A Necklace of Raindrops

Some years ago Daughter begged a copy of Joan Aiken’s A Necklace of Raindrops from my friend Pippi when we visited her. It was an old battered paperback, and she just had to have it. I didn’t forget about it, but I must admit to not having looked at it carefully enough to realise it was illustrated. Daughter was past needing it reading to her, so I just didn’t get involved.

That’s why I was so keen to see a copy of the book now that it’s being published again. I somehow thought the illustrations by Jan Pieńkowski were new. They are, in fact, original, and were in the 1968 version as well.

Oh, well. This is a lovely book, and two copies can be better than one – old and battered.

I love Joan Aiken, although I’ve not read much of hers for this age range, which is younger than the Wolves Chronicles. There are eight short stories, which are all perfect either to read to a child or to have them read on their own. I was going to say nicely old-fashioned, but perhaps they were simply normal forty years ago. They are the sort of stories we read when I was young.

This is a larger size hardback, so Jan Pieńkowski’s pictures look marvellous. They have that authentic 1960s half modern, half old style feel to them. If you know what I mean?

Y is for yay!

Unsolicited books get shorter shrift than the ones I ask for. But there can be real gems, that I didn’t even know I wanted. This is one such occasion. There is a pop-up book out to celebrate that Sesame Street is forty years old.

Generally I am more of a C is for cookie kind of person. Offspring and I watched Sesame Street with our lunch for years, and then out of necessity we had to stop. I wouldn’t mind watching it again, but I get the impression it’s no longer on in Britain. Why not?

A Walk Down Sesame Street is some consolation. Elmo walks round, meeting some of the regulars, and doing a little educating as he meets and greets. Good Elmo! There are even pull-thingies to make Grover fly and Cookie stir his cookie mixture. Big Bird is really an awfully big Big Bird.

Ernie has put down his duckie, believe it or not, and Oscar and his trashcan are very much in-your-face, popping out. If only they knew of the agony suffered at witch headquarters over the elephants Oscar keeps. I thought we were heading for a major bin phobia at one point.

As Daughter walked in through the door after college, she jumped on this book. Maybe 17 isn’t too old for pop-ups after all? She made Elmo dance, which was something I had missed.

Oh, now I want to get out all my Sesame Street videos again and watch…

I, Coriander

I, Coriander is a prize in several ways. Daughter won her copy, personally signed by Sally Gardner herself, when the book was new. I forget what she did that was so good, but she won it nevertheless. It was something at the local bookshop, and Sally had been meeting the owners, and so the signed book came this way.

It is a beautiful book, just like Sally’s two later novels, with old pictures of London on the cover and inside. A red ribbon to keep the right place for the reader. Very old-fashioned and attractive. But I could never quite get away from visualising a bunch of green herbs. Extremely stupid of me, but that, and lack of time, meant I didn’t read I, Coriander until now.

The lovely thing about having been a prize idiot over Sally’s book, is that this way I was rewarded – undeservedly – with a wonderful read so much later. It’s set in the era of Cromwell, and I realised yet again that I need to improve my knowledge of British history. Coriander was born in 1643 and the novel ends in 1660. Her family were Royalists, which wasn’t a good thing to be just then.

What actually struck me was that it’d be easy to read the descriptions of what London was like at the time, and what Cromwell’s regime was like, and think that nowadays everything is so much better and more refined. But pessimist that I am, I feel the story describes pretty much what it’s like here and in other countries today. I don’t think we ever improve. We just like to think we do.

Coriander’s mother dies when her daughter is young, and the effects of her death almost ruin the lives of all those around her. There is a lot of fantasy or magic, which is never quite explained. Coriander finds she can do magic, a bit like her mother, but that’s not good. In Cromwell’s England magic is dangerous, and in Coriander’s fantasy world things aren’t so great either.

Sally has come up with an appalling stepmother figure, and her even more appalling ‘helper’. Coriander has a hard time, and it takes her years to find her way back to some kind of normal life. In fairness, she has also created some wonderful and strong minor characters, who all have their part to play. I loved the story, but I must admit to not having ‘got’ the very end.

The Gates to Hell and all that

I should have known you can’t have just one book about dead bishops. Here is another one, although the bishop isn’t the main character, or anything. This is a Halloween book, so go get a copy to get you into a nice demonish mood for the day.

It can be very dangerous for the TBR pile development to go and poke around on other people’s blogs, but when Declan on Crime Always Pays put the first chapter of John Connolly’s The Gates up, I couldn’t resist. And John was extremely charming about being begged for a copy.

The Gates is a very funny book, and very exciting, too. (And what’s more, it’s short, in this age of four-inch thick books.) Samuel Johnson and his dachshund Boswell are out trick-or-treating, slightly prematurely, when they come across something at the neighbours’ house that doesn’t look very good.

It’s not good. Earth is about to be invaded by really bad demons. (But as the more alert readers can work out, Halloween is not a good time for demons to invade anywhere.) 11-year-old Samuel and his friends and his dog have to try and save the world from this new threat. They get some assistance from a friendly demon called Nurd, and information – if not useful help – from the scientists involved with the Large Hadron Collider. Because it just happens to accidentally help the demons find a way in.

John believes in footnotes. Lots of them. They are very amusing footnotes, which is lucky, because I really don’t like the flow of my reading interrupted all the time. But I forgive him, because they are funny. And necessary.

As with far too many authors, I don’t know John’s books at all. In the case of The Gates, think Douglas Adams meets Eoin Colfer. That should do it.

Witch Baby and me after dark

Oh, Witch Baby, how lovely and normal you are! First and foremost you are a sweet little toddler. I know you just happen to be able to do magic, because you’re a witch, and you’re getting really good at it now. As with all toddlers, you are slowly learning to interact with friends and family, too. And you love that dog of yours.

So when WayWoof disappears, we can just about guess why. After all, there are puppies on the way, somehow. And you just have to find your WayWoof again.

It being Halloween, you go round the neighbourhood with big sister Lily and her friend Vivaldi. Never mind that they are trussed up in sheets like mummies. Your costume is marvellous, and very convincing. All of them are. I think I like the little devil one is best.

Everyone seems to be out for Halloween, including the Chin. I think you’re proving to be a good influence on both the Chin and the Toad. Possibly even on the Nose. Love is beautiful for witches and lonely Daddies and imaginary werewolves.

This grumpy old witch thinks that everyone should read about you, Witch Baby. And your kind of puppy is the best kind.

Henry gets his comeuppance

Hmm, Perfect Peter may have been emptying the dishwasher unasked, which is rather wet, but perhaps there is more to him than that. Horrid Henry is as ‘horrid’ as ever, and uses ‘poor’ Perfect Peter for his own needs, in this almost Halloweeny Horrid Henry Wakes the Dead.

You have to give it to Henry, he does have some good and original ideas, when all his peers are somewhat useless, not to mention untalented. ‘Waking the dead’ as entertainment is not your average school show material. And not every school invites TV presenters like Sneering Simone. Wonder where Francesca got the inspiration for him?

Four more stories about our HH, with friends and family. When will Fantastic Francesca run out of alliteration on the names front?

Hope you people aren’t getting tired of this Halloween review week, btw? More excellent spooky books here before the week is safely over. I’ll be done when Plucky Palmer’s pumpkin explodes on Saturday evening.

(Photo © CBS)

Trixie The Witch’s Cat

I would insist on a black cat with a white paw if I were to have a cat. And by the end of this adorable picture book, Trixie has come to the conclusion that being different is good.

Have you ever stopped to think about a roomful of identical black cats? Hard for a witch to find hers in a hurry. Trixie’s witch looks rather like me; what you can see of her. A witch with a bicycle bell on her broomstick is a sensible witch.

This is a lovely book, with lots of funny little details, which will provide something to look at for hours. Any book with a purple cover is good…

In ‘my’ kitchen

This book spoke to me. Wonder why that could be? Nick Sharratt has a book, all by himself, called What’s in the Witch’s Kitchen?, and it’s got that nice, slightly creepy, Halloweeny feel to it. My kitchen, on the other hand, is nothing like it. I would quite like a purple lino tiled floor, though, and the purple dresser’s nice, too.

It’s a flappy book, this witch kitchen picture book, with a final pop-out. You can look in the witch’s fridge, dresser, oven, and so on, in two different ways. One is nice and normal, and the other is a little less pleasant. Someone should tell the witch about basic kitchen hygiene, and what doesn’t belong in a kitchen.

I tried to work out if there’s a pattern to which flap will yield the less lovely revelation, but lost myself hopelessly after a while. You open up and down, left and right.

And to finish someone pops out. Is it you?

They are starting younger

Bloggers are getting younger by the day. Unfortunately it’s not me who’s suddenly more youthful; it’s the ‘competition’ that’s picking up on the idea of blogging rather early in life. And let’s face it; the only reason I didn’t blog in the 1960s is the obvious one. I couldn’t type…

As I was saying, I have a new competitor, or maybe I shall be kind and call him a colleague. Bookreader is a reader of books, and he is only nine. But he is a good reader, and he blogs worryingly well. His blog is called The Books I Read and I suggest you have a little look. Not too long, mind, because I like to keep my customers.

Bookreader has so far only blogged about a few favourite books, but they are well selected. Unlike this witch he doesn’t mind telling it as it is. There is one that really doesn’t get many ‘out of five’. Honest.

And Another Thing

Seamless, said someone in the audience last week, when talking to Eoin Colfer about his new Hitchhiker novel. And she’s right. After a year of Eoin saying he wasn’t going to try and be Douglas Adams, he has got much closer than you’d imagine possible. And that’s good. Seamless means that we don’t really notice the change from one writer to another. I’ve read other sequels where the style is very different, and with good reason. You can’t be someone else.

I feel that Eoin could be some kind of honorary little brother of Douglas’s. Like most others, I found And Another Thing to be more Hitchhikery than I’d thought possible. It’s very enjoyable. Someone said he’d not laughed reading this one, unlike with the other five Hitchhiker books. I agree to some extent, but wonder if that’s because we are not only older now, but the concept is less new and we have come to expect certain things, so don’t laugh out loud. But I could be wrong.

It’s good that Eoin didn’t seek to write this book. I think you do a better job when a little reluctant. So I was surprised at the Guardian reviewer’s comment that Douglas’s family allowed Eoin to write this sequel. They asked him to! There is a big difference.

To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t totally remember how we left Arthur and Co in book five. It’s been a while. But it was easy to get back into the flow, and it’s good that Eoin came up with his own plot, rather than use the notes Douglas left. I daresay we wouldn’t have had an Irish character without an Irish author, so Hillman Hunter is a fun invention.

The use of Norse Gods is also good. Would quite like people to settle on the spelling of Leif, however. I like it correct, and I don’t want both spellings competing with each other. And is it just my background, or is there some deeper meaning in Thor’s appearance and the fact that Arthur has some dislike for Thursdays?

Random Dent is quite lovely, really, particularly given the weird adults she’s surrounded by. Zaphod is better with the one head, but still stupid. Nice to see Trillian finding love. And I suspected Fenchurch would turn up, somehow.

Eoin hasn’t written a definitive ending, just really carried the story on a little. He’s left it so that we can stop here, or his idea of other relay authors taking over would be a feasible project. I would like to see poor Arthur sorted. He’s really a most unfortunate man. At least he’s getting used to his bad luck.

And there is something almost loveable about Vogons.