All that the Resident IT Consultant could say about Eva Ibbotson’s The Secret of Platform 13, was that Virgin doesn’t have anything to do with King’s Cross. That’s train nerds for you. Actually, he did say he liked it a lot, too. The Virgin connection is because the book we just rescued from Daughter’s shelves, was a freebie from Sir Richard, back when they wanted to impress families travelling by train.
At long last I’ve read the book that surely JKR must also have read. If she didn’t, it would be a real piece of proof that extremely similar ideas come floating through space at a particular time. No point listing all the similarities, because the stories aren’t the same. They are both a lot of fun, each in their own way.
I’ll begin by guessing that Eva is no fan of the country’s first female prime minister, judging by some of the more memorable characters in this book. Handbags and hairdos.
Platform 13 hides a door to an island that sounds like paradise. Like with so many trains, you can only get there very infrequently. In this case every nine years. A baby prince is kidnapped on one occasion, and needs to be found and brought back nine years later. It’s a Harry and Dudley kind of set-up, and there are many, many funny goings-on in London before things go as they should. This is a good, old-fashioned story, so you can tell from the beginning what will happen, but you don’t know how.
Good is good, and bad is bad. And I’m sure there is a reason why bad people are so often very fat. But I do have to say one thing in defence of the bad mother in this story. If you specifically ask for soup with no bits in, then a few leaves of parsley do not make it prettier or better. Think about it.
You have said the thing that I never dared to about JKR–I read Platform 13 years ago and always wondered if….
Well, there are several books like that as regards HP. The Worst Witch is another. But it’s OK that the whole idea isn’t original; it’s what JKR did with it that matters. And she did more than fine.
After all, read Milton after His Dark Materials, and you’ll notice a thing or two.
It’s not what you do, it’s what you do with it–I like that. I am a huge admirer of how JKR weaves a myriad sources of reference (classical, folk, random everyday) into a whole which really works and draws you in. And yes, Milton takes on a different gloss when you’ve read HDM. Still can’t get his poor daughters out of my head though, scribbling down those sublime words in the cold and semi-dark. I’ve never been able to enjoy him absolutely because of that.
I got a free promotional copy of ‘Platform 13′ from Ottakar’s many years ago but only just read it. I can remember loving Which Witch? and The Great Ghost Rescue enormously when I was a kid. She writes terrific baddies. And naturally the reader identifies with her eccentric & creative heroes, who just happen to be ghosts, ghouls, witches, hags etc.
It’s interesting what you say about fat baddies though. I was reading ‘The Stolen Lake’ the other day, and Dido Twite declares of the grotesque queen that it’s ‘impossible to feel sorry for somebody so very fat’. I wonder how many villains fall into this category in children’s fiction. It’s a neat Dickensian shorthand, but I have a feeling it might become increasingly sensitive now that the whole nation’s getting fatter (including, presumably, a great many bookish & sensitive young readers …)
Not to mention very sensitive bookwitches.