By DAPHNE LEE
From Tots to Teens, StarMag
WHEN I was little, I used to turn to the back of my Puffins (books published my Penguin's children's literature imprint) and sadly read the ads for the Puffin Club. "If you have enjoyed reading this book and would like to know about others which we publish, why not join the Puffin Club?"
Why not indeed? Well, because I didn't live in the UK or the Republic of Ireland, that's why. If I did, membership would have cost me 5 shillings (25 pence/RM1.40) and I would have received a magazine, the Puffin Post four times a year, a badge and a membership card. And I'd have been able to enter competitions and win prizes, including books.
Some Puffins (depending on when they were published) included information on how you could join the club if you lived in Australia. Alas, I lived in Malaysia and joining the Puffin Club was something I could only dream of. By the way, back when I was a child, the Puffin imprint was, to me, a guarantee of excellence.
I longed for a bookcase filled with Puffins - my books had synopses of other Puffins in their end pages and I longed to read them. Just a couple of years ago I came across a copy of The Dolls' House, by Rumer Godden, in a bookstore and remembered that I'd read a synopsis of it at the back of my Puffin edition of Ted Hughes' How the Whale Became and Other Stories! The memory of reading and re-reading about those elusive Puffins is still a powerful one, even after more than 30 years have passed.
These days, I can search for those books online and I own quite a few of the titles I so coveted in the past. I even have a copy of the very first Puffin Annual, a hardcover compilation of stories, essays and illustrations edited by the famous Puffin editor Kaye Webb, who, incidentally, also founded the Puffin Club, in 1967 - the year of my birth!
The Annual features work by an impressive array of famous children's writers and illustrators, including Joan Aiken, Roald Dahl, Edward Ardizzone, Pauline Bayne, Raymond Briggs, Quentin Blake and Tove Jansson. I suspect the Puffin Post also boasted a rather illustrious list of contributors.
Sadly, the Post shut down in 1981. The good news is that it's being relaunched in January next year! Word has it that contributors include Charlie Higson, Cathy Cassidy and Eoin Colfer (all authors on Puffin's list). Considering that Puffin's current stable of writers and illustrators include Anne Fine, Questin Blake, Sarah Dessen, Benjamin Zephaniah and Jan Pienkowski, readers are in for a treat.
Unfortunately, Puffin Post won't be available in bookstores or newsstands. You have to buy a subscription. A year's subscription will entitle you to a new issue every two months; access to Puffin Island, an exclusive area of the Puffin Post website (www.puffinpost.co.uk); to choose a free book from a range of titles with each issue (worth 41 pounds/RM229 a year); and a membership pack full of exclusive merchandise. Pretty good, huh? Well, the problem is that a year's subscription for an international subscriber (that includes Malaysians) costs a whopping 120 pounds (RM671)! Even if you minus the RM229 for the books, plus postage, that's still a lot to pay for a magazine.
So, is the Puffin Post as as elusive to Malaysians in the Noughties as it used to be in the 60s and 70s? Well, until the exchange rate improves in our favour, I don't think many of us be subscribing to the mag. Luckily, the website promises to be good fun. And I suppose kids could suggest that their school libraries take out a subscription (I hope public libraries do so). The six free books could go on the shelves and, along with the magazines, would entertain readers for years and years to come.
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