Nonsense, chocolate, animals, magic, escaped convicts and a lamp-post. (Top Ten Childrens Books)

Member Name: pje

Product:	Top Ten Childrens Books
Date:	01/04/02 (2343 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: I just like 'em, ok?

Disadvantages: Sadly, some of 'em are out of print.

"Begin at the beginning", the King said, gravely,
"and go on till you come to the end: then stop."

That's one of many, many, many brilliant lines from:

ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (1865) ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
& THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (1872)
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by Lewis Carroll .......... ¶ Paperback: £3.99 ¶ ISBN: 0140433171 ¶ pp 448 ¶

Ah, the classic story of a young girl who chases a White Rabbit down a hole, imbibes a concoction which has a very strange effect on her, not unlike that of a magic mushroom (actually, I'm told it's a toadstool called fly agaric) which causes macropsia (the inability to judge size.) Not that I'm suggesting anything you understand... Anyway, then she finds herself at a tea party with a Mad Hatter (it's the mercury y'know), a March Hare (who's as mad as the hatter) and a Dormouse - and that's just for starters!

So much of these books has, like Shakespeare, seeped into our language. Every child has heard of the Cheshire Cat, whose grin lingers on after the rest of him has faded away, and the twins Tweedledum and Tweeedledee.` I remember the way my Dad used to mutter "curioser and curioser" while watching mysteries on the telly, and vaguely recall playing the Mock Turtle    in a play while I was at infant school. Y'know, if the National Curriculum was determined by the Mock Turtle, the kiddies woud learn Reeling, Writhing, Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision. (So no change there.)

These two books are just dripping with wonderful wordplay.

' "When *I* use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
"it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." '

~ Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
~ How I wonder what you're at!
~ Up above the world you fly,
~ Like a tea-tray in the sky.
<
br>I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of poetry, maybe that's why I love the way JABBERWOCKY reduces poetry to a series of beautiful but nonsensical tongue-twirling sounds:

~'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
~ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
~ All mimsy were the borogoves,
~ And the mome raths outgrabe.

My thanks to auldmac for pointing out that the full text of both of these books is available online courtesy Project Gutenberg...

http://gutenberg.teleglobe.net/etext91/alice30 .txt
http://gutenberg.teleglobe.net/etext91/lglass1 8.txt

And if I can have two-nonsense-books-for-the-price-of-one in my Top Ten, then why not four-nonsense-books-for-the-price-of-one too...


COMPLETE NONSENSE (1846-1877)
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by Edward Lear .......... ¶ Paperback: £3.99 ¶ ISBN: 0571207367 ¶ pp 308 ¶

Edward Lear was the youngest of twenty-one children, yes TWENTY-ONE! (Most of whom died before him) and for a while he was employed to teach Queen Victoria how to sketch.

Lear created some wonderful 'characters' like the Pobble who has no toes; the Jumblies who "went to sea in a Sieve"; The Dong With A Luminous Nose (who fell in love with a Jumbly Girl); and of course, the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò. They appeared in his four books of nonsense:-

The Book of Nonsense (1846)
Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets (1871)
More Nonsense (1872)
and
Laughable Lyrics (1877)

which contain illustrated poems, stories, and nonsense recipes.
And he is also fondly remembered for his silly limericks...

~ There was an old man, who when little,
~ Fell casually into a kettle;
~ But, growing too stout,
~ he could never get out,
~ So he passed all his life in that kettle.

Which (admittedly) can be a bit hit-and-miss...

~ There was an Old Person of Cromer,
~ Who stood on one leg to read Homer; r>~ When he found he grew stiff,
~ he jumped over the cliff,
~ Which concluded that Person of Cromer.

And, of course, kids will particularly enjoy anything that's a bit disgusting...

~ There was an old person of Putney,
~ Whose food was roast spiders and chutney,
~ Which he took with his tea,
~ within sight of the sea,
~ That romantic old person of Putney.

All the limericks are illustrated by cartoons, of course, and I love the way Lear used unusual and tongue-challenging words like turbid, mendacious, melancholy and subsisted:

~ There was an Old Person of Ewell,
~ Who chiefly subsisted on gruel;
~ But to make it more nice,
~ he inserted some mice,
~ which refreshed that Old Person of Ewell.

And there's a wonderful innocence about Lear's work, isn't there..?
Take his most famous poem: The Owl and the Pussy-Cat for example:

~ The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
~ in a beautiful pea-green boat.
~ They took some honey and plenty of money,
~ wrapped up in a five-pound note.
~ The Owl looked up to the stars above, and sang to a small guitar:
~ 'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love, what a beautiful Pussy you are
~ You are, you are! What a beautiful Pussy you are!'

Unfortunately, children often grow up into horrid, dirty-minded adults who concoct filthy, rude limericks. I'm sure that sort of thing never once crossed Edward Lear's mind when he was writing things like:

~ There was a Young Lady of Lucca,
~ Whose lovers completely forsook her;
~ She ran up a tree,
~ and said, 'Fiddle-de-dee!'
~ Which embarrassed the people of Lucca.

This strand of nonsense was surely a huge influence on the people who shaped the popular culture of the 1950's and 1960's. Like Spike Milligan - who wrote The Goon Show and died (paving the way for Monty Python)    and John Lennon, who
was a certainly a fan of Lear. Some of those odd Beatles' lyrics like: "semolina pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower" which    were attributed to mind-altering substances, were probably inspired by    Lear, as was his book "In His Own Write". Interestingly, like Spike, Lear hated noise. He also thought that most human beings were "awful idiots".

~ There was an old man in a garden,
~ Who always begged everyone's pardon.
~ When they asked him: "What for?"
~ He replied: "You're a bore!
~ And I trust you'll go out of my garden."

The Book of Nonsense is also online at: http://gutenberg.teleglobe.net/etext97/nnsns10.txt



THE FABLES OF ÆSOP
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¶ Paperback: £1.00 ¶ ISBN: 0140621288 ¶ pp 224 ¶

You may not think you know Æsop's Fables but you do. His most famous cautionary tales include:- The Tortoise and the Hare; The Boy Who Cried Wolf; The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing; The Dog in the Manger; and The Fox   and the Grapes (he couldn't have them so he said they were sour.)

Aesop's fables are short, pithy little tales, all with moral conclusions which illustrate consequences and stuff. They are an excellent source of wisdom    for the little 'uns - every child should be told these stories at an early age. Think of it as an inoculation against anti-social behaviour.

In times of trouble you learn who your true friends are.
United we stand, divided we fall.
If we want our own lives to be protected, we must protect others.
One good turn deserves another.
Don't count your chickens before they've hatched.
It's better to be content with half, than to lose all.
Look before you leap.
Slow and steady wins the race.
Etc, etc.

You can read Aesop's fables online at:

http://www.aesopfables.com/


Hans Christian Andersen&
#39;s fairy tales are another classic source of morality for kids, and I nearly included them here. The Emperor's New Clothes is, in my opinion, probably the best little story ever told. It is one of two Penguin 60's that I keep by my bed (The Ballad of Reading Gaol being the other.)
But on the other hand I really hated The Ugly Duckling as a kid -
ugly ducklings do NOT grow up to be swans, they grow up to be ugly ducks!

You can buy Andersen's fairy tales for a quid as one of those Wordsworth classics, or better still read 'em for free - they're also on the Aesop website:

http://www.pacificnet.net/~johnr/aesop/aesophc a.html

And, as you'd expect, Project Gutenberg includes the stories of both Aesop and Hans Christian Andersen:

xchttp://gutenberg.teleglobe.net/etext91/aesop 11.txt
http://gutenberg.teleglobe.net/etext99/hcaft10 .txt

Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce also narrowly misses out here, partly because I came across a copy this next book in an Oxfam shop...


THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY (1960)
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by Sheila Burnford .... ¶ Paperback: £4.99 ¶ ISBN: 0340626658 ¶ pp 117 ¶

I didn't even know The Incredible Journey WAS a book until I came across it in a charity shop. I just knew it as the Disney film we got to watch in school. (Which was quite an event in the days before Video Recorders.)

The Incredible Journey is the timeless tale of two dogs and a cat making their way back home across the wilds of Canada.

The oldest and slowest of the trio is BODGER, a white English bull terrier. TAO, the "wheat-coloured" Siamese cat with "sapphire eyes", is the most self-sufficient, and LUATH, a young red-gold labrador retriever is the leader.

The trio face many dangers along the way, from other animals (a bear cub,    a lynx and a porcupine) and from nature (when an attempt to cross a river p
roves disastrous for the cat). It's a delightful, captivating, adventure story; but Disney made such a marvellous film out of it, that I doubt whether anyone bothers to read it to their kids any more, which is a shame.


Next is another book I found in that Oxfam shop, having lost my copy years ago (or maybe it was a library copy I read and loved all those years ago.)


DOLPHIN ISLAND (1963)
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by Arthur C. Clarke ...... ¶ Paperback: N / A ¶ ISBN: 0140319204 ¶ pp 158 ¶

This is one of many books set in the 21st century that I read as a kid - isn't it hard to believe we're there now? Johnny Clinton (don't snigger) is an orphaned teenager living with "unsympathetic relatives" (and before you ask, no, he doesn't have a pet owl.) One night he sneaks out and stows away on a hovership, but unfortunately for him, it crashes into the sea.

After clambering onto a piece of flotsam, he finds himself surrounded by fins, fortunately they're dolphin fins, and the dolphins push him towards land.    And there he is taken in by a scientific community who are attempting to communicate with dolphins. As well as helping them with their experiments, he learns to skin-dive and explores the Great Barrier Reef. And here, in his descriptions of the underwater wonders of the reef, Arthur C. Clarke's love    of diving in the Indian Ocean shines through. I wonder how many kids were inspired to become marine biologists by this book?

When the scientists do manage to communicate with dolphins, they're faced with a tricky dilemma, because the dolphins ask for their help - in a war...



HELEN KELLER'S TEACHER (1965)
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by Margaret Davidson. ¶ Paperback: £4.50 ¶ ISBN: 0590446525 ¶ pp 153 ¶

I wasn't going to include any non-fiction, but how could I leave out a book    as memorable as this? I still have several biographies specia
lly written for children, including another one by Margaret Davidson called 'Louis Braille,    the boy who invented books for the blind' and 'The Story of Madame Curie' by Alice Thorne - which I also considered including here. Are kids given potted biographies like these to read nowadays? And if not, why not?
Children need, and want, heroes to inspire them and role models to look up to and to emulate - real people, not just boy wizards! (Although, that said, 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' knocks spots off some of my choices.    But until J.K. gives us Harry Potter V, VI & VII, I think I'll keep my options open Potter-wise.)

Joanna (Annie) Sullivan was born on April 14th, 1866. Her parents had left Ireland a few years earlier because of the famine. Annie soon developed    the eye disease trachoma and was prone to throwing wild tantrums.    Annie's mother died from tuberculosis, and her father became a drunkard,    so their children ended up being cared for by relatives. But they found her behaviour intolerable and packed Annie, and her younger brother Jimmie,    off to a poorhouse. Now Jimmie had suffered from a tubercular hip since birth, and before long he died, leaving Annie devastated.
[Whoever is humming Simon Bates' "Our Tune" just stop it right now!]

Eventually, Annie was allowed to go to a school for the blind, and received some education. There she also met an old woman called Laura Bridgeman, who had been taught to communicate despite being deaf, blind and mute, using a hand-to-hand version of sign language. Annie went on to use this technique when she was asked to be a governess to a deaf-mute blind girl called Helen Keller, who subsequently become a world famous academic.

Helen had become deaf and blind after contracting scarlet fever when she was a baby, and became shut off from the world. Her parents spoilt her,    and just like young Annie, she became prone to th
rowing tantrums. Annie's struggle, first to tame Helen, and then teach her to communicate, is deeply moving. Culminating in the triumphant day that Helen hides in a wardrobe and then spells out her first sentence: G-I-R-L   I-S   I-N   W-A-R-D-R-O-B-E.


Talking of wardrobes... [Did I hear someone groan?}


THE MAGICIAN'S NEPHEW (1955)
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by C.S. Lewis ............ ¶ Paperback: £3.99 ¶ ISBN: 0007115555 ¶ pp 176 ¶

Now here's an odd choice. Why have I plumped for this prequel, instead of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe itself? And how can I choose a book I'm not sure I even read as a child? (I probably did, but it was a long time ago.) Well, the play's the thing, you see...

At junior school I was involved in a play based on this book. I played Uncle Andrew (boo, hiss!) a cowardly rotten dabbler in magic, who has some rings made out of dust from the lost island of Atlantis. When his nephew Digory and Polly, the girl from next door, find their way into his forbidden study while exploring the attic, he uses them as guinea pigs in an experiment.

He gets Polly to put on a yellow ring and she disappears. Digory is shocked by Uncle Andrew's callous disregard for Polly's safety, and chivalrously goes to her rescue, and they find themselves in a wood between worlds.

They end up tumbling from one world to another and back again, picking up a strange entourage along the way, including a queen who's a bit of an old witch, a cabbie and a lamp-post, before witnessing the wonderous creation of a new world by a singing lion called Aslan. The world is Narnia of course, and the lamp-post becomes a significant landmark. So if you've always wanted to know how it got there, you have to read this book!

The first actor to play Digory to my Uncle Andrew quit y'know. Aww come on, I wasn't shaking him THAT violently, I mean, it's gotta look realis
tic, right?

C.S. Lewis died on November 22, 1963, the day that Aldous Huxley died, amongst others.



CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1964)
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by Roald Dahl ............ ¶ Paperback: £5.99 ¶ ISBN: 0141311304 ¶ pp 192 ¶

You know the story: he's just a poor boy from a poor family, but he finds one of the five golden tickets hidden in Wonka bars and, along with his Grandpa Joe, gets a tour of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, along with four spoilt brats who each meet a sticky end.

Possibly the greatest novel ever written. Seriously. What do you expect from a classic novel? An imaginative unique, plot? Memorable characters? Wit? Comedy? A sharply observed critique of the moral values of society? Pathos? Bathos? D'Artangnan? (Sorry, I know, I've done that joke before, but I couldn't resist it.) This book has everything, the only things missing are those pretentious, polysyllabic words beloved of intellectual snobs.

Now, I know what you're thinking, you're thinking: "Hang on, if that's possibly the greatest novel ever written, why isn't it your number one?"
(or else: "How much bleddy more of this is there, you stupid cunctator?")    Well, it's because the last two really were my favourite books as a child,    and so are close to my heart...



FOXY (1959)
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by John Montgomery .. ¶ Paperback: N / A ¶ ISBN: 0330028251 ¶ pp 120 ¶

After seven years in an orphanage in London, nine-year-old David Grant
is adopted by Mr. & Mrs. Hedger, and goes to live on their farm in Sussex.
Inevitably he finds the country dull in comparison, but what they do have    out in the sticks are animals. Not just farm animals but pets as well, and he soon yearns for one of his own. He asks the Hedgers if he can have a dog, but they tell him to wait until he's older.

Then one day he is
sent on an errand which takes him through the woods, even though there is an escaped convict on the loose (well, you can't have    a children's book with an escaped convict, can you!) In the woods he meets a mysterious stranger. Now be honest, you thought he was going to find an abandoned fox-cub and then take it home and keep it as a pet, didn't you? Well, ok, you're right, he does (the escaped convict is a bit of a red herring).

He can't keep Foxy a secret for long. But, surprisingly, when they see how tame the animal is, the adults quickly come to accept his new 'pet', and Foxy become quite popular. Yeah, I know, a tame fox is stretching reality a little and the pro-Fox-hunting lobby would scorn such namby-pamby propaganda but then again, the pro-Fox-hunting lobby are vermin, and should be shot, so who cares what they feel (if anything)? And, yes, the fox-hunting season does come round, and yes, Foxy does go missing on the day of a hunt, and yes, I'm afraid little David does see a fox caught and killed by the hounds... Sadly he doesn't see the hunters machine-gunned to death by saboteurs, but, y'know, one day maybe. Sorry, have I gone too far there? Look, if they go around killing things for pleasure, they aren't human they're vermin. But that's a different opinion. The point is, I remember Foxy being my favourite book when I was about seven, but then tragedy struck...

Sometime in the mid-1970's our Council House was re-modernised (I'm sure that was the word the council used - as if they'd been modernised before!) While it was being done-up, we were moved into caravan. "It'll take about six weeks, so you should be back in your homes by Christmas..." they said.    It took six months. A lot of stuff had to be packed away in the garage, which is where I thought my copy of Foxy was put, but I never saw it again.
I found another copy in that Oxfam shop recently thoug
h :o)


And (at) last, here it is, my favourite children's book of all time...


NO WAY OF TELLING (1972)
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by Emma Smith ........... ¶ Paperback: N / A ¶ ISBN: 0006707394 ¶ pp 224 ¶

It was while living in the caravan, that I read this book. I remember starting it on a cold, snowy, New Year's Day. Or perhaps that's just how I choose to remember it? Maybe I was re-reading it - I think that this was the first book   I ever read twice, and maybe it wasn't actually snowing, but this book left me with a love of snowbound stories... I yearn for a week of heavy snow,    so I can sit by the window and read 'The Song of Hiawatha' or 'Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow', while listening to 'Incantations' by Mike Oldfield. (Do you know, I think I've read every other book Peter Høeg has written apart from Miss Smilla - just because I'm waiting for snow!)

Who can forget being let out of school early because of heavy snow? Well, that's what happens to Amy Bowen...

"Snow, she thought, was a marvel - it was indeed! Snow was like nothing else: it changed the world, the whole of life, in a matter of moments.
Not only the shapes of trees and grasses were changed but daily habits - even laws lost their power and had no meaning when snow fell."

Amy lives with her Granny in a mountainous area of Wales, and they are completely cut off by the snow. And yet they have an unexpected visitor... ` A huge man bursts into their kitchen, searches their house, and takes some food and blankets without saying a word to them. What a gripping start!    The next day, two men on skis appear, obviously hunting the first man.    They claim to be the police, but Granny is strangely unfriendly to them, perhaps it's the gun...

This is a terrific thriller with an amazing atmosphere. It sent shivers down my spine and kept me totally spellbound - just
like it did when I was a kid!

"No Way Of Telling" was shortlisted for the 1973 Carnegie Medal, but is now out of print. You can't get it from Amazon and you can't have my copy either, so if you want to read it you'll have to beg the publishers to re-issue it, unless you can find it in one of those magical charity shops that is.

Phew! Thanks for reading all that, I hope you enjoyed it.
If not give yourself a medal! The End.
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