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

Children's Fantasy - Lloyd Alexander & Susan Cooper

It is many years since I have read these books, but both series - Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain sequence and Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising books - are excellent, and could give the Harry Potter novels a run for their money.

The Chronicles of Prydain novels were originally published in the 1960s but I discovered them in 1973 when I first came across The Book of Three in an Armada Lion paperback edition along with its sequel The Black Cauldron. They tell the tale of Taran, assistant pig keeper to oracular pig, Hen Wen, and how he is forced into a dire adventure by her disappearance. The series continues in The Castle of Lyr, Taran Wanderer and The High King, the last three of which I have in Dell Yearling paperbacks.

Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series is highly regarded though I'm afraid I can't tell you much about them as I have forgotten the story, but the blurb at the back of the first volume Over Sea, Under Stone indicates that the story begins with "the discovery of an ancient map and a search for a buried Grail." The story continues in subsequent novels, The Dark is Rising, Greenwitch, The Grey King and Silver on the Tree.

All, except The Grey King, are Puffin paperbacks. The Grey King I bought in hard cover, no doubt impatient for the story to continue.

Next CS Lewis - Narnia and Tolkien