Lulu and the duck, and the dog

Only a very skilled author could make a non-pet kind of person want to find and befriend a wild dog, and then keep it. Hatching a duck’s egg under your clothing is another almost attractive animal adventure (although I’d worry about accidentally harming the egg).

I have been reading about Lulu, one of Hilary McKay’s lovely heroines. She is only seven, and normally I wouldn’t pick a young book like these for my own entertainment. But I know I’ll be all right with Hilary.

Lulu, and the Duck in the Park, and Lulu, and the Dog from the Sea are the first two in the series about Lulu and her love for animals. True to Hilary’s story telling style, we have another set of lovely parents, and Lulu’s best friend is her cousin Mellie, with whom she doesn’t seem to have any quarrels, either.

It’s very refreshing, not to mention soothing, to read about characters who don’t fight every step of the way. No tantrums needed. No tedious misunderstandings. There is enough excitement in the story itself. And humour.

I just love them. I know I won’t be adopting a stray dog, but it’s still very charming. And I don’t mind admitting I shed some tears over that duck.

Practically Perfect

It is.

I believe we have to make this official; Bookwitch loves Hilary McKay. You know, in a pure, innocent kind of way.

I also need to have a shorter way of saying ‘this isn’t a book I would generally have picked up.’ (I’ll work on that. Acronyms on a postcard if you’re feeling clever.)

Practically Perfect is a princess book, clearly aimed at younger girls than me. (It says 7-9 on Hilary’s website.) But if it keeps the attention of someone elderly, it’s doing a pretty good job.

This is both a typical princess book, and it isn’t. To start with the princess is a Queen. She is ten years old. She is willful, but quite nice. She has Ladies-in-Waiting. And a Cook, and a Prime Minister. A Donkey. A best friend who likes to dig.

Practically Perfect begins with a poet who lives in the cupboard under the stairs, and ends with a happily ever after. That bit was never in doubt, but you couldn’t be sure of the way there. I mean, who’d dream up buttered cooks?

I loved it! I wasn’t expecting to get started on Hilary’s younger fiction, but there might be no stopping me now. Anyone who can get away with double brackets has my vote.

Binny for Short

By the time I got to Joseph I was crying. It’s the kind of effect Hilary McKay can have on you, and I really had not seen what came coming. And I’m sort of glad. I’d only come across one review of Binny for Short, and to be on the safe side I’d only squinted at it sideways. Briefly. You don’t want your Hilary McKay books to be ruined, however well-meaningly it’s done.

You want to enjoy them whole-heartedly, by yourself, and if the phone doesn’t ring when you have ten pages to go, so much the better.

I’m coming to the conclusion that Hilary can’t write bad books. Binny is no Casson. She’s a Cornwallis, and this is another wonderful McKay family. Hilary has no need to kill off parents to be rid of them. Simply by being so very nice – yes, nice – and so different, they make their stories totally unique.

Binny’s father dies (sorry about that, but he was old), and her new dog has to go and she is heartbroken. With her lovely mother, and her equally lovely older sister Clem, and sweet younger brother James, she starts moving around. A lot. They have to.

Because she was the one who got rid of Binny’s beloved dog, Binny hates her Aunty Violet with a passion (I’d like to be Binny’s mother, but suspect I’d be Aunty Violet), and anything connected with her is bad.

I didn’t mean that Hilary doesn’t kill off characters. She does, and quite quickly, too. But the Cornwallis family need somewhere to live for the duration of this book, and they couldn’t have ended up in a better place. Mrs C finds a job, Clem works hard at everything and James is in heaven. Binny makes an enemy, which she finds most satisfying.

And in the midst of the charming day-to-day happenings, Binny has a bigger adventure, which carries through the book from the start, before you know why or what. As I said, I didn’t see it coming, but just let myself be lulled into this comfortable place, knowing that somehow everything would make sense.

They are just so nice! And so is the book. And I know the author ‘shouldn’t matter’ but I would guess, so is Hilary McKay. You can’t write this kind of thing and not be. Her writing is sheer genius in its simplicity.

Caddy Ever After

This Casson family story is more like four separate – or five? – stories, because Rose and Indigo and Saffy and Caddy each have a go, and then it turns ot that their separate tales belong together after all. It’s almost as though Hilary McKay is serving up a Casson smörgåsbord (my sincere apologies for using a description like that for the wonderful Cassons. I don’t know what’s got into me).

As always with Hilary this is a most marvellous book, and one that instantly made me feel better when I read it last week. Why am I not a Casson? Although this time round I thought I’d like to be Sarah’s mother. How much better to be kind and lovely to the neighbourhood children, than to scare them away.

Rose has an accident at school, and is busy painting the night sky, without stars. Indigo runs the school disco and pairs people off, with some success. Saffy is paired off, and also falls out a little with best friend Sarah, who wants to be stabbed to make sure she’s properly dead. (She’s not.)

And then we have Caddy, who falls in love (again) and wants to get married. But what about her last boyfriend?

So much to feel good about, in a relatively short volume. But there is one more to go (so ‘plenty’ of time for more Casson writing, Hilary!) and with my new policy I will read it sooner rather than later.

Binge reading

Why am I such an idiot? (Only answer that if you’re going to be nice to me.)

I’ve been getting too carried away with reviewing, and doing so as close to the publication date as I can, feeing stupidly unhelpful when I post a review six or twelve months afterwards. I tell myself no one objects to a review of their book, whenever it happens. But you know, I’m good on guilt.

So, with a view to changing my behaviour, I stared at my TBR piles, and thought ‘I’ll begin with all my favourites or books I know for certain will be top notch.’ How that will go is anyone’s guess, but for today, my sixth birthday, I am indulging in Hilary McKay. I have been stringing her darling Casson books out for far too long. I shall binge!

For someone who as a child would neither save her sweets nor share them with others, I don’t know why I’m not bingeing all the time. (I suppose I do. I’m an idiot.)

Before my interview with Debi Gliori a few years ago, I Strega-binged over a relatively short time, to make sure I had read all the Pure Dead books; the better to interrogate her.

And thinking back to that happy spring, I don’t reckon I’ve suffered any ill effects.

Perhaps I don’t need to dole out a book per annum when I happen to have some lovely stashes of ‘I know I will love these’ books?

Hilary today, and then who knows?

Although I am aware that some new favourites might have gone undiscovered if I’d only stuck to certainties. I shall have to improvise. Old books, new books. Anything that’s good.

I’ve been feeling a bit blue. I will treat myself to a four-author book event later today, and that snow had better not get in my way!!!

Permanent Rose

My WBD book about Rose the other day was an appetiser. It was that short. I felt I deserved a main course too, so allowed myself to read Permanent Rose while I was in my Hilary McKay mood. (I always am, actually, but try to keep the Casson tales going for as long as possible.)

If my knees were up to it I would go down on them and worship Hilary. She’d need to be in the same room, obviously. She’s not. Just as well, since that avoids a lot of embarrassing behaviour from me.

How is it possible to write such perfect stories where (as Daughter said when she recently read her first Casson) nothing happens? Until suddenly quite a few little somethings happen and you laugh and you cry and just feel ridiculously happy.

Saffron is looking for her unknown father in Italy. Caddy is trying to become un-engaged. Indigo has lost a good friend and gained a new – unwanted – one. And Rose is trying to help. Eve is in her shed, when she’s not at the hospital, painting stuff to make the patients think of other things. Home. Nudes.

There is a dead cat and a loser boy. An expensive ring. Shoplifting. There is Daddy Casson’s girlfriend, who seems exceptionally nice, and well suited to the Casson style. Lancelot and Arthur have minor parts to play. I just wish I’d seen the hint of what was to come a little earlier. I mean I did. I just didn’t stop to think.

If ever a series of books was crying out to be given the crossover treatment, this is it. Yes, they are children’s books. But they are also grown women’s books (so could do with an adult cover option…). I love them. I just don’t know how I will stop myself from going straight on to the next book.

I need my Cassons!

Holding Hilary’s hand

Or more accurately, with her in my hand. I have owned Hilary McKay’s World Book Day 2005 short book about Rose for an absolute age. I don’t know when or where or even why I got it. This was before I discovered and fell in love with the Casson family.

I have also been reading this 50 page book for a Very Long Time. That’s not because I’m slow, but because it’s a perfect book. Sometimes I need a very small, but reliably wonderful book to grab when I leave the house and require something to calm me down and make me feel better without lugging a huge tome of a book along. The Flying Feeling fits in a pocket, and even in my bumbag. (I know that sounds to Americans the way fanny pack does here…)

It also wants to be very very good. So basically, I don’t want to waste such a perfect book for when it’s not needed. I’ve read the first chapter several times, and this week I was ready to go further.

I mean, who would not want to be accompanied by little Rose wetting herself in class, as you are waiting to part with some blood? (Anyone squeamish; leave now!) Very little blood, but I like hanging on to it. Not my mind so much as the rest of my body. I know I have blood. But none to give nurses when they come looking for it.

So as I was enjoying the post-wetting agonies of Rose and the possibility that her darling Mum had been murdered in the shed in the dark, I was led from blood-taker to blood-taker with as little success (for them) as that day in 1992 which scarred Son for life.

It’s always best to lie down, as I have a distinct dislike for fainting off chairs. When I finally ended up in New GP’s room I discovered a berth thingy that clearly was an antique, just there for effect. It was also piled high with picture frames and countless other bits of junk. Which the receptionist and New GP hurriedly had to shift…

Bet that added to my popularity. I obviously didn’t hold Hilary while the blood reluctantly trickled out, seeing as my arm was otherwise engaged, but her spirit was present.

And to avoid fainting by the zebra crossing outside I sat in the waiting room with Rose, recovering while she dashed down the road in the thunder storm, with dead hamsters behind her, or not.

Then I went home and came to the conclusion that I deserved the blood donor’s traditional treat of tea and biscuits. The Resident IT Consultant pointed out I had not parted with enough blood for this, but I still drank my tea with enjoyment. Then I allowed myself to finish The Flying Feeling as an extra special treat. Pin cushions are entitled to treats, some of the time.

OK, you can look now.

(If anyone could see their way to writing a few more books of this type to keep me afloat in times of need, I’d be obliged.)

Dear Madam, Love Frank

I listened dutifully, sitting next to the woman from Aberdeen (who might well have been a librarian). Over dinner at our Onich walking holiday centre she was telling me about a fantastic book she had read. That can be boring, but I listened. I didn’t totally believe her, but I was young. A book about letters to a bookshop sounds plain weird, doesn’t it?

So, along came the next walking holiday (this was in the days when I actually got out and did things), and I found myself in a bookshop in Grasmere (probably the bookshop in Grasmere, now that I think of it), and browsing aimlessly I happened upon a book that looked like an airmail letter, and I realised this was what my Aberdonian Librarian had been waxing so lyrically over. ‘I might as well buy it,’ I thought to myself. It seemed as if it was meant.

Last week when I was agonising over what books could be about, I think it was Hilary McKay who mentioned 84 Charing Cross Road, and I have to admit I had almost forgotten about it. Only from a point of view as a book that is not your average fiction or non-fiction book, obviously. You can’t forget Helene Hanff’s collection of letters.

So I hunted  for my copy of the book and failed. Told the Resident IT Consultant to find it for me. (I reckon that’s one of his good sides; finding the very obvious which insists on escaping me.) It was where it should be. Naturally.

I cried a bit, looking through the book again, and that is surely a testament to quite how special 84 Charing Cross Road is? Admittedly, I started at the end where Frank Doel dies. But working my way to the beginning of the Hanff-Doel friendship just brought more tears. ‘I hope “madam” over there doesn’t mean what it does here.’

In more recent years I have come across people who express themselves like Helene did. Americans, I mean. At the time she struck me as ‘different,’ whereas the polite English letters from the bookshop seemed perfectly normal to me. ‘I could rush a tongue over.’ That’s an unusual thing to want to do for a bookshop, but it brings back the lack of food in Britain even as late as 1950. In fact, the whole book is a lesson in modern history.

I loved this book, and I have offered delayed thanks to Aberdonian Librarian ever since. Not that we’ve been in contact. I’m not sure how many copies I’ve bought of the book to give away, but long before I gave up on being a stingy old witch I actually spent good money on giving people their very own 84 Charing Cross Road.

I’m afraid I have no plans for more of that, so you can just go get your own copy. Just make sure you do. The only excuse is already owning one.

Witch’s Eleven

Here’s the 2011 top ten. Because it’s my top ten, it has eleven books. Because it’s 2011. Eleven is such a nice number. You know.

Anyway, I can’t have the same number every year. I need to keep my readers on their toes. There could have been many more. Books. Not toes, unless we count them individually, since every extra reader ought to bring around ten when they join.

I was aiming for some sort of order of colour in this pile, but eleven isn’t enough. And rest assured, I didn’t choose my list according to colour of spine.

Whereas in the photo the books are rated by colour, I will list them here based on titles in alphabetical order. It’s an even year, and almost impossible to pick a ‘winner.’

Being Billy, Phil Earle

Bloodstone, Gillian Philip

Caddy’s World, Hilary McKay

Cat’s Paw, Nick Green

In the Sea there are Crocodiles, Fabio Geda

Life, an Exploded Diagram, Mal Peet

Outlaw, Stephen Davies

Return to Ribblestrop, Andy Mulligan

There is no Dog, Meg Rosoff

The Unforgotten Coat, Frank Cottrell Boyce

Wonder Struck, Brian Selznick

My rules are few. The books need to be from this year. I need to have loved them more than I loved many other excellent books. They need to have made me go ‘Yes!’ when reading them. Made me laugh or cry, or both, that little bit more than average. I’m also hoping to have at least partially avoided what someone was complaining about on facebook the other week, which is that recommended books often have very little to do with what children read. Or rather, since I don’t know what children actually read, that I’m not recommending books suitable for adults only.

If I’m to elevate one book above the others, it will have to be Fabio Geda’s Crocodiles. And it’s not even fiction. And it’s a translation.

Little My and the H₂O

I always worry when I visit School Friend and need to wash my hands. (And I don’t mean her place calls for extra hand-washing, just that one does have to wash one’s hands occasionally.) Her guest hand towel features Little My, and anyone quite so angry looking is a wee bit scary. You know.

But on Sunday I decided it’s not my hands that make her angry, even as I wipe them on her face. It rained. When it stopped raining we wanted to go out and sit on the deck. I was fine, because I have never done the Swedish taking shoes off indoors (and apparently even for stepping out on the deck…) thing, so didn’t mind the H₂O spread out all over. School Friend, however, objected to wet tootsies, so wiped the floor with – you guessed it! – Little My.

That will be why she’s perpetually upset.

Last time chez School Friend I was a little shocked by the new table decoration. It looked anything but child friendly. Or even people friendly. That sword (something LOTR-ish, I gather) is sharp. And on the dinner table. With flowers, but still.

Now Pizzabella, the owner of the sword, has her own little flat which we went to inspect the other day. The sword went with her. But, oh dear, it sits on top of a (Billy) bookcase, and I can just visualise how it falls down…

The room where I sleep where the New Librarian used to reside is now an art studio for School Friend. I sometimes use her desk for my blogging, and was ridiculously pleased to find an old friend on there; Permanent Rose, Hilary McKay’s darling girl.

There are so many uses for Philadelphia Cream Cheese, aren’t there?

The Resident IT Consultant was puzzled to find an ‘unknown’ Mary Hoffman in our hosts’ bookcase and wanted to know which one it was. I told him it’s Falconer’s Knot in Swedish, and if he looked closely he’d find that it had been signed by the author. Just as with the copy of Troy by Adèle Geras, nestling dangerously close (i.e. below) to the aforementioned sword.