The Places You Will Go

Stolen Childhood

By DAPHNE LEE 

Tots to Teens 

IT'S funny how one sometimes "avoids" reading a book for no reason other than it's not yet the right time to read it. I know other avid readers will know what I'm talking about. It's what keeps one buying books although dozens sit, unread, on one's shelves. One is forever in pursuit of the perfect read - the trouble is one keeps recognising potential perfect reads, future perfect reads. It's impossible to tell which book will keep you riveted on any given day until it actually does. 

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (Puffin Books, 192 pages, ISBN: 978-0142414088) by Judith Kerr is a book that I have "avoided" for years. I love Kerr's picture books, but somehow never felt inclined to pick the book up. I didn't even see it as a "potential" good read! Goodness, was I wrong. 

I received Pink Rabbit in the post a couple of weeks ago and, just like that, knew that the right time to read it had come. As I was going away to East Malaysia for a few days, I packed it to read on the trip and once I started reading I could not put it down. 

The book is about Anna, a little girl who lives in Berlin, Germany with her parents and brother, Max. It's the 1930s and the elections are around the corner. Hitler's party might win and if it does, it will probably make things very difficult for Germany's Jewish community. Anna's father is Jewish and so, it's decided that he should go to Switzerland where he will be safe. If the Nazi party wins the elections, the rest of the family will follow. 

This is not the family's only move. They go on to Paris and then, finally, to England. The book is a fictionalised account of Judith Kerr's experiences and the title refers to the soft toy Kerr/Anna decided to leave behind when her family moved to Switzerland, thinking she would return someday to her home in Berlin. In fact, the house and all its possessions were confiscated shortly after the family left Germany, a price was put on her father's head and his books were publicly burned.

Making Facts Stick

By DAPHNE LEE

Tots to Teens, StarMag

HISTORY was one of my favourite subjects in school. I found the stories interesting, and it amused me to imagine what the men and women that featured in them were really like.

But in most history books, historical figures are reduced to names linked to significant events and dates. There is no sense of what made them tick, their likes and dislikes, their hopes and dreams. Was Parameswara a serious or cheerful man? Did Frank Swettenham [right] like durians and other local delicacies or was he a fussy eater? Did Yap Ah Loy ever put his feet up with a good book?

If history textbooks are to be believed, the people mentioned in them do nothing but sign treaties, fight wars, and plan assassinations and rebellions. It takes historical fiction, I suppose, to flesh out a historical figure – to animate those blurry black and white lithographs and awkwardly proportioned illustrations.

Historical fiction also, because it doesn’t just present the dry, bare facts, but puts them into the context of the lives of thinking, feeling people, makes much more of an impression on the reader. If a story is told well, the details stick.

Josephine Tey's fascinating exploration of the man who was Richard Plantagenet (in The Daughter of Time) helped me to finally make sense of the War of the Roses. It also turned me into a lifelong Ricardian just as Shakespeare's bit of Tudor propoganda (Richard III) has probably fixed Richard as a hunchbacked monster in the minds of many.

It's easy to get carried away and believe everything one reads, but we have to remember that it's historical fiction and not accept it all as fact. Anyway, you know what Winston Churchill said about history being written by the victors! There are definitely many versions of every historical event depending on the perspective of who records or retells it.

I wish someone would write some exciting hostorical fiction set in Malaysia. I suppose Hikayat Hang Tuah qualifies but who knows if he even existed. Apparently, National Laureate Muhammad Haji Salleh has completed an English translation of that book. I hope it is published with some fanfare and doesn't just slip quietly into the bookstores and get relegated to the bottom shelf of the Malaysiana section.

She Did What?

I WAS in Singapore last weekend to watch The Swordfish, Then the Concubine, by Kee Thuan Chye, a critically acclaimed Malaysian playwright who also happens to be an associate editor at The Star.

The play is based on a legend, told in the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals) of the attack of Singapore by swordfish. I've always been fascinated by the story without really understanding it. It's obvious that Singaporean fishermen would have been affected by shoals of killer swordfish, but apparently thousands of men, women and children were also killed. Strolling by the seashore was, I suppose a favourite pasttime in those days before video games and cable TV.

Anyway, the ruler of Singapura (as the island was called then) ordera the royal guard to form a human barricade at the edge of the water, but this plan fails. Presently though, a small boy suggests that banana stems be used to form a protective barrier against the fish. This brilliant idea works like a dream: the swordfish get their sharp snouts stuck in the stems and are destroyed by the king's men. However, the boy's original thinking is not rewarded. Fearing that he will grow up to be a threat to authority, the king has the lad killed.

According to the legend, it is the blood of the murdered boy that stained the earth and gave Bukit Merah its name. And what is the lesson that this tale teaches? Ummm ... that children should be seen and not heard? As one of the character's in Kee's play says, if the boy had kept his mouth shut, he would have lived - provided he kept off the beach, that is. Hmmm ... no wonder many versions of the story end simply with the success of the banana-trunk wall.

Yet, although the end of the tale is a tragic and unfair one, it does accurately reflect life. One is not always rewarded for doing the right thing. Performing well wins you admiration and can lead to success, but also causes jealousy and may end in downfall at the hands of those who resent you. In anycase, no one actually does anything about the boy's unjust treatement. "The kingdom thrives, the people carry on ..." sings the chorus in Kee's play. All's well, so why rock the boat for the sake of one scabby little kid?

Old but Always New

The late Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time deserves to be introduced to a whole new audience. Forty-four years after it was first published its contents still ruffle feathers.

Junior Reading Room

Social Misfits and resourceful children are featured in this week's selection. Get a 25% discount with the coupon in StarTwo.

Dido and Pa

This week's featured illustrations are from Dido and Pa by Joan Aiken. The pictures are by Pat Marriott.

Dido and Pa is part of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series.

Scary Stuff

I interviewed Tunku Halim (left) on Friday and felt like a worm when he said that hardly anyone had reviewed his Children's History of Malaya.

(I interviewed him when that book was first published.)

I squeaked: "I mentioned you in my column."

OK, so it was a very, very brief mention ....

No excuses, so let's just look forward to his new book, 44 Cemetery Road, a compilation of his supernatural shorts.

For what it's worth, I still read CHM to my kids and have recommended it to a couple of home-schooling centres (where it is now used). The book makes history interesting for children. History is, of course, interesting anyway, but most textbooks have an uncanny knack of turning bloody battles, scandals and betrayals, turbulent lives, cruel dictators and courageous people into chunks of boring, lifeless facts. Quite a gift, that!

To get your kids interested in Malayan history, get them CHM.

And check out Tunku Halim's blog Write Lah! Writing for Malaysians.

44 Cemetery Road is due out in April.

Mini Review: The Whispering Road

The Whispering Road
By Livi Michael
Puffin Books
ISBN: 0141317035

Main Characters:
1. Joe
2. Annie

What It's All About
Brother and sister, Joe and Annie, run away from their master, a cruel farmer who bought them from a workhouse. The children were left there by their mother who promised to come back for them. Like most workhouse children, Joe and Annie are ill-treated - beaten, starved and over-worked.One night, Joe decides to flee and takes Annie with him. So starts a journey full of dangers and evils.

What I Like About It
It's a fast-paced, exciting story, with characters (Joe and Annie as well as the people they meet along the way) you can really believe in.

What I Didn't Like About It
It's very sad. However, that's also what makes it good. Michael is simply describing a state of affairs that actually existed. This is no fantasy but the grim truth of 19th century England. What's really heartbreaking is that Joe and Annie's life is really not too different from that of children living in poverty in many countries, right now in the 21st century!

If You Like The Sound of This book, You Should Also Try:
Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Reviewed by: Daphne Lee

Independent Reading

I enjoyed a couple of books over the Independence Day bank holiday: The Mirror-Image Ghost by Catherine Storr, and The River at Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston.

I only found out last night that Boston started writing her Green Knowe books when she was 60! Wow! There is hope for me yet! And until last night I thought all the books were about Tolly, the little boy who arrives to live with his grandmother in an old manor house by a river. It seems that the characters in each book vary somewhat.

In River, it's Ida, Oscar and Ping, who explore the water in a canoe. Like in the first book (The Children of Green Knowe, which is the only other in the series I've read) it is pretty plotless, and simply describes the children spending long, idyllic days, exploring and enjoying the countryside. I must say it's a rather magical and evocative read.

I'm keeping my eye out for other Green Knowe books, epsecially Stranger at Green Knowe, which won the Carnegie Medal in 1961 and once again features Ping!

The books are illustrated by Peter Boston, the son of Lucy Boston. In fact, Green Knowe is based on Lucy Boston's own home, Hemingford Grey Manor House, in Huntingdon, Cambrideshire. You can actually visit the house, by appointment. Alas, I did not know this when I was living in the UK!

The other book I read, The Mirror-Image Ghost, is a grimmer, much sadder tale about Lisa, a young girl adjusting to her new step father and siblings. The ghost of the title appears in a haunted mirror, and it is not so much a spirit as a figure from the past. I found the book quite creepy in places, especially near the end ...

Catherine Storr's best known novel is Marianne Dreams, another very spooky tale about a girl who dreams vividly about whatever she draws. The sequel, Mark and Marianne, is weirdly uncreepy though. It's like Marianne forgets totally all the strange things that happened to her in the first book, and goes on to lead a horribly mundane life. I wonder what Storr was thinking! Not that it's a bad book. I'm just baffled by how different it is, up to the point of being rather inconsistent. Maybe Storr just wanted to use the two characters in an ordinary teenage novel.