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Along the Bookshelf |
By Penny Hill
If you like Diana Wynne Jones’ style,
then what else might you enjoy?
This article gives me an excuse to trawl my "children’s"
bookcases and enthuse quietly about some of my other favourite "children’s"
writers.
I shall of course attempt to make this vaguely relevant with remarks
along the lines of "this shares that sense of real people and
their relationships", "this has a similar dislocation
between our and other realities", or whatever other plausible
comments I can make.
Working alphabetically (to avoid bias & because that’s how
our shelves are organised) Joan Aiken comes first. I’d recommend
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase sequence and the excellent Midnight is
a Place. This is a fantastic world in which magic could happen,
although usually it doesn’t. Some of the characters are fully
rounded and awkward - such as Dido Twite - others seem a little
pallid. It’s better than the television version shown last year,
trust me.
Next I’d mention Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain chronicles,
starting with The Book of Three, although I ought to go back and
re-read them myself, as I’ve now read rather more Welsh-based
fantasy and maybe these aren’t as original or as funny as I
remember.
My copy of Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt has a Pauline Baynes
cover but unlike the Narnia books you have a sense of a character who
has to make a genuine moral choice under un-, sub- or supernatural
conditions.
If you’ve not come across any of Lucy M Boston’s Green
Knowe books then keep your eyes peeled in the second-hand bookshops
(although you’ll be fairly lucky, they don’t seem to turn up
very often). The child protagonists are a little dull but the
supernatural elements are suitably tantalisingly elusive and the house
Green Knowe itself has an evocative atmosphere and sense of place.
Although Susan Cooper’s Over Sea Under Stone series had a big
impact on me as a child, I found that much of the magic had gone.
Perhaps I’m just getting cynical in my old age.
Helen Cresswell’s Moondial, however still works very well, both
the book and the television adaptation. I identify more with awkward
teenagers than meek 19th century style heroines.
Annie Dalton’s Night Maze was very similar to the Lucy M Boston
works in both style and content, so it’s good if you want more of
the same.
And now another favourite, Peter Dickinson, with not just The
Weathermonger trilogy but also the excellent Tefuga, The Seventh Raven
and The Gift. These last three are probably my favourites of his works
and share both the qualities I admire most about Diana’s work,
namely the genuine emotional make-up of the protagonists and the vivid
believability of the magic they encounter. If you see anything by him,
give it a go, trust me.
In passing I must mention Goggle-Eyes by Anne Fine which could be
read as a companion piece to The Ogre Downstairs. We were introduced
to this by a very good television adaptation a couple of years ago -
and were furious when we missed an episode and lost the thread. So of
course we had to buy the book and I’m very glad we did.
Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer is one of those good
time-travelling children’s stories like Tom’s Midnight
Garden (Philippa Pearce) and A Traveller in Time (Alison Uttley) which
leaves you with a haunting sense of loss and incompleteness. As a
child I found these books disappointing but now I can appreciate their
bittersweet endings.
It’s just as well that Nicholas Fisk concentrated on hard SF,
otherwise I’d have the problem of trying to fit him in here too -
but as it is I can just allude to him gracefully in passing - like
this - and move on to Alan Garner.
If you haven’t read any Alan Garner, go out and buy some now.
Maureen Kincaid Speller will be able to tell you why far better than I
can.
My personal favourites are The Owl Service and Red Shift, neither of
which I understood at all the first time through. Let me just warn you
that an awful lot is conveyed through some very sparse dialogue so
that you can easily find yourself missing things. Oh, and wasn’t
that a disappointing production of Elidor a while back? Was it just me
or was it very slow?
I have only recently discovered Nicholas Stuart Grey so for detailed
information I would point you in the direction of Caroline Mullen, but
be warned, his books are notoriously hard to come by. The Stone Cage
retells Rapunzel’s story through the eyes of a cat who could have
stepped straight out of Howl’s Moving Castle.
Tove Jansson’s Moomin books are great fun with some sense that
magic has a price and that not all people are able to let go and enjoy
themselves as unselfconsciously as the Moomins themselves do. On the
whole though, they’re (just?) an enjoyable romp.
I read Noel Langley’s The Land of Green Ginger many years ago
and had almost completely forgotten it. A continuation of Aladdin, it
has some lovely modern touches such as Nosi Parka the egg head who can
see the future. Some may find the Persistent Capitalisation of
Important Words a little Trying, but let me assure the Gentle Reader
that it is Worth It in the End.
I thoroughly enjoyed Madeleine L’Engle’s A Swiftly Tilting
Planet but other fans may find the Christian elements are
over-emphasised. Which reminds me, this is the book I was going to
take to work for David who (also) told me all about the Welsh
discovering South America.
Whilst looking at the explicitly Christian authors let us move on to
C S Lewis who you either like or you don’t. I read and re-read
all the Narnia books so many times when I was young that I am quite
incapable of examining them critically. Each sentence, almost, evokes
so many associations and images that I no longer really notice the
words on the page and their inherent racism, sexism and classism. In
the same way my own mental picture of Narnia is so strong I’m not
really aware of how much or little description there may be.
C S Lewis himself would like me mention to George MacDonald and his "modern"
fairy stories such as The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and
Curdie. Although these stories were written longer ago than the Narnia
series, they seem to have dated less, possibly through being set in a
fairly universal fairy tale land.
John Masefield’s The Box of Delights remains an excellent
Christmas book and the television version, though fairly primitive in
special effects is still very watchable, capturing both the sense of
wonder and of Advent.
Earthfasts by William Mayne is another novel we discovered through
children’s television. In this case, I think the television
series was in fact better, having been unobtrusively modernised. We
watched it again recently and were once again impressed by the power
of the performances of the two young leads. (One of whom has gone on
to better paid things in one of the depressing soaps, don’t ask
me which one).
Is it possible that Diana Wynne Jones may have been E Nesbit in an
earlier life? The bickering children and their inability to make good
use of their magical opportunities seem to echo one another across the
years. Try Five Children and It or The Phoenix and the Carpet.
You may enjoy Beverley Nichols’ books about The Wickedest Witch
in the World. I certainly did, although once again there is the
problem of good characters who come across as just a wee bit twee.
Mary Norton’s Bedknob & Broomstick covers similar ground
rather better with another very modern witch, but some children who
aren’t all sweetness and light. I also enjoy her Borrowers books
which work for me by keeping the magical elements to one basic premise
(borrowers exist) and examining the implications of this in an
otherwise ordinary world.
Jill Paton Walsh’s A Chance Child is breathtaking in its
examination of child exploitation with just one small magical element
to point the contrast and similarities between past and present. I
also really enjoyed A Parcel of Patterns, although it is outside the
scope of the current discussion.
My last author is another favourite, Robert Westall. His brooding
claustrophobic country landscapes and stifled family relationships in
The Scarecrows, Yaxley’s Cat and The Devil on.the Road make me
feel that any triumph over the magic is achieved at great cost. These
are not books to be read when feeling low.
I hope I’ve managed to give you a flavour of some of the other
children’s authors "out there". By its very nature,
this article has been little more than a list and a very biased one at
that. If there’s someone you think I’ve passed over, do
please let me know.
edited and produced by
Meredith
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