Jodie

This could have been written about me, the young witchlet. And for that reason, presumably also about many of you, and that will be why it appeals so much. Hilary McKay’s new book for Barrington Stoke is a sweet blend of loneliness and nature.

Jodie is new at school, and hasn’t made any friends. But she still has to go on the school’s trip to the field centre, staying overnight, sharing a room with five other girls, and not only has she got the ‘wrong’, new equipment, but the teacher she trusts is unable to come.

She ends up breaking the centre’s rules, partly because she needs to escape the other girls, and partly because there is this dog that keeps barking and she wants to find it, to help it. And then she gets stuck on the salt marshes.

She is so lonely, and so brave. She knows no one will come for her, no one will miss her. Or be able to find her.

This is a slightly supernatural tale of bravery, love and friendship. Not everything is as it seems.

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Sweet sixteen

A year ago Bookwitch ruminated on what sells and what she reads and why.

Today I’m – because we are the same, Bookwitch and I – thinking about the effect Bookwitching has had not just on me but on the young and innocent, like Daughter. We have both put sixteen behind us – but only just. Obviously. Today it’s Bookwitch’s turn to hum ‘She was only sixteen…’

As you may have gathered, Daughter has recently moved and has some vintage shelves to arrange with books. And, it seems, a polar bear. Also two bookmarks, one of which I was intrigued to find personally dedicated and signed by Michelle Magorian.

This is the effect I mean. Somehow a lot of young literature has happened to Offspring. The vintage shelves I mentioned seem to contain mostly books by people I ‘know’ and who Daughter has met through being dragged on bring-your-child-to-work days.

There are an inordinate number of Cathy Hopkins books, and that’s as it should be. Likewise Caroline Lawrence and Liz Kessler and Jacqueline Wilson. Although the latter has had to be pruned down to more manageable numbers of books.

I won’t list them all, but basically, the story of Bookwitch can be seen on these shelves. There won’t be so many new ones, as the e-reader has taken over. This is just as well, because however lovely the vintageness from the local auction-hunter, a flat has only so much space.

Apologies for the tile samples. There is a kitchen splashback to deal with. And I would like it to be known that that book by Vaseem Khan has been ‘borrowed’ from a kind parent.

There were bests in 2021 too

I worried. But then I nearly always worry. What did I read? Was it any good?

As always, I read. And yes, it was good, even in 2021. I read fewer books than usual, and with a larger proportion being old, adult or a translation, I have left those out. It’s handy that I make my own rules here.

I’ll put you out of your misery right now. The book standing head and shoulders above all the other really great books is Hilary McKay’s The Swallows’ Flight. Set in WWII, it’s a story I can’t forget (and these days I forget a lot).

Hilary’s is not alone in being a WWII story, as 50% of my 2021 winners are. I don’t know if this is proof that many more such books have been published recently, or if it just shows how much I like them.

The other five are Phil Earle’s When the Sky Falls, Morris Gleitzman’s Always, Liz Kessler’s When the World Was Ours, Tom Palmer’s Arctic Star, and Elizabeth Wein’s The Last Hawk. The latter two are dyslexia-friendly books.

Debi Gliori’s A Cat Called Waverley also features a war, but a more modern one. The illustration below makes me cry every time, and it has that thing which makes a picture book truly great.

Waverley is Scottish, as are C J Dunford’s Fake News, Barbara Henderson’s The Chessmen Thief and Roy Peachey’s The Race.

Last but not least, we have an animal story from Gill Lewis, A Street Dog Named Pup, and a ‘historical futuristic fantasy’ in The Outlaws Scarlett & Browne by Jonathan Stroud.

These twelve gave me much pleasure, and they were not in the slightest hard to choose. If the publishing world continues to give me books like these, I will have no reason to give up [reading].

Happy memories

I’ve been looking for nice memories from the past. Well, I suppose memories of necessity tend to be from the past.

Anyway, here is a photo of Jon Mayhew in Edinburgh in August 2013. It was a special day. I believe it was Jon’s first at the book festival. And I wasn’t there!

‘You weren’t?’, I hear you say. No. But I sent my Photographer. Hence the picture of Jon laughing in front of Bookwitch’s favourite London Plane tree, our very own photo backdrop for when the blue or green carpet was less available. You can’t beat a good plane tree.

As I – almost – said, I have fond memories of that day. My Photographer was all grown up and able to go on her own, allowing herself one day when she could leave her brown dwarfs on their own in St Andrews, and frolic in Charlotte Square instead.

And thanks to generous people like Jon, she got tickets for events. Or so I believe. I wasn’t there. But she sent ‘home’ lots of photos of all the authors she caught that day, and it was almost as if I had been there. That’s proof of how it is in the children’s books world. You feel included, and you can send your child to them.

Having had a quick look to see how I was suffering at home, I discovered I had invited Hilary McKay round for scones. So that was all right, too.

The Swallows’ Flight

I need to offer up even more and bigger thanks to Hilary McKay and her writing. It seemed impossible that there could be a book as great as, or greater than, The Skylarks’ War, but with The Swallows’ Flight I would say Hilary has done the impossible.

Thank you from the bottom of my tear-drenched hankie.

This time it’s about the children born between the two wars, whose turn it is to fight when WWII begins. Although, as with Skylarks, we learn most of what we need to know in the twenty years before. The war is ‘skirted past’ reasonably briefly. Unlike its predecessor, Swallows features not only a group of children in England, but we are introduced to two German boys and their families in Berlin.

And it works. We get to know Hans and Erik as human beings, and we see the changes to life in Germany alongside the boys. We find out what they want to do with their lives until developments mean they end up doing totally different things; in this case the boys become pilots in the Luftwaffe.

At ‘home’ we meet the generation after Clarry, Peter and Rupert from Skylarks. Peter and Vanessa have six children, and Clarry is godmother both to her niece Kate and to her best friend Violet’s daughter Ruby. We all need a Clarry godmother!

While we wait for the war that lumbers towards the families, we mostly learn about normal stuff like sibling rivalry, being bullied at school or being unwell and almost forgotten about by others. It is all this that forms the characters of these children, soon to be adults. Even Clarry’s and Peter’s rather unsatisfactory father has a role to play. There are cats, including a very random one, and there is a – smelly – dog.

There is much over the years to be sad about, but also many small and humorous incidents. I won’t spoil your reading.

My tears were partly over the inevitable deaths, but more for all those moments that simply make you cry. They rather bunch up towards the end of the story. There is much humanity here, and Hilary’s touch is lighter than ever.

The Time of Green Magic

Hilary McKay’s latest novel, The Time of Green Magic, is about the merging of families; discovering you can like an unwanted step-sibling.

It’s also about reading, the importance of doing it, what you get out of it (could be a rather damp book, or frostbite), and the many different ways you might learn to read and why you’d want to.

Abi and her dad Theo move in with Polly and her two boys Max and Louis, and her beloved granny finally gets to move back to Jamaica. So it’s all change for everyone, and change is always hard. And then they suddenly need to find a new house to rent, and end up in a lovely ivy-covered tall house that is much too expensive, which is why the adults work extra long hours.

That also leaves room for alarming things to happen, like the pretend – or is it? – pet Louis is visited by in his room. Just like the wet book that fell into the ocean as Abi was reading.

Like in most Hilary’s novels, this is a lovely, if unsettled, family, doing the best they can in a difficult situation. Is Iffen real, or does Louis imagine him? If so, how come Abi and Max can see him too? And where did he come from? How to get rid of him?

There is much love in this story.

Kanada bound

Well, he was. The Resident IT Consultant is now safely back from his Kanadian adventures. (Sorry about the Ks. I got a bit karried away, what with Swedish and German and all the rest.)

He decided he wanted to go and see his relatives over there, so he went. I was allowed to come too. I just didn’t feel up to it. Besides, there is so much a witch can get up to when all alone in the house. I suspect he still hasn’t found the things he’s not found yet. And it’s been a couple of weeks, so I no longer recall what I hid where.

Just like when Son went the first time, there were cousins to see. An uncle. Even a brother, if you allow for the US detour. There’d have been another uncle, but he very sensibly decamped to New Zealand. Cousins once removed (which is a really odd way of putting it).

They looked after him well.

After all, I sent along books as bribes. I chose several of my favourites, mostly with some sort of connection to Scotland, to possibly entice some of them to come and visit us. Gruesome murders is a sure way of tempting people to come. I don’t remember all my choices, but James Oswald was there, as was Elizabeth Wein and Catriona McPherson. And naturally Meg Rosoff and Hilary McKay for a bit of comfort reading.

There were oatcakes too, but I imagine the books were the best.

And when they’d swapped their Grandfather’s jigsaws with each other, the Resident IT Consultant escaped across the border near Niagara Falls. Really fishy visitors obviously walk across, and here he is, looking surprisingly all right for a man who never selfies. Anyway, he’d have needed extra long arms for this one.

Another Costa for Hilary!

I sensed that Hilary McKay was most probably going to be this year’s winner of the children’s Costa award. But I didn’t want to say so, since it’s so hard to deny things in a believable way if cornered.

“Children’s writer Hilary McKay collects the Costa Children’s Book Award for the second time for The Skylarks’ War, a story following the loves and losses of a family growing up against the backdrop of World War One which the judges called ‘as perfect a novel as you could ever want to read’.”

How right that judge is.

And Hilary was up against some good ones, so it’s never easy predicting. Or for that matter – I imagine – to judge.

Yippee for Hilary and her Skylarks!

Bookwitch’s 2018 selection

It’s that time of year again. Here are some of the books I enjoyed the most, chosen with some difficulty, because the next tier consists of really excellent books. Too.

I haven’t always felt that ‘picture books’ belong here, but the two I’ve got on my list are more literature with pictures. They make you cry. I mean, they made me cry. And that’s good. They are:

Michael Morpurgo and Barroux, In the Mouth of the Wolf

Jakob Wegelius, The Legend of Sally Jones (translated by Peter Graves)

And then for the more ‘regular’ children’s novels:

Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X

Candy Gourlay, Bone Talk

Michael Grant, Purple Hearts

Matt Killeen, Orphan Monster Spy

Hilary McKay, The Skylark’s War

Sally Nicholls, A Chase in Time

Maria Parr, Astrid the Unstoppable (translated by Guy Puzey)

Celia Rees, Glass Town Wars

Ellen Renner, Storm Witch

Books like these make everything worth while. There are a couple of ‘beginners,’ some ‘mid-career’ authors – whatever I mean by that – and some established authors with decades of great writing behind them. And, only two that I knew and loved before Bookwitch became famous for her reading, meaning that this blogging business has been responsible for many introductions, without which my life would have been the poorer.

The Skylarks’ War

I frequently give thanks for the writing of Hilary McKay, but never more so than now, on the publication of The Skylarks’ War. This story, which we got a sideways introduction to in Binny in Secret, the middle book about Binny, is an absolute delight, even though it’s about WWI and there will be tears, and you weep with happiness as well as that awful sadness that accompanies war stories. Who will die?

Born soon after the turn of the century, Clarry has always felt guilt over killing her mother in the process. But she has her older brother Peter and their cousin Rupert, and the three of them have their summers at the grandparents’ house in Cornwall. That’s a good thing, as Clarry and Peter’s father is a sad example of parent; one who is neither horrible, nor kind and loving.

It is Clarry’s good nature and positive outlook on life, despite being a murderess, which make this book. The boys have to be boys, go to boarding school, be manly, and go to war, while Clarry is expected to stay at home and attend the Miss Pinkses’ Academy where nothing useful is taught.

As always there are many unusual and interesting characters, and they are what make the book, and it is they who help Clarry develop. And still, someone has to die. There is a war on. There is much on feminism, in a quiet sort of way, and you finish the book determined to do as well as Clarry. Except you know you can’t.

Did you know that back then it wasn’t too difficult to transport a horse from one part of the country to another? Trains had horse boxes and you simply put the horse on the train.

Excuse me for a moment. There seems to be something in my eye.