March 2012: our book display in Bath Library

Come along to Bath Library before the end of March to see our book group's display of beautifully bound classic children's books from the Library's collection.  They are in two secured glass cabinets next to the Reception Desk.  Many are now available to read online or as ebooks.  They range from Seagull Rock by Robert Black (1872) to a 1954 edition of Visitors from London by Kitty Barne, the first Carnegie winner (1940) to go out of print.  

There's an English Struwwelpeter by Dr Heinrich Hoffmann with its frightening illustrations of the boy with enormously long fingernails, and many other much-loved titles to stir childhood memories. 

Books we must get round to ...

Every time we meet, someone mentions a particular book, and we all say "Oh, we MUST get round to that one ... " so here's the Must Get Round To List.  We'll keep adding to it every month.  So many books, so little time ...

• Something from the Jennings & Darbishire series by Anthony Buckeridge (1912-2004): DONE
• Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (1877)
• Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken (1964)
• The Borrowers by Mary Norton (1952)
• Anything written by Mrs Molesworth (1839-1921) because her name keeps coming up: DONE (The Cuckoo Clock)
• The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken (1963)
• Five Children and It by E Nesbit (1902)
• The Phoenix and the Carpet by E Nesbit (1904)
• House of Arden by E Nesbit (1908)
• Mistress Masham's Repose by T H White (1946)
• The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling (1902)
• The Wool Pack by Cynthia Harnett (1951)
• Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1935)
• Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
• The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean by R M Ballantyne (1858)
• Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling (1906)
• Dragonfly by Julia Golding (2008)
• The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff (1959)
• Arthur: the Seeing Stone by Kevin Crossley-Holland (2000)
• Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (1876)
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868)
• War Horse by Michael Morpurgo (1982)
• Polyanna by Eleanor Porter (1913)
• The Nicest Girl in the School by Angela Brazil (1909) or similar
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)
• Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll (1871)
• Down with Skool! A Guide to School Life for Tiny Pupils and their Parents by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle (1953) or How to be Topp! A Guide to Sukcess for Tiny Pupils, Including All there is to Kno about Space (1954)
• Numbers by Rachel Ward (2009)
• The Railway Children by E Nesbit (1906)
• Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones (1977)
• Any book by Henry Treece
• Bows Against the Barons by Geoffrey Trease (1934)
• Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (1958)
• The Golden Treasury by Francis Palgrave and Alfred Pearse (1861)
• Carrie's War by Nina Bawden (1973)
• Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian (1981)
• The Arabian Nights
• The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Colludi (1883)
• The Box of Delights by John Masefield (1935)
• Any poetry by Roald Dahl
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)

Blue Peter Book Awards 2012

The children who watch the long-running British television programme, Blue Peter, have voted US author Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid the Best Children's Book of the Last Ten Years.  They chose from a shortlist of the ten best-selling (by volume) fiction books of the last ten years for 5─11s with a first publication date between January 2002 and December 2011. Only the top-selling book of each author was included.

Interestingly, boy heroes dominated - Greg Heffley, Horrid Henry, Harry Potter, Alex Rider, Theodore Boone, Thomas Peaceful and the young James Bond.  This gender skew must be something to ponder, given that girls are regarded as the more voracious readers.  The sole female protagonists were Chloe (Mr Stink) and Floss (Candyfloss), with the three Baudelaire orphans (Austere Academy) making up the list.  The shortlist by publication date was:

• A Series of Unfortunate Events: Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket (2002) 
• Alex Rider Mission 3: Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz (2002)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J K Rowling (2003)
• Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo (2003) 
• Young Bond: SilverFin by Charlie Higson ( 2005) 
• Candyfloss by Jacqueline Wilson (2006)
• Horrid Henry and the Football Fiend by Francesca Simon (2006)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney (2008) 
• Mr Stink by David Walliams (2009)
• Theodore Boone by John Grisham (2010)

Blue Peter Awards 2012

March 2012: T H White's "Sword in the Stone" and our April book

This month we've been reading The Sword in the Stone by Terence Hanbury (T H) White, published in 1938.  This whimsical children's story by the former Stowe schoolmaster - based on Malory's Morte d'Arthur (1485) - was an instant success when it first came out, with Walt Disney acquiring the film rights in 1939. White amended it to become the first volume in his more serious - and much less readable - Arthurian quartet, The Once and Future King (1958).  Lerner and Lowe purchased the latter three books to make the successful musical Camelot in 1960. This finally motivated Disney to make the cartoon version of The Sword in the Stone: it came out in 1964, one year before White died suddenly aged 57 in Piraeus, on board the ship on which he was returning from a lecture tour of the United States. He was buried in Athens.

One of us had read and loathed The Once and Future King leading to some reluctance to tackle The Sword in the Stone.  Luckily, these fears proved unfounded!

Our wide-ranging discussion touched on aspects of White's somewhat eccentric and melancholy life as well as the book's extensive sources and intertextual references.  Having persevered through the first chapter with its obscure falconry language - evidence of his own passionate enthusiasms - we all agreed that (rather like King Pellinore's Quest) it had been worth the struggle!  In fact, the shape of the book seemed to echo White's melancholia with its highs and its lows, personified by Pellinore and the Beast eventually coming to terms with their inter-dependency.

There were so many "highs" to talk about, despite some of the dated language.  The description of the interior of Merlyn's cottage, so like Remps' 1690 painting of a Dutch cabinet of curiosities that we felt White must have been describing it; the perfectly-behaved English weather when the white snow never turns to slush; the night in the mews; Wart's transfigurations into animals, birds or fish; the scenes with Robin and Maid Marian; the modern references (such as Merlyn appearing like Lord Baden-Powell in running shorts, or the cigarette cards of wildfowl paintings by Peter Scott); the trees' discussion about their various utilities; the Wind in the Willows-like scenes with Athene and the hedgehog and badger ... It was interesting too with White's interest in Catholicism to recognise the religious references - including salvation for the wicked bankers! 

The American Book-of-the-Month Club magazine wrote in 1939: "Mr. White is evidently a scholar. His knowledge of the codes, the customs, the courtesies of medieval England, is extraordinary ... This book is unique. You may not like it if you cannot take a mixed drink of phantasy and realism, edged with satire, and beautifully blended by a humorous imagination. But if you like it, you will not like it moderately."

We didn't all like The Sword in the Stone, but those of us who did, definitely did "not like it moderately". 

Our next book is Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin but we won't be meeting until Wednesday 2 May because of the Easter holidays.  It's going to be hard to wait that long!