The Felix trilogy

Should publishers keep re-issuing old books? Are they trying to make easy money, or are they catering to a need for classic stories?

Joan Aiken’s Felix trilogy is definitely the kind of reading material you can never have enough of. It’s got everything; adventure of almost every kind you could dream of, friendship, romance, history, travel. Ten years ago when I’d worked my way through the Willoughby Chase novels, one by one, I was desperate for more Joan Aiken, so happily moved on to Felix when I noticed him on the shelves.

How lucky I was to have found that branch of the well known chain that actually stocked these books. So many shops didn’t. Yes, you could order the books, but first you’d need to know of their existence.

Go Saddle the Sea, Bridle the Wind, and The Teeth of the Gale have recently been re-issued, with great new covers that I hope will appeal to new readers, or to those older people (although old people could obviously also enjoy them) who buy books for young readers.

To me these books are timeless, and every generation needs them. Joan wrote them over a period of ten years (actually I don’t know that. They were originally published over ten years, though) and looking at it from the future, where no waiting is necessary, I can’t help but feel it might be better that way. It’s the constant push for sequels every year that could sometimes make for less than perfect books.

I don’t know. But perhaps a good story needs maturing?

Anyway, this isn’t a review as such. I only want to get more people interested in Felix, who like many other heroes is an orphan, poor, treated cruelly, and who travels from Spain to England to find his ‘family and background’, has good and bad things happen to him, after which there is more travelling, incarceration, love, and a return of sorts to his roots. He grows up, and so do we.

It’s lovely.

Bookwitch bites #101

Who wants books when they can have videos? You do?

OK, I will let you have book related video clips, then. With real live authors. Who to start with? I know it’s usually ladies first, but let’s get the boys out of the way. Just to get them out of the way.

That Lemony Snicket chap hasn’t given up yet. He has more weird books coming our way, and someone is about to tell you as little as possible about the next one. It’s what’s known as a leak. (No, not that kind of leak!)

http://www.egmont.co.uk/lemonysnicketleak/

Our second boy is less secretive. We can actually see what Neil Gaiman looks like as he talks about his new book (October in this case) Fortunately, The Milk… which is a book about milk, as well as many other silly things. Third boy, Chris Riddell, is doing wonderful illustrations of interstellar dinosaurs to go with the milk.

Moving on to the girls, we have Julia Skott, who will have her first book published later this year (and it has just struck me I don’t know in what language…). It’s non-fiction and it’s about bodies and health. Julia is the daughter of a Swedish journalist and a Russian academic, which is why she sounds like this when she speaks:

http://juliaskott.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/video-bokangest/

Someone who sounds pretty English and also pretty involved with saving libraries, is Fiona Dunbar, being grilled by someone on Sky News (who seems a little anti-library). Very brave of Fiona to venture into a television studio like this. Some of us would have seized up completely…

Finally to our last girls, who are not on video. There is a brand new blog featuring the life and works of Joan Aiken, run by her daughter Lizza. I wasn’t surprised to find a very early story by Joan on there, in facsimile. She clearly had the story-telling gene working right from the start. It’s about a teapot, and Satan. Obvious choice, really.

Joan also has a facebook page now. Please like!

Lady Catherine’s Necklace

I can’t say I was ever desperate to know what became of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Good riddance, might more appropriately describe my feelings. She was needed to get Darcy to see sense (or was that Elizabeth Bennet?) and then she could do as she liked. I never felt sorry for her daughter Anne, who didn’t need or deserve Darcy.

But, now that I have read Joan Aiken’s sequel, Lady Catherine’s Necklace, I am much more interested in what happened. Sadly, Mr Bennet has died. That means Mr Collins needs to go away to sort things out with his inheritance. Lady Catherine is not keen to be without him, whereas Mrs Collins doesn’t mind in the least…

Life at Rosings Park becomes more interesting with the arrival of a brother and sister who have had an accident nearby, and who impress Lady Catherine so much that she invites them to stay.

It’s a quiet sort of story, although at times it becomes fairly dramatic. We meet various people in and near Rosings, and we see much more of Anne. There was a reason for her lack of character in Pride and Prejudice. She is now engaged to Colonel Fitzwilliam, who in turn loves someone else.

There is a hilarious adventure awaiting Lady Catherine, and she almost redeems herself. Anne develops plenty of character, and there are two gay lovers, as well as dead and lost offspring.

Lady Catherine’s Necklace is a book for young readers, and I’d like to think that those who don’t know Pride and Prejudice at all, or who have only seen the film or television series, will want to pick up the Jane Austen novel after reading this one. And for anyone who found P & P too difficult to read, it will be a pleasant little story to start with.

Darcy and Elizabeth are only mentioned in passing, and the same goes for Jane and her Bingham. But it’s nice to feel they are almost part of the story. To me, Joan Aiken seems to have captured just the right style, making this book feel almost like the real thing.

Wolves, again

It’s autumn. Time for another Joan Aiken Wolf-fest. As I said, wolves appear to be the in thing right now. Jonathan Cape brought out a lovely Wolves of Willoughby Chase last year, and now it’s back in time for the 50th anniversary of the first Wolves. Same edition, but wearing new clothes. This dust jacket is, if possible, even more appealing than the last one.

And to be quite frank, I can find room for lots of Aiken wolves on my shelves. But I won’t review it again, this excellent start to a most wonderful series of books. What I want is for the remaining ten books to magically pop up in this new edition as well. I went back to my emails from last year, and realised I just might have read them wrong. Maybe, just maybe, they said other classics were coming; and not that more Willoughby Chase stories will be re-issued.

In that case – please, please, pretty please, change your minds!

Wolves is good, but as I mentioned last year, it is not the best of them. Black Hearts in Battersea is the next one, and is one of the very best, if not the best. And coming second, it wouldn’t be too hard to go there next, would it?

I’m not saying this because I need them. I have every single one, but there will be people who don’t. They need them, whether they know it or not.

There was a vivid discussion in the comments section here several years ago, when I blogged about Dido Twite, one of literature’s feistiest heroines. Even Lizza Aiken joined in, and I learned that The Whispering Mountain is actually a prequel. Which I didn’t know. I am pretty certain it is lurking somewhere, and I must unearth it, even if it involves cleaning and tidying.

Great tidings from the publisher about reissuing the Felix trilogy next year. Lovely. But it doesn’t mean we don’t need Battersea and Simon and Dido. And I don’t know why I found out about the event in Cheltenham one week after it happened. Howl!

A Little, Aloud

This is one anthology that I won’t be able to carry around with me in order to catch all its participating authors for autographs. Many are dead, and anyway, there are so many of them. Many means good, because there is a tremendous variety and choice, and once you’ve read what you fancy, you might pick something you don’t. That way you discover that is actually also perfectly fine.

You don’t always get anthologies intended to be read aloud, which of course doesn’t stop you from doing so. Short stories and excerpts and poems are just right for that bedtime read, when you are praying you won’t be sitting on the edge of the bed half the night. This book obligingly tells you how long you can expect to spend reading each contribution, so no nasty surprises.

The royalties for this collection of good reads go to The Reader Organisation, which has as its aim ‘reading and health.’ Very nice to see those two words used together. I frequently sit down with a book even when far too many little jobs and crises scream at me that my attention is of the utmost importance. I know that I will feel so much better after a read.

Foreworded by Michael Morpurgo (naturally) and with blurbs by Philip Pullman and Stephen Fry (two men whose voices I just love listening to), the book begins with Instructions by Neil Gaiman. I mistakenly thought he was needed to tell us what to do, but it was actually a proper poem.

Many of the stories in here are ones I have already read, as part of the novel they hail from or as works in their own right. They have, for instance, had the good taste to pick my favourite Shaun Tan story, Broken Toys. There are excerpts from Siobhan Dowd’s The London Eye Mystery, Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase as well as Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce.

You have Shakespeare and Kipling, Stevenson and Larkin, and even good old Anon. I haven’t read them all. Yet. This is another of those volumes I want to keep somewhere near, just to dip into. The pile for dipping is getting taller, but that just can’t be helped.

I will want to dip.

(Apologies to all those, dead or alive, whose names I haven’t listed. They are many. And how marvellous to be able to share classic writers in an easy bite size form with a child.)

The Kingdom Under the Sea

By the time I picked this book up, I’d almost overdosed on myths and traditional stories and fairy tales, but wanted to take a look at The Kingdom Under the Sea by Joan Aiken and with illustrations by Jan Pieńkowski. I could skim it.

That’s what I thought. It only took me a little of the first story to be hooked. That’s the thing with Joan Aiken. She didn’t do things the way others do them.

To begin with, none of these stories were of the same old, same old kind. Nothing wrong with well known tales, but new (to me) traditional ones are more refreshing. They are all in the same vein that I remember from my childhood collections, but new and very well told.

It’s always the youngest son or the prettiest but poorest girl who are true and good. Why this is so I have no idea. There is a wonderful tale about a poor knight and his many animals. That story didn’t go in the expected direction, and was so much better for it.

Perhaps there is too much killing, even when done by the good characters, but it sort of belongs in this type of literature. (Witches don’t absolutely have to be bad…)

And as if Joan Aiken’s stories weren’t enough, we get beautiful illustrations by Jan Pieńkowski. Many of them are black silhouette ones, which somehow make more of an impact than a colourful and detailed ordinary picture would. You can see the warty, crooked nose of the witch so much better. (Ahem.)

This is the second recent reissued collection by Joan and Jan, and I adore these books. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go shopping again. This is perfect Christmas present stuff.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase

The cover is purple. That alone is enough to make me grab for the reissued The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. It’s got a menacing looking wolf as well. That’s what you get when you have channel tunnels that will let anything through from foreign lands. So not a good idea. Joan Aiken was well before her time with that tunnel.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is a wonderful book, even if it’s not my favourite in the by now pretty long saga of Willoughby Chase stories. But it sets the scene nicely, and it introduces one of my favourite characters. That’s what’s so fun, actually. We meet two young girls in this one, Bonnie and Sylvia, and then they don’t turn up again in the other books. Except very briefly, a lot later.

We do meet the villain, Miss Slighcarp, and she turns up far too much. She’s probably one of the most long lived and evil women in children’s literature. The wolves are nothing compared to her. But they are scary.

I always think this is quite a Christmassy story. Could it be the snow, or am I just a bit mad?

But it’s a nice mix of cruelty and slavery and courage and friendship and a happy ending. And as I said, it leads on to more wonderful books, and to the marvellous Dido Twite. I’ve tried to find out if Cape are planning to bring out all the books, or if this is a one-off. Still don’t know.

I do hope they are all being reissued. I have very fond memories of finding the books the first time round, going into a particular branch of the large chain store and finding the next book. It worked every time, while many other shops didn’t stock them at all. And Son was as keen as I was. That will be why he has them in his bookcase.

Are they in yours?

City of Thieves

Someone very wisely said something about second novels often being so much better than the first, and it was only just the other day, too. City of Thieves is such a book. I liked Ellen Renner’s Castle of Shadows, but have to say that with the sequel she has come a long way with her writing. Castle of Shadows had a hint of Joan Aiken about it, whereas this could almost be mistaken for an Aiken.

Where the first book concentrated on Queen Charlie, before Queenhood struck, this is the story of her faithful friend Tobias. And contrary to what I expected there is little contact between the two of them. They end up doing their bit for the nation of Quale separately. Charlie in her castle, and Tobias out in the town, where he finds himself uncomfortably close to his thieving relatives, the Petches.

So not only does Tobias have to contend with his biological father, the disgraced former prime minister, but his equally unsavoury adopted uncle Zebediah Petch gets his hands on him and trains him in the skills of thiefhood. It’s quite fascinating, really. A good little earner, and a skilfully set up company. You have to admire old Zebediah.

Between the thieves and the crooked politician and the scheming royals you get a fair bit of excitement. What will Tobias do? What can he do? His pal Charlie may be Queen, but what can she do?

Neither Zebediah nor the ex-prime minister Alistair Windlass are nice people, but they are awfully interesting. The Petch family also has some real characters who no doubt will be given an opportunity to do more.

Because, unlike Castle of Shadows, this book is not finished. You could have left things – just about – after book one. Now you’ll be panting for more, and fast.

I like very much.

Castle of Shadows

There is a distinct risk that I miss worthwhile books completely, because I’m not on mailing list terms with the publisher. This debut novel by Ellen Renner is one of those books. The title might make me think of Enid Blyton, but if it had been anything like that I doubt that Mary Hoffman would have recommended that I read it. And she did, so I felt in safe hands.

Castle of Shadows is the first of four books set in an alternate 19th century England. I think it’s England, anyway. Charlie, aka Her Royal Highness, Charlotte Augusta Joanna Hortense, Princess of Quale, is 11 and roams the castle where she lives with her father the King. Unfortunately he is vague and confused after the Queen disappeared five years earlier, and the kingdom is falling apart. Charlie never gets enough to eat and she is dressed in dirty rags.

Mrs O’Dair, their scary housekeeper, runs the castle as she likes, and Charlie is aware that the people are in uproar, outside the thick walls of her home. Almost by accident, Charlie comes to realise she needs to find out why her mother left and what the Prime Minister is really up to. Her only help comes from Tobias, the gardener’s boy, and Moleglass, the former butler.

This novel provides quite a good lesson in politics, something which is often missing in children’s books. It’s interesting to see how hard it is to decide whether the Prime Minister is good or bad, or just somewhere in-between, as so many politicians seem to be. Should you fear the Resistance, or help them? And does anyone want the King dead, and if so, who?

Nice Victorian style adventure in the spirit of Joan Aiken. The initial problem is resolved in book one, but with a few more planned there is obviously plenty that can happen. The teaser pages included at the end of this one, show Tobias – picker-of-locks – centre stage. I assume there will be plenty for Her Royal Highness – the daredevil climber – to do, too.

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?