June 2013: Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Little House on the Prairie and our next meeting

This month we set off across the wide open spaces of the American mid-West to share Laura Ingalls Wilder's closely autobiographical story of the pioneer family trying to make a new life for themselves on the Kansas prairie during the 1870s.

The Little House on the Prairie (1935) was the second in a series of books that recalled the Ingalls family's 19th century adventures as they travelled in a covered wagon from Wisconsin to Kansas in search of a new life.  The ever-optimistic parents - a father who suffered from wanderlust, and a stoical mother - try to make a new home for the young family in Indian territory, where they have been told the land will soon be up for settlement, but they have no legal right to occupy their homestead and soon have to leave again in the face of native Osage Indian hostility.

Wilder's books resulted from a collaboration between Wilder and her daughter Rose who, while not named as co-author, was certainly responsible for the deft editing and promotion that helped to ensure these enduring tales of her mother's life - several of which won Newbery prizes  - were crafted to best advantage and continue to give much pleasure.  The stories are charming and engrossing, with fascinating and authentic period detail providing a real sense of American history.

The structure is formulaic and all the more enjoyable for that: the children are enveloped in a comfortable family with a protective and strong father and a warm, caring mother.  They are allowed to take risks but they can always return to the safety of the home.  There is a real sense of excitement as they leave their familiar surroundings and set off with their dog, Jack, in a covered wagon for an unknown future, crossing the Mississippi river and finding themselves in endless adventures.

Wilder's descriptions are beautiful but dense, and the story is seen entirely through young Laura's eyes, with limited narrative.  For modern readers, the author's attitudes to the native American Indians is unsettling, while entirely accurate from a historian's perspective.  The challenges of living without any of the social or physical structures that we are so used to these days are immense, but father and mother will always win through.

Wilder died in 1957 aged just 91 but 50 years later the Little House stories still endure, and there is now an enormous industry in the United States around her books, with museums in each of the main locations where the family lived.

The story of this endlessly self-sufficient family, getting by on limited resources and always surrounded by love, retains its charm and offers children today a real glimpse into a pioneering Victorian past.

Next month we are reading Geoffrey Trease's Cue for Treason (1940).

May 2013: Alan Garner's 'The Owl Service' and our next meeting

Today we tackled the "myths and legends" genre with Alan Garner's 1967 Carnegie award-winning classic, The Owl Service.  In 2007 this was a contender for the public's all-time favourite Carnegie winner, and was eventually voted as one of the ten most important children's books published in the last seventy years.  Children's book critic Julia Eccleshare credits Garner with having invented the young-adult fiction genre with this book. Quite a reputation, then.

One of our group had met Garner in 1974 during a school visit, and had brought along her signed copy of The Owl Service.  Describing herself as an Alan Garner fan, she remembered him as somewhat grumpy and rather intense, but with a strong aura and a definite sense of place.  Several amongst us had read and enjoyed The Owl Service  previously and preferred it to his The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.

A real sense of mythology and magic dominate the story of Roger, Alison and Gwyn - three hormonal, class-bound and somewhat prejudiced teenagers sharing an uncomfortable summer who become entangled in a human conflict with its roots in the ancient Welsh legend of Bloudewedd, a woman created from flowers who was turned into an owl for inciting her lover to kill her husband. 

There is an almost tangible atmosphere of claustrophobia and suspense, with lots of dark mutterings, rather strange locals and a dominant mother/step-mother who is only ever experienced off-stage, like a secondary character in The Archers.  The ancient Welsh/English hostility runs just below the surface, personified by Roger and Gwyn's tetchy relationship, while Alison is drawn terrifyingly into the myth, like Alice into a very dark looking glass, as she desperately cuts out paper owls from the template she has found on a set of plates.

Garner does not believe in spoonfeeding his young readers; this is a book which could easily be a novel for adults.  It demands you go away and research the Welsh myth on which it is based.  Only then do all the pieces of the story finally fall into place.  We took time to read through the story in the Mabinogion, a collection of ancient Celtic prose stories that were translated into English by Lady Charlotte Guest during the 19th century.  So that left us asking the question: is Garner writing for his own pleasure, or to educate?  The plates on which the story is based belonged to Garner's mother-in-law: the valley is real; this is a very personal tale.

Some described the structure as flawless and compulsive in its opacity; others said the story tailed off rather disappointingly.  It feels a little outdated now, with its class and race distinctions, but its position as a children's classic seems assured.