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Summer readings: My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell | Books | guardian.co.uk

Summer readings: My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

A family holiday on the Greek island of Paxos was the perfect setting for my first encounter with hermit crabs and a classic tale.

 

Naturally inspiring ... Corfu, where Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals is set. Photograph: Robert Harding Picture Library L/Alamy

I am not sure quite why I have such an affection for My Family and Other Animals: my brother referred to me as Margo for quite some time, not because of my effortless ability to attract various languid Greek youths, but because I was a bit spotty, and so was she: "swollen up like a plate of scarlet porridge", as Larry puts it. How unfair.

Book Review: The Rescuers | Hornbooks and Inkwells | The Great Bear

By MEGHAN COX GURDON

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S.D. Schlinder

An illustration by S.D. Schindler from Hornbooks and Inkwells.

Margery Sharp's mouse-centric 1959 adventure, The Rescuers, has only been out of print for a decade, but it is well worth revisiting. For one thing, it has just been reissued in handsome hardback as part of the New York Review Children's Collection, with drawings by Garth Williams. For another, this new incarnation (149 pages, $14.95) prov des an excuse to rescue the story for a generation of children who might otherwise know only the animated 1977 Disney movie of the same name. As with most children's classics, Ms. Sharp's original work is much funnier and more interestingly textured than the high-fructose movie version.

A celebration of the writing and art of Mervyn Peake | Books | The Guardian

A celebration of the writing and art of Mervyn Peake

Mervyn Peake, creator of Gormenghast, is now recognised as a brilliant novelist and artist. Michael Moorcock, China Miéville, Hilary Spurling and AL Kennedy celebrate his achievements.

Swelter, the murderous cook ... illustration by Mervyn Peake from the The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy published by Vintage Classics

Stories that are the Cat's Whiskers

By DAPHNE LEE

From Tots to Teens, 19th June, 2011

So, I hope you’re eager to learn of more fictional felines this week.

One of my favourite novels about cats is Jennie by Paul Gallico. Unfortunately, it is no longer in print. However, you can find secondhand copies online.

It’s about a boy, Peter, who is transformed into a cat and is cared for by a cat, called Jennie, who
has been abandoned by her owners. If you’re familiar with the way cats behave, you will realise that
Gallico was obviously very fond of and familiar with cats. In fact, he also wrote The Silent Miaow
which is a manual, supposedly written by a cat (translated from the feline into English by Gallico),
that “instructs stray kittens and homeless cats in how to obtain, captivate, and dominate the families of their choice.”

There’s also The Three Lives of Thomasina (readers of a certain age may remember the 1960s Disney adaptation) and Honourable Cat, a collection of poems and essays about cats.

A Relevant Read

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

 

I AM reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Not re-reading, but reading for the first time. I don’t know how I’ve managed to arrive at my 43^rd year without having read the book, especially when so many around me love it so much.

 

I am now two chapters into Part Two, and enjoying it thoroughly. I am loving Scout, the narrator, especially. She’s six years old at the start of the book, and there is nothing more insulting to her than to be told she behaves like a girl. “Scout sometimes you act so much like a girl, it’s mortifying,” is the sort of thing her beloved brother, Jem, says whenever Scout shows any inclination not to take part in his plans.

 

Jem is four years older than Scout and, as big brothers go, is actually a pretty good sort … most of the time.

 

By the way, I have not watched the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird either, but I’ve been told that it’s a very faithful dramatisation of the book. Harper Lee liked it and became close friends with Gregory Peck who plays Atticus Finch, the kids’ dad (Peck’s grandson was named Harper).

 

The children call their father Atticus, which would be unusual even in the 21^st century let alone in the deep south of the 1930s, where and when conventions, manners and appearances were everything. This is one of the first indications that Atticus is not like most fathers.

 

He is a widower (his wife died when Jem was six) and has raised his children himself, with only the help of a cook and cleaner, a black woman named Calpurnia. Atticus is that most rare breed of parent who actually listens to his children, not that he doesn’t ever lecture them. However, at least he practises what he preaches.

 

Scout mentions that she can’t remember her mother, but observes how Jem sometimes goes off by himself and recognises this as a sign that her brother misses their mother and leaves him alone on these occasions. Like most children, Jem and Scout are often acutely sensitive to and considerate of others’ feelings. They are also frequently tactless, selfish and indifferent.

 

The Railway Children: Forever Young | Film | The Guardian

Heartbreaking ... The Railway Children. Photograph: Allstar/EMI/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

via guardian.co.uk

Posted via web from daphnelee's posterous

The Railway Children will always be remembered for that scene at Oakworth station, the one where Roberta's father emerges through the steam of a departing train. "Daddy, my Daddy!" Plenty of people will admit to weeping when the young Jenny Agutter is reunited with her father. But watching it now, 40 years after it was first released, I find myself welling up long before then: at the birdsong, the music, the Yorkshire countryside, the lost Edwardian world.

Potter for the New Generation

By DAPHNE LEE

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

BEATRIX Potter's tales are going to be "re-vamped" for the present generation of children. An animated TV series featuring beloved characters like Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddleduck, Jeremy Fisher and Tom Kitten is due out in 2011, along with the inevitable merchandise like stationery, toys and, probably, new "as-seen-on-TV" books.

In an interview with The Guardian, a spokesperson from Chorion, the licensing agent of Potter's publisher, Frederick Warne, declared that the children's classics are bought chiefly by "posh to middle class" people on both sides of the Atlantic. The new TV series is supposed to widen the appeal of the stories and characters. One way is for the stories to be updated so that they are "appropriate" for the present-day kids.

The Box of Delights is a true Christmas classic | Books | guardian.co.uk

  via guardian.co.uk

Posted via web from daphnelee's posterous

Young Kay Harker, returning from school to his family home Seekings and his festive visitors in the shape of a gang of cousins, is given the Box of the title to care for and protect by a mysterious travelling Punch and Judy man, Cole Hawlings. As is the case in these types of books, the Box is a treasure of such magnitude that by rights it should be entrusted to a private army rather than a small boy, and it isn't long before a gang of crooks with a rather magical bent, led by the dark Abner Brown, are on its trail and menacing Kay and his cousins.
 
So far, so fairly traditional children's fantasy. But its Christmas setting in a snowbound corner of England (with particular resonances for this very festive season - all the grown-ups conspire to be snowed in elsewhere, leaving the children pretty much alone to enjoy their travails) and the dreamy, poetic language of author John Masefield come together to make it something of a seasonal classic that certainly bears repeat readings year after year.

Still Waiting for the Wild Things

By DAPHNE LEE

Tots to Teens, StarMag

THE Malaysian release date for Where the Wild Things Are film has been postponed. While we're waiting, here are some more books from Maurice Sendak, for Christmas or just anytime.

Sendak not only illustrated his own stories, but also the work of other writers.

Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories (HarperTrophy, 90 pages, ISBN: 978-0064401470) is a Newbery Honor collection of seven folktales by 1978 Nobel Prize for literature winner, Isaac Bashevis Singer. Originally written in Yiddish, the stories tell of the lives, adventures and (mostly) misadventures of various simple country folk.

A number of the tales are set in the village of Chelm, which is inhabited solely by fools. The village is ruled by the seven Elders - the "oldest and greatest fools" in Chelm. They have long white beards and high foreheads from "thinking too much", and when they consider a problem they have to clutch their beards and cover their foreheads with their hands.

Facing the book's title page is Sendak's illustration of the seven Elders. There they stand, looking totally flummoxed - and who can blame them when they have to deal with difficulties such as four sisters getting their feet mixed up under the bed clothes! (The Mixed-Up Feet and the Silly Bridegroom)

In this book, Sendak's fine pen drawings are highly detailed, with plenty of shading and cross-hatching. The blunt-featured, slightly large-headed figures with their expressive faces are recognisably Sendak's.

The Promise of Earthsea

By DAPHNE LEE

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

MORE than 10 years ago I tried to read Ursula K. Le Guin's The Wizard of Earthsea and failed miserably. This happens sometimes. You find a book unremarkable, hard to read even, at 23 only to declare it the best thing since sliced bread when you re-read it at 50.

The Wizard of Earthsea and the other books in The Earthsea Quartet (The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore and Tehanu) kept me up way past my bedtime two weeks ago. Like the best fantasy novels they explore the great mysteries of the universe - life and death, good and evil, and time. Running through the books is also the theme of self-discovery, the search of identity and the meaning of self, mainly through the life and exploits of the quartet's central figure, Sparrowhawk.