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.

April 2013: Mrs Molesworth's "The Cuckoo Clock" and our next meeting

We finally took on Mrs Molesworth's The Cuckoo Clock (1877) this month, having put it on our Books We Must Get Round To list at our very first meeting two years ago.  It was the book that established Mrs Molesworth (1839-1921) as a leading children's author, and a prolific one too - the Enid Blyton of her day, perhaps.  By the time of her death in her early 80s she had produced over a hundred books, sometimes writing as many as seven in a year.  Below is a picture of author Rosemary Sutcliff's own copy of The Cuckoo Clock, sitting on the shelf in her library.

Mary Louisa Molesworth was born in 1839 in Rotterdam where her Scottish father, Charles Stewart, worked as a shipping agent.  The growing family soon returned to England and settled in Manchester, eventually moving to Whalley Range (then a select middle class suburb on the outskirts of the city).  As a teenager, Mary Louisa attended classes given by Reverend William Gaskell, husband of the famous industrial novelist, Elizabeth Gaskell.  She also spent a year in Switzerland, studying French.

In 1861 Mary Louisa married well: to Captain Richard Molesworth, nephew of the 7th Viscount Molesworth.  The couple lost two of their children in close succession in 1869, but five others survived into adulthood.  Mrs Molesworth published her first novel in 1870, and her first children's book, Tell Me A Story, was published in 1875.  The marriage was an unhappy one and ended in legal separation in 1879, by which time Mrs Molesworth was an established author.  Her admirers included the poet Swinburne, who wrote: "Any chapter of The Cuckoo Clock is worth a shoal of the very best novels dealing with the characters and fortunes of mere adults."

In The Cuckoo Clock young Griselda is taken to stay with her very old maiden aunts who live with a very old servant in a very old house - reminiscent of Lucy Boston's The House at Green Knowe.  We don't know why she's there, but she's lonely and bored and she's required to be good.  There is something of Katy in What Katy Did about her.  She strikes up a friendship with a magical cuckoo in a clock, who takes her on various gentle adventures.  Eventually she makes friends with a real child: a  boy called Philip, and the cuckoo tactfully flies back to his clock (which turns out to have been made by Griselda's grandfather).

Mrs Molesworth often wrote about lonely children finding friends with magical help.  Her  cuckoo is strict, sharp and quick to chastise.  Using animals as bossy teachers and guides is a familiar technique amongst many of our favourite children's authors - C S Lewis adopted it in his Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956), as did E Nesbit, whose Psammead (Five Children and It, 1902) was frequently acid-tongued, but Mrs Molesworth's overly-didactic and moralistic approach does become rather heavy-handed by contrast.

Overall, we felt that The Cuckoo Clock was an interesting historic piece, but insipid: Alice without Lewis Carroll's originality.  There were some charming ideas (a nightdress decorated with real butterflies and scented drops of dew for refreshment, for example), but the story didn't make any great progress, the adventures were lacking in punch, and the author was at times frustratingly lazy ("This wonderful thing happened but I can't explain it").  It did bring to mind other more pleasurable books: the Mrs Pepperpot series (Alf Proysen, 1956 onwards) and The Faraway Tree series (Enid Blyton, 1939-1951) were both mentioned, as was The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1911).

Maybe we'd enjoy one of Mrs Molesworth's many other books more (The Tapestry Room, 1879, perhaps, or The Carved Lions, 1895).  As to her reputation as "the Jane Austen of the nursery": on this one reading it doesn't seem to be justified.  The advantages of the e-book generation come to the fore here; no financial outlay is required to give more of her books a try as many are freely downloadable.

Our next meeting is on Wednesday 8 May 2013, when we will be talking about Alan Garner's 1967 Carnegie-winning fantasy, The Owl Service, named in 2007 as one of the top ten Carnegie-winners of all time.

March 2013: Mary Treadgold's 'We Couldn't Leave Dinah' and our April book

This month we finally - and for some of us, reluctantly - got round to reading a "pony" book; but in an attempt to find something rather more complex than the standard "gymkhanas-and-jodhpurs" stories, we chose Mary Treadgold's Carnegie-winning We Couldn't Leave Dinah (1941), brilliantly illustrated by Stuart Tresilian who also illustrated some of Enid Blyton's later books.  

Set in the summer holidays on the fictional island of Clerinel, somewhere south of Plymouth during World War II, We Couldn't Leave Dinah appears to draw on Treadgold's own childhood holidays in the Channel Islands, with the story echoing the de-militarisation by Britain and their subsequent German occupation.  'It combines evocative landscape descriptions with a gripping adventure story, giving a powerful and moving account of the complexities of divided loyalties, collaboration and threatened relationships in an occupied country, seen through the analytical eyes of teenagers.' (Oxford DNB)  Sadly, despite its award-winning status, it is out of print and quite difficult to find.

Born in 1910 into a comfortably well-off home (her father was a member of the London Stock Exchange), Mary Treadgold was educated at the famous St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith before graduating with an MA in English Literature from Bedford College, University of London in 1936.  She became a children's editor at Heinemann but, dismayed by the 'staggering number of manuscripts about ponies and pony clubs ... the majority quite frightful', decided 'I could do better myself!' and resigned to write her own.  We Couldn't Leave Dinah was developed during time spent confined to air raid shelters in the last months of 1940, and was published by Jonathan Cape in 1941.  Mary joined the BBC in 1941 where she spent 20 years, editing and producing Books to Read before becoming editor of the West Africa service.  She worked briefly with BBC propagandist Eric Blair (George Orwell) who was also at the Overseas Service between 1941 and 1943, and may even have shared his office, the notorious Room 101.  She published eight books for children amongst other works: her final novel, (Journey From The Heron) appeared in 1981.  Mary died in 2001, aged 95.  She never married.

Most of us really enjoyed We Couldn't leave Dinah, and there was a lot of laughter when  we met to talk it over.  However we agreed that - whatever Treadgold's intentions - it really isn't a traditional "pony book" at all.  It may not be her best work either, but it's a page-turner of a thriller, combining adjective-rich prose with breathless feats of derring-do; focused on a tiny island community's response to invading enemy forces in a story where the ponies turn out to be useful props, rather than central to the plot.  With mother conveniently out of the way in Africa, and their father and younger brother evacuated to ghastly cousins in London's Eaton Square, Caroline and Mick are accidentally left on Clerinel with their ponies, and become involved with the Resistance.  Interestingly, we felt that the Melendy children in far-away New York in The Saturdays (1941) were more acutely aware of the war's impact on London than the children on Clerinel in We Couldn't Leave Dinah.

Unsurprisingly propagandist, and - perhaps more surprisingly - in need of a little prudent editing, with some flat-footed racial stereo-typing ("bullet-headed" Germans, plucky English children, phlegmatic and possibly collaborative French-speaking locals), occasionally inconsistent characters, some poorly constructed German sentences and unlikely plot points (would the head of an invading force really bring along his grand-daughter and her maid?), it was nevertheless a compelling read, with human interest as well as humour.

The book invoked memories of other much-loved island and pony stories including Pat Smythe's much-loved Three Jays series (my favourite was Jacqueline Rides for a Fall, 1957); the Pullein-Thompson sisters' many horsey books; and Enid Blyton's Scottish island jaunt, The Adventurous Four, also published in 1941.  Someone mentioned narrative echoes of John Buchan, while Bedknobs and Broomsticks (Disney, 1971) based on Mary Norton's The Magic Bedknob (1943) and Bonfires and Broomsticks (1945), also sprang to mind.

One of our group had purchased a copy of We Couldn't Leave Dinah which was inscribed as a gift for Christmas 1944 to a little girl called Evelyn: we wondered how Evelyn must have felt to be reading the story while the Channel Islands were still occupied and war was  raging across the world.

Has the "pony genre" improved since Mary Treadgold was so despairing in 1940?  Our view is most definitely not.  Recent publications we've read are more shallowly plotted, with overmuch attention being paid to grooming and schooling rather than any more interesting action.

And finally, with apologies for the plot spoiler, we found that Caroline "Could Leave Dinah" after all ...  

Our next book is one from our "Books to Get Round To" list: Mrs Molesworth's morally instructive The Cuckoo Clock (1877).

February 2013: Diana Wynne Jones' "Magicians of Caprona" and our March bookbook

The Montagues and the Capulets; the Sharks and the Jets?  This month we came face to face with Diana Wynne Jones' magical Montanas and Petrocchis in The Magicians of Caprona (1980), the third book in her Chrestomanci series.

The two warring Italian families live in their sprawling, fortified spell-houses in the city state of Caprona, located somewhere between Florence, Siena and Pisa and set in an indefinable time - a "world parallel to ours, where magic is as normal as mathematics and things are generally more old-fashioned".  Caprona is rather like Lyra's Oxford in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy (1995-2000).  The tourist buses circulate, while the families ride in magical horse-drawn carriages and work at spells in the Scriptorium.  Sworn enemies, they do everything they can to outdo one another while firmly believing the worst of each other.  But while they are fighting, they fail to notice that their city is falling under an evil enchantment.  Young Tonino is the only person in the Montana household who wasn't born with an instinct for creating spells.  His ability to communicate with cats might help Caprona - but only if he can cooperate with a girl from the hated Petrocchi family.

The book has a rather lengthy beginning, which required some application and stubborn persistence, with its numerous Italianate characters ("The Montanas were a large family") all delaying the narrative and crying out for a family tree to be included by a helpful publisher.  But right from the bright and colourful beginning, with gorgeous descriptions reminiscent of the market place in Angela Carter's short story The Kiss (1985), Wynne Jones' unique style, her powers of description and her humour shine from the pages.

"The Old Bridge in Caprona is lined with little stone booths, where long coloured envelopes, scrips and scrolls hang like bunting.  You can get spells there from every spell-house in Italy.  If you find a long, cherry-coloured scrip stamped with a black leopard, then it came from Casa Petrocci.  If you find a leaf-green envelope bearing a winged horse, then the House of Montana made it."

The story gradually darkens with family feuds, terrifying magical street battles, and a Punch and Judy sequence that plunges the protagonists into a darkly frightening place from which they must escape.  Benvenuto, the wise and independent old cat, provides Tonino with a welcome familiar in the tradition of Carbonel (Barbara Sleigh, 1955), Orlando (Kathleen Hale, 1938) and - rather more sinister - Blackmalkin (John Masefield, The Midnight Folk, 1927).  There are overtones of J R R Tolkien too - one of Wynne Jones' tutors at Oxford University where she was a student of English Literature.

The story is told from Tonino's single narrative viewpoint.  This is a useful technique, which allows a 'reveal' when a weak character (viewed from the narrator's perspective) is suddenly seen in a different light.  "Re-reading pays dividends" someone said, and for those who did re-read the book, this offered an the opportunity to appreciate the hidden dimensions of all the characters and to see the story's many different levels more clearly.

With her own memories of a difficult childhood, growing up largely without books, Wynne Jones emphasises the importance of strong family relationships and this is a story that will help children to understand that the process of growing up and breaking out can make them stronger in the end.

Alongside Magicians of Caprona, we read the transcript of a talk about Diana's work given by her son, the academic Dr Colin Burrow of All Souls', Oxford.  It was broadcast on BBC Radio Three on 4 July 2011 as part of a series The Essay: Dark Arcadias.

Further recommended reading: Four British Fantasists: Place & Culture in the Children's Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones and Susan Cooper, Charles Butler, Scarecrow Press, 2006.

For our next meeting we will be reading Mary Treadgold's Carnegie-winning book We Couldn't Leave Dinah (1941), a book that extends the conventional "pony genre" to incorporate a darker perspective of life during World War 2 - this time on an island under occupation, rather than in the cheerfully distant New York of the Melendy family.

Lovely Lists: Bath's Own Children's Authors and Illustrators

Here's the start of an interesting list: children's authors and illustrators who have some association with Bath ... if you can think of anyone else, just let me know or add to the Comments box.

Allan Ahlberg who, together with his illustrator wife Janet created Peepo!, Burglar Bill, Each Peach Pear Plum and many other classic children's books, lives in Bath. Born in Croydon, Allan was brought up in Oldbury in the West Midlands.  He writes from a shed in the back garden of his town-house. Janet Ahlberg died in 1994, sadly aged only 50.

David Almond was appointed Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University in 2012. He's a prize winning children's author, perhaps best known for Skellig and My Name is Mina (which we read in January 2012).

Grahame Baker-Smith won the 2011 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal for his illustrations for FArTHER.  Born and raised in Oxfordshire, he lives in Camden in Bath.

Elen Caldecott graduated with an MA in Writing for Young People from Bath Spa University and now lives in Bristol. She was shortlisted for the 2009 Waterstones' Children's Book of the Year. Operation Eiffel Tower was shortlisted for the Red House Children’s Book Award 2013.

Jim Carrington, a Carnegie nominee for Inside My Head, was born in Norwich and studied at Bath Spa University.

Under her maiden name Sheila Chapman, Sheila Jeffries wrote four children's novels in the popular 'pony story' genre. Sheila studied at Bath Academy of Art and began to write full time in 1982 under the name Sheila Haigh.

Tracey Corderoy moved to Bath from South Wales when she was eighteen to study at Bath College of Higher Education. Her books include the Willow Valley series and Whizz Pop, Granny STOP!

Nicola Davies / Stevie Morgan trained as a zoologist and worked for the BBC before becoming an author. What’s Eating You was shortlisted for the American Association for the Advancement of Science children’s book prize for 2008. Nicola is a senior lecturer in creative writing at Bath Spa University. 

Kim Donovan studied for her MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University. She is the author of St Viper’s School for Super Villains.

Sam Gayton moved to Bath aged 26 to take the MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University.  He worked as a teaching assistant at Widcombe Junior School and launched his debut novel, The Snow Merchant, at the Bath Children's Literature Festival in 2011.

Che Golden spent her childhood between County Cork and London.  She is a graduate of Bath Spa University's creative writing course.  Her first novel was The Feral Child, in 2012.

Julia Green, author of Blue Moon and Baby Blue, is a senior lecturer at Bath Spa University.

Sarah Hammond studied for her MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University. The Night Sky in my Head was shortlisted for the Calderdale Children’s Book of the Year Award 2013 and the Leeds Book Award 2013.

Candida Harper (C J Harper) is another graduate from Bath Spa University's MA in Writing for Young People.  Her first book is The Disappeared, published in January 2013.

 

Marie-Louise Jensen went to school in Bradford-on-Avon.  She studied for her MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University.  She was shortlisted for the 2009 Waterstones' Children's Book of the Year.

Dick King-Smith (1922-2011) taught at Farmborough primary school near Bath, and spent the latter years of his life in Queen Charlton, a village just outside Keynsham, between Bath and Bristol.  He is best known for The Sheep Pig, on which the movie Babe was based.  

Gill Lewis has a Masters degree in Writing for Young People from Bath Spa University and won the 2009 course prize for most promising writer.  Her first children's book was Skyhawk.  She lives in Somerset.

Sue Mongredien grew up in Nottingham but lives in Bath.  She has published over 100 children's books, including the popular Oliver Moon series.

Sally Nicholls' first children’s novel, Ways to Live Forever, was written while she was a student at Bath Spa University: it won the Waterstones' Children's Book of the Year Award in 2008.

Maudie Smith is another graduate of Bath Spa University. Her debut novel for children was Opal Moonbaby.

Geoffrey Trease (Bows against the Barons, Cue for Treason etc) spent his last years in Bath, to which he and his wife had moved from Malvern shortly before her death. He died in Bath in 1998.

Stephen Voake (The Dreamwalker's Child) is a prize-winning author and former head-teacher who is now Senior Lecturer in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University.  He comes from Midsomer Norton and lives near Bath.

Rachel Ward lives in Bath.  Her first novel, Numbers, (published 2009), was shortlisted for Waterstones' Children's Book Prize and longlisted for the Carnegie. 

Jacqueline Wilson was born Jacqueline Aitken in Bath, where her father was working as a civil servant.  She first found fame with the Tracey Beaker books, going on to become Children's Laureate 2005-2007.

Bath-based Moira Young won the Costa Children's Book of the Year prize 2011 for Blood Red Road.  A native of Canada, she came to the UK in 1983/4 and now lives in Bath.

We have a winner! Landmarks & Legends Writing Competition

Our book group has a prize-winning children's author of its very own!  Congratulations to Hannah Sackett on becoming the first winner of the Landmarks & Legends creative writing competition organised by Salisbury Cathedral in conjunction with Orion Children's Publishing, in collaboration with children's author Cornelia Funke, of Inkheart fame.

Landmarks and Legends writing competition was launched by Cornelia Funke in October 2012 for the UK launch of her book Ghost Knight, which was inspired by Salisbury Cathedral and the true story of the first person to be buried there. Stories submitted to the competition had to be set in a real, historical location and include some real characters from history or be based on actual events and local legends.  They also had to be suitable for children between ten and fifteen years old.

You can read Hannah's winning story, the Bath-related Legend of Bladud (as told by one of his pigs) here. Salisbury Cathedral Story Competition Winner

There's more information about the competition, the winner and the runners-up here. Salisbury Cathedral Press Release about Landmarks & Legends competition