Children's Books - Classic Children's Fantasy

This is the last post on children's fantasy and I'll be covering here some old classics.

Firstly John Masefield's Midnight Folk. John Masefield was Poet Laureate from 1930 to his death in 1967.

Eric Linklater's Wind On The Moon is another old style fantasy which was briefly reviewed in the Curiousity section of Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine in 2003.

Two odd children's books - The Hunting of Wilberforce Pike by Molly Lefebure about a cat thief who snatches cats off the streets to be made into fur coats and draws upon himself the ire of the Power Station gang - a mysterious cat underworld who seek revenge. Bottersnikes & Gumbles by S A Wakefield is an Australian children's book with a great cover.

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster is quite famous and needs no introduction. A very unusual fantasy indeed. The illustrations in this Armada Lion edition are by Jules Feiffer.

Two favorite books from my childhood were A Traveller In Time by Alison Uttley and The Little Bookroom by Eleanor Farjeon. The first is a ghost story and the second is a collection of short stories.

The Adventures of Uncle Lubin was written and illustrated by W Heath Robinson. I need say no more.

I've left the best to last - Ronald Searle's extremely funny How To Be Topp.

The Private Life of the Gerund Click for larger view

Coming next - Science Fiction!

Children's Books - Animal Themes

I remember as a child I was very fond of animal stories - I ploughed my way through such classic writers as R M Ballantyne and Jack London and some other writer whose name escapes me.

Anyway, I have a few such like animal stories in my collection of children's paperbacks. These included Charlotte's Web which is missing.

Everyone has heard of Watership Down by Richard Adams - a big hit back in 1972. There was even a film made of the book. But truth to tell, every time I think of Watership Down I recall this urban legend which relates to a butcher somewhere in the UK who had a sign outside his shop advertising rabbit meat. It said " You've seen the movie, you've read the book, now eat the cast."



Also rather famous in their time are the archy & mehitabel books by Don Marquis.

As the blurb says "archy is a cockroach who writes free verse on an office typewriter; mehitabel the cat claims she was once Cleopatra. As she can't type, archy, a wit, a scandal-monger and a philosopher, is forced to be her reporter."

Also involving cats is T S Eliot's Old Possums Book of Practical Cats - another very well known book which was the inspiration for the musical "Cats"

Another charming animal story is The Pig Plantagenet by Allen Andrews described on the back as a tale of wit and enchantment.

And how could one go past Russell Hoban's wonderful The Mouse & His Child. My paperback edition of this book is signed by Russell Hoban whom I met in 1984.

Next - more old children's paperbacks, I promise it will be the last of them for the time being.

Madeleine L'Engle & Peter Dickinson - Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

For some reason or other I do not have the first volumes of either Madeleine L'Engle's Time series or Peter Dickinson's Changes Trilogy. I think this is because when we moved to this house 20+ years ago a box of books went missing in the move. I am gradually discovering what was in that box - a bit late I know, but I always wondered what it contained.

So you get incomplete series in this post.

Madeleine L'Engle is famous for her book A Wrinkle in Time a sort of time travel adventure. The sequels are A Swiftly Tilting Planet and A Wind in the Door. There were two other books, but I don't have them, but have an unrelated book, The Young Unicorns.

Peter Dickinson is another excellent children's and young adult book writer. His The Changes trilogy, SF set in a near-future England in which use of machines is equated with witchcraft. I have the second two books in the trilogy, though I'm certain I had Weathermonger at some stage.

He has written many books and I have several individual novels such The Dancing Bear, Blue Hawk and Tulku which won the Whitbread Prize and the Carnegie Medal 1979. Below are the covers.

Next - to wind up the children's fantasy section - a miscellaneous selection of old and unusual juveline fiction.

Alan Garner & Rosemary Harris - Weirdstones & Ancient Egypt

I discovered Alan Garner in 1968 as I was buying books on my meagre allowance and exploring the children's books sections of various bookshops. Alan Garner's books were quite wonderful - exciting supernatural fantasies, to which I became addicted. The first of these was The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and its sequel The Moon of Gomrath.

Of course after that I looked for his books whenever I was book browsing. The Owl Service was made into a Television Series in 1969, so the cover of my copy has a scene from that, though I am sure I had another edition of it originally. Elidor is the other fantasy of Alan Garner's I have in my collection.

Rosemary Harris wrote a charming trilogy set in ancient Israel and Egypt which began with the Carnegie Medal winner The Moon in the Cloud, where a humble animal tamer and musician is forced by Noah of Noah's Ark fame, to fetch a cat in Egypt to make a pair with his (the animal tamer) own cat. The condition is that he must find the cat to be included on the Ark, otherwise he and his wife will be left to drown. The story follows his adventures as he makes his way to Egypt and how he secures the cat.

The story is continued post flood in The Shadow of the Sun and The Bright and Morning Star. All the books are beautifully written and slyly humorous.

Coming next - more children's fantasy - Madeleine L'Engle and Peter Dickinson

Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons

Arthur Ransome's children's stories set originally in the Lakes District of England were favourites of me and my brothers when we were growing up. We read the entire series of books, and an abiding fondness for the books drew me to collect them again in adulthood.

Arthur Ransome led a very interesting life as is described in detail on his Wikipedia entry. His second wife Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina was Trotsky's personal secretary. He met her while he was covering the Russian Revolution as a journalist for The Daily News, a radical newspaper of the time.

When he retired from journalism to the Lakes District he began his famous Swallows & Amazons children's books.

He also illustrated them and as you will see in the covers below, his art style is quite exquisite. I love the fresh bright colours and the meticulous design of his drawings and paintings.

Unfortunately I am missing the first book Swallows & Amazons but I did find a copy on the web, so I'm including it here. My puffin editions are the 1968 editions which used Ransome's paintings on the covers.

I don't have the entire series in this edition - either I didn't buy them at the time or they've gone missing.

Next - Alan Garner's Weirdstone of Brisingamen and other fantasies

C S Lewis and Tolkien

Not that I've read them for decades, I do have a complete collection of the Narnia books in Puffin paperbacks, all with illustrations, as well as the cover art by Pauline Baynes.

The Tolkien paperbacks are individual copies of various works by the man or about them as is the case with The Guide to Middle Earth published by Ballantine.

The following edition of The Hobbit is an Unwin paperback. The cover art is by Tolkien himself.

Next - Arthur Ransome - Swallows & Amazons