Children's Fantasy - Moomins & Wolves

When I first started buying books as a student at University, I had very little spare cash with which to do so. Somehow I managed to buy a few paperbacks a week from my meagre allowance. Children's books were the cheapest - you could get 4 books for $2.00 - and in many cases were more interesting, story wise. Naturally I was drawn to the more fantastic books in the range.

Tove Jansson's Moomin books were of course among those I purchased.

Here's a selection of covers of the Puffin books editions, with cover art by Tove Jansson.

Another children's book author whose books I keenly looked forward to right up to her death in 2004, was Joan Aiken. Her alternate history series which began with Wolves of Willoughby Chase were a particular favourite, though all her children's adventure stories are first class. She was a wonderful writer, her stories being marvellously eccentric.

I am missing the second book, Black Hearts in Battersea, in the "Wolves" sequence but I have all the rest. The Puffin books editions are all illustrated by Pat Marriott as are the Red Fox editions.

Cold Shoulder Road has cover art by none other than Edward Gorey.

The last two books in series (alas) are Midwinter Nightingale and The Witch of Clatteringshaws are both US editions, published by Dell and Delacorte Press.

Next - Lloyd Alexander and Susan Cooper

Children's Books - Moomins & Ravens

My interest in fairy tales naturally led me into exploring children's literature and I became something of an expert on the subject after working in the children's book section of a bookshop. I was unerringly drawn towards the more fantastical side of children's books, discovering such writers as Alan Garner, Joan Aiken and Tove Jansson's Moomin books to name a few.

I have all the Moomin books, mostly in paperback, but the three below are hard cover first editions which I acquired in about 1974.

Joan Aiken was a prolific writer - she wrote many children's books, most famously the Wolves of Willoughby Chase series set in an alternate historical Great Britain, many of them featuring her most engaging heroine, Dido Twite. I was saddened by her death 2004 shortly after her second last Dido Twite novel was published, as I've been following the Wolves series for years. All her stories have a charming eccentricity and outrageous plots.

She also had another series of books about a little girl and her pet raven Mortimer. They are hilarious stories as Mortimer foils robbers and gets up to all sorts of madcap raven mischief. They have delightful illustrations by Quentin Blake