminder that Britain did the good and right thing during the war and you might be suffering still now but remember that somehow, somewhere, we’re still kings of the waves. And the air. And can take down enemies with just a twig and a cricket ball. We’re number one!
It has dated awfully and features more than one or two isms but it wouldn’t ever do anything but. This is a volume tied firmly to that post-war period of recovery, of rebuilding, of remembering who we are and what we stand for and why we made all the sacrifices we did. It’s full of a jaw-dropping bravado, an utter sense of determination, and all delivered at such a fierce pace and with such firm self-belief that it’s difficult to resist.
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That Boarding School Girl by Dorita Fairlie Bruce
That Boarding School Girl by Dorita Fairlie Bruce
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
There’s something delicious in coming to Dorita Fairlie Bruce so randomly, so irregularly, because it feels like reading her for the first time every time. And as much as I’d like to devour all her work at once, I rather love that I have this kind of intermittent discovery of how good and how characterful her work can be. She is very good at giving strong character and I think that’s why upon reading this near-hundred year old book, it felt so fresh. And good! It felt good and I was just so struck by how you might ever dress up a school story (and however many missing wills or potential life-ending incidents the stories may hold), they survive because, at the best, they are stories about people being people. Messy, fun, loving, shy, awkward, people. And this is what That Boarding School Girl gives: people trying to do the best of their lives, in whatever shape that might be, and it’s so nicely done.
The second in a series, though it reads well-enough as a standalone, That Boarding School Girl is the story of Nancy who was expelled from her last school and is now trying to Make Good. She is paranoid about getting into troubles and trying to do the right thing wherever she can – and it’s not easy. She gets grief for working hard and trying to pass exams and when the school holidays come, she relaxes a little bit and her chums go “huh, why can’t you be this cool chick all the time?” but she is all “mais non, my chums, I cannot tell you for I have a secret.” As is the way in this sort of story (I’m not spoiling it, you all know it’s going to happen) her secret comes out and Shenanigans Ensue.
Where this book shines is in that sense of a person just trying to do good. Nancy is intensely believable and her relationships with the people around her are finely drawn and nuanced things. Fairlie-Bruce is awfully good with people and friendships and making them feel very real and true to life. She’s also very good at underplaying big emotional moments; there is one that I’m thinking of where Nancy’s Best Chum does something Super Best Chum Worthy and Nancy just has the tiniest, sweetest second of realising just what her Best Chum has done for her.
Sometimes a school story can have thin characters – boxes can be ticked and they can play a function within the text but not really have any other life other than playing that function. Where Fairlie Bruce shines is giving that sense of purpose to everybody on the page and off it. Even when characters are off doing other things or not mentioned for a whole chapter, you still have this sense of them being there and doing things and living their own little life and even if the ending may be a little thin or neatly done (it is, shall we say, perhaps what you expect it to be), you will allow it because you’re invested. You’re in. But then, I don’t think you ever would be anything else with this fun, fun thing.
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1939: The Last Season by Anne de Courcy
1939: The Last Season by Anne de Courcy by Anne de Courcy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
My only issue with this was that it was not long enough: I could have read it several times over. The Last Season tells the story of that final few moments of life before the war for a very privileged sector of society. Champagne flows, lobster is eaten until it runs out and then we have some more, there’s caviar for all, and house parties every other night (and every night in between) and eligible bright young things debuting and dancing and ugh, it is all delicious and I drank it all in. Structurally it’s fairly straightforward; de Courcy works her way around key figures and focal points such as the government’s final few inexorable steps towards the war, the race season, debutantes dancing the night away (chaperoned, naturellement), parties in freezing and enormous country houses where the butler would lay a ball of string out to guide you back from your room to the evening meal, I mean, ugh, I drink this all in, I do, I do.
I am fascinated by those moments of hinge, I think, where society is about to become something else and nobody knows it until, looking back, everybody does. Normally, you never know the big moments when you’re in them but there’s hints, here, of a generation knowing that everything is changing and that they are the last of their kind. I was fascinated by every chapter and moved by many of them – in one chapter, de Courcy writes about the university students of the time knowing that they will be the ones to go out and face it all … It’s hard to read, amazing to even realise, and beyond words to even, really, comprehend.
The Last Season shines in its frank delight in its topic, in its commitment towards primary sources and deeply delicious detail and sharing them with the reader – it’s hard to resist such moments as the Lady who attempts to bribe her maid’s driving text examiner: “…even if she is a little behind standard…please pass her”, Queen Mary’s gentle fishing for trinkets by complimenting them so much that the host would offer them to her, and the country house where newly arrived guests “found a dry martini, a carnation for a man’s buttonhole and an orchid for a woman’s corsage”, I MEAN, I adore it , I adore it. I’d have read this a thousand times over.
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Sergeant Luck’s Secret Mission by Geoffrey Bond
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
There’s a point where you think in a book that “that’s enough now, we’ve got there, we’ve hit all the character beats and everything’s pretty much set up now for us to roll on home in style” and sigh contentedly to yourself and think Noble Thoughts about the art of literature and adopt a Noble Expression as you do so. And many books conform to such a beat; they go “yep, we’ve done good you and I, let’s hit the finishing post together my friend” and all is well, noble, noble, etc. etc.
This is the sort of book which looks at ‘enough’ and laughs in its face; the sort of book which says “NO THAT IS NOT ENOUGH” and then adds everything it can to an already overstuffed plot and then, when all of that is not enough, throw in the kitchen sink, the secret heir to the House of Habsburg (a spoiler, perhaps, but this has been out three hundred years and you’ll never see it coming I guarantee it) and then, as if all of that is not enough, goes “i’m going to add a wooden hand to the mix”.
I mean, this saw “enough” and went “not today, not on my watch”.
And yet, despite all of its noise (and there’s a lot of it), it’s still a solid thing. Part of the Eagle empire, this was a spinoff of a popular comic strip “Luck of the Legion” which was published in the periodical itself, and it wasn’t alone: there’s a Dan Dare and a Belle of the Ballet novel along with several others featuring Luck himself. I didn’t know these novels even existed but I’ve always enjoyed Eagle and Girl when I’ve come across them and that’s due to the near-uniform high standard across the publications. There’s always good stuff here and it’s always stuff which knows precisely what it is – and I think that’s a good way to characterise this book. It knows precisely what it is, what it wants to be, and makes no bones about it. It strays merrily and wholeheartedly into stereotypes of the period that have not worn well for modern readers in the slightest but then it was never going to do anything other. It ends every chapter on a cliffhanger. It makes the Foreign Legion sound like the absolute best thing ever. The sidekicks are catchphrases with legs and you just don’t care because we’re all too busy believing in brotherhood and adventure but oh? did you want mysterious and meaningful flashbacks and flashforwards as well as this?? You GOT IT.
OH WHAT’S THAT? YOU WANT MORE? WELL THIS BOOK HAS GOT IT TOO.
I mean, it really has. I haven’t even mentioned the Aztecs.
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The Children Who Lived In A Barn by Eleanor Graham
The Children Who Lived in a Barn by Eleanor Graham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
So the basic premise of The Children Who Lived In A Barn, a book that appealed to me precisely because of that outstanding “does exactly what it says on the tin” title and a charming wraparound cover, is “the parents disappear for plot reasons and the kids are made homeless but then go off to live in a barn that the farmer’s offered them and everyone’s cool about that” and that’s a lot. I’ve read an enormous amount of children’s books from this period and earlier and I’ve seen some stuff, she says, staring into the infinite distance, that you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. And yet here I am, reading this book where the parents are all “we’ve got to go off now, our planet needs us” and the kids are all “cool, we’ll just chill out for a bit and wait for you to come back” and half of the villagers are deeply anti-authority, up the revolution, come hide in my barn for a bit, it’s all good, kind of all proved a little too much for me to cope with.
And yet, even though I could not remotely deal with the premise of this book, it’s charmingly put together and deeply evocative of both time and place. Graham’s writing is infinitely sweet stuff that, even though I found myself screaming “and everybody’s cool with these kids in the actual barn??”, I still found myself enjoying it. It’s otherworldly, forgotten stuff. The children are taught how to cook in a haybox (epic stuff which young readers could easily replicate) and the whole vibe is just one of deep, utter adventure. Even though it’s on mad, ridiculous circumstances. Even though the farmer’s like “live in my barn but don’t tell the Mrs”. Even though the villagers are all “we hate you but we hate authority more here’s some bacon”. Even though the ONLY normal person in this entire shindig who sticks up for the children at a particular point of crisis goes “well, they’re doing good” and completely ignores the fact that they are in a barn and winter is an actual coming thing and how is anybody remotely fine with any of this??
Honestly, fun stuff, adventuresome stuff, but! but!
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Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat by Ursula Moray Williams
Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat by Ursula Moray Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE DEEPLY EMOTIONALLY TRAUMATISED BOY HAVE I GOT THE BOOK FOR YOU.
SO! Beforehand: I pick up Gobbolino and I think gosh, what a delightful thing. I have hazy memories of this at best but positive memories and this is not always the case , perhaps it is time to revisit and see how I feel about this text today. I am not particularly familiar with Ursula Moray Williams but I always have positive vibes about her and then I find an edition with a foreword by Joan Aiken (JOAN AIKEN I shriek to myself WHAT A FOREWORD PERSON TO FOREWORD) and I think well yes, this is my jam, now is the time, let us read this warm and delightful story about the cat and remember why I liked it so much before.
THAT IS WHERE IT ALL WENT WRONG MY FRIENDS. I pick up this book, I discover that Gobbolino is a witch’s cat who wants to be a kitchen cat and have a home of his own and THAT EVERYBODY IN THIS BOOK IS AWFUL TO HIM AND IT DOESN’T STOP CAN’T YOU JUST LET THE CUTE CAT HAVE A HOME INSTEAD OF BEING SO AWFUL AND MEAN DON’T YOU MAKE ME COME ROUND THERE HE CAN’T BLAME BEING WHO HE IS STOP JUDGING ON APPEARANCES AND GET TO KNOW HIM HE’S LOVELY THIS IS FAR TOO STRESSFUL I DID NOT NEED THIS oh thank god.
This will traumatise your socks off and then traumatise your socks back on and you will love it every second of the way because it is perfectly, perfectly done. It is intensely simple, intensely clean and clear in style, and a beautiful thing to read aloud and you will love it and loathe it and will want to hug it and also, every other page, just mutter GOD STOP PICKING ON THE ADORABLE CAT YOU ABSOLUTE ROTTERS.
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Ponies in the Attic by Irene Makin
Ponies in the Attic by Irene Makin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A perfect cover, this, delivered by Elisabeth Grant who understands everything, but everything, that a pony book should be and manages to capture it in that still, breathless moment between human and animal. It’s beautiful and I love it and it’s the thing that made this fall off the shelf and into my hands. I was also intrigued by the fact that this was a Kaye Webb book, as she is one of those enormous figures in post-war children’s publishing that I am trying to read more about. So, a double dip of intrigue here and one which only grew and spiralled as I read: at its best, there’s more of a hint of Philippa Pearce in this slim, soft story, that sense of adventure about to begin, and that is always worth stopping for.
I am dreamy, I think, with books like this because they always make me think of summer holidays and the way that they felt endless and never-ending because they were. Nothing mattered beyond the moment and that, I think, is what makes this slender story work. There’s just over one hundred pages here and the plot is simple if you abstract it: a girl is lonely, neglected by her family and her siblings in her new home, but then she meets a boy and a pony and learns about the history of her new home. That’s really it. But then, it’s also not.
What this is is a story of a life in transition, of figuring out who you are going to be in complicated times, and of realising that there are other things and people and places out there in the world and you are connected to it all. It is a book for reading late at night when everything suddenly becomes a potential truth and it is for the morning after to remind that these things are still possible. I don’t think it’s perfect but I find it infinitely interesting because of those hints of Pearce and even, as I write this, of KM Peyton and her eye for people and for character. With more space this might be something remarkable but even in the bare breath that it has here, it’s more than worth spending time with.
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Illegal by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin
Illegal by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin, illustrated by Giovanni Rigano
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I have wanted to read this for a long while and finally came across a copy at my local library. I was familiar with Colfer due to his work upon Artemis Fowl and this title, I was familiar with, because I’ve seen a lot of good press for it. Sometimes that can detract from a book for me because The Discourse can sometimes be a little bit overwhelming of the text itself. I lose track of what the story is and I end up reading it through this kind of foggy filter that obfuscates the actual thing at the heart of it all. But time helps and distance helps and when I read this, I came to it and I found a lot of gentle, rather profound clarity within it.
I am looking for clarity more and more within stories at the moment, that ability to sit within a very precise moment and just inhabit it without rolling the text along. Perhaps this is as a result of reading a lot of other authors who will determinedly get you to the final page before you’ve even finished reading the first (no names but her name rhymes with Schmenid Schmyton), but I wonder if it’s also due to the amount of sheer stuff that’s in the world at the moment. We live with noise, a lot of it, and when some stories are told, others are silenced or, indeed, othered, and sometimes it takes time to hear and to trust and to determinedly tell those stories.
Colfer and Donkin deliver something very eloquent here and, although this may sound a strange word to use (stay with me), something rather soft. There is a gentleness about the colour palate, a sort of faded, sun-worn edge to it all where the colours are remembered and the story told in flashback until all of a sudden, the timelines merge and we reach a moment of trauma so potently rendered that it is quite the most powerful and simultaneously the most awful bit in the book.
The story moves towards an ending that some readers may suspect but one that, I think, Colfer and Donkin get away with because of the grace in which it is handled. It is a hopeful book this and one which finds hope even in the raw, ragged edge of things, and it is difficult to write hope and find hope in such situations but it is not impossible, I think, and it is often good.
Daisy May Johnson 