The Lewis chessmen

Image: britishmuseum.org

As a girl, one of my favourite things to do was to visit the British Museum. I loved the slightly creepy horror of the Egypt room (too many illicit viewings of horror films!) but my heart has always belonged to small things- Japanese netsuke, for example or the Lewis chessmen. Museums were far less interactive and child friendly in the 70s, but the Lewis chessmen were perfect- at child eye height, you could see things that adults couldn't- the pompous expression on the Bishop's face, the tired droop of the Knight; the Queen with her hand to her face. They're wonderful objects. I could almost feel their smooth weight in the palm of my hand.

So I was delighted when two books recently featured the chessmen. The wonderful Francesca Simon of Horrid Henry fame's Sleeping Army is the story of Freya, living in an alternate version of Britain, where Christianity is a minor cult, and Viking beliefs are the mainstream religion.

Image: Francescasimon.com

Freya is caught between her warring, divorced parents: her mother is a priestess of the Viking religion, and her father, who has lost his job, is a security guard at the British Museum. Owing to a mix up, one night he has to take Freya to the museum with him, where, bored, she blows Heimdall's horn, and brings the statues to life. A brother and sister, Alfi and Roskva, Snot the Berserker and Sleipnir the eight legged horse. Together they end up in Asgard, only to find it horribly altered: the gods are dying, and Freya must go on a journey to save them. If she fails, she will be turned into a chess piece herself. On the way they meet giants, Loki the trickster god and travels to the Underworld. Freya is a believable protagonist: hardly heroic at times, she is definitely not the outdoor type, but grows into her role as the leader of a quest. I really enjoyed this, and recommend it to children 8+.

Image: foyles.co.uk

All the Doctor wanted was a game of chess. But he arrives on an island at the top of Scotland just at the wrong time: a mysterious fire that burns on top of the water is coming closer to the island, and a ship full of Vikings is transporting a princess to an unwilling marriage with a very unattractive King, and an island people with no way of defending themselves from either. And to top it all, the salt water seems to be playing havoc with the TARDIS.

This is a great adventure. If you know Jenny Colgan's romance novels, you'll know that she's a very funny writer with a great talent for deft characterisation, and she captures the whimsical and capricious nature of the Eleventh Doctor, as well as his love affair with humanity. Here he is without Amy and Rory, and rather lonely- and in keeping with the television series, has an affinity with a child. The Princess and Viking subplot is great too, and balances nicely with the Doctor's lone state. Although this is not marketed for children, I think a confident Who fan of 11+ would love this book.

May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favour

On Sunday morning, I went to the cinema to watch The Hunger Games. Sunday mornings are great for going to the cinema on your own; I have a shocking concentration span for films and am ridiculously easily distracted. The emptier the cinema is the more likely I will watch the film and follow the plot.

 Image: moviespad.com

I won't say too much about the film in this post: Juliette at Pop Classics writes brilliantly (as always) about it. It differs significantly from the books in some points (as Juliette points out, the complicity of the people of Panem in the continuation of the Hunger Games, and also in the lack of mutant spy animals created by the Capitol to control the population among other aspects) but I think the adaptation was very, very good. 

The book is told in the first person by Katniss Everdeen, a sixteen year old girl living in District 12 (the former Appalachia) in Panem (what remains of the United States of America after an apocalypse). After an unsuccessful uprising 74 years before the events of the book, each district is forced to send a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18 to fight to the death in a televised battle, the Hunger Games. Katniss volunteers to be District 12's Tribute after her little sister Prim's name is drawn, the first time that she is eligible to be entered into the Reaping, where the tributes' names are drawn from the lottery.

This is a rich, complex book. Suzanne Collins has said that the inspiration came from channel surfing, where she saw coverage of the Iraq war and flicked over to a reality TV show. There are also many parallels with classical myth- Theseus and the Minotaur, where the Athenians are forced to send 14 young men and women to the labyrinth to appease the Minotaur. However I was most struck by the Roman elements: the Roman names of the Capitol- dwellers (Cinna, Seneca, Caesar, Flavius, Coriolanus, Venia, Octavia), the name Capitol, and the Bread (Panem) and Circuses (Hunger Games) approach to controlling the people. 

The inequalities are stark in the book: even in a poor District like District 12, the poorest (like Katniss and her best friend Gale) have a greater chance of being selected than Madge, the mayor's daughter or baker's son Peeta, the male tribute of District 12, as the poorer young people enter their name multiple times into the lottery in exchange for a portion of grain or oil. Katniss explains several times that starvation is not uncommon in the Seam, the poorest quarter of District 12 where she lives.

On the other hand, in the richer Districts, where food is more plentiful, young people have been trained from a young age to fight in the Hunger Games, and they usually win. However, they are not used to hunger, like Katniss and little Rue, the 12 year old tribute from District 11. Katniss's prowess with bows and arrows and snares, from years of illegal hunting to supplement the meagre food her widowed mother can provide, and Rue's experience of climbing to harvest fruit, stands them in good stead.

Peeta is far more aware than Katniss of the need to play up to the Games audience's desire for narrative, but Katniss is also constantly aware of the cameras in the Arena where the Games take place. This makes for an incredibly tense read, I found. This link with our society's obsession with reality TV, fame and celebrity makes this a powerful read.

The film is fantastic, but I recommend the book as well, for readers 10+. Both are gory, but not explicitly so. It might be good to read along with your pre-teen child, to discuss any issues that crop up for them.

The title of this post comes from the slogan said by several officials of the Hunger Games. It reminded me of what gladiators reportedly said before combat: "Hail Caesar, we who are about to die salute you".

The District 12 scenes in the film brought this song to mind: Michelle Shocked's the L&N Don't Stop Here Any More. I think it was because the setting reminded me of the 1930s depression, and because it is the coal mining district.

Heavens Above

Last April, I visited the London Book Fair. While I browsing the Australian publishers' stand, a book caught my eye.

Image: penguin.com.au

I was lucky enough to get hold of a copy of Jen Storer's Tensy Farlow and the Home for Mislaid Children. The story of a mysterious red-haired orphan, found by truck driver Albie Gribble after she has been dumped in the River Charon. Something nasty is in the water, the evil Matron Pluckrose is after her when she is betrayed to the Home for Mislaid Children, and even worse, she has been born without a Guardian Angel. How will Tensy survive the awful Home, with its murderous crows and mysterious Watchers? And what is the evil Thing living in the cave?  But all is not what it seems, and with the help of some rather unreliable angels and some of the other orphans, Tensy can show just what a special little girl she is. This is a beautiful looking book, and would be a great read for fans of A Series of Unfortunate Events. I just hope that it gets a UK publication soon. There's a great trailer here.

Image: bookdepository.co.uk

"It was a dark and stormy night", begins Madeleine L'Engle's award winning fantasy/ SF novel. (For Wikipedia's round up of other books riffing on Edward Bulwer-Lytton's famously purple prose opening line, see here.) A mysterious woman turns up at Meg Murry's house, Mrs Whatsit, who is a friend of Meg's gifted little brother, Charles Wallace. After drying her feet and eating a sandwich, Mrs Whatsit tells the Meg's mother "there is such a thing as a tesseract". The following day Meg learns that the tesseract is what her scientist father was working on before he disappeared. Meg, Charles Wallace and a popular boy from Meg's school, Calvin O'Keefe, go to visit Mrs Whatsit, where they meet Mrs Who. That evening, Charles Wallace tells Meg and Calvin that they must go with Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who to rescue their father. They meet the Mrs Whatsit's third friend, Mrs Which, and travel through the tesseract, the wrinkle in time, to the planet Uriel where they learn about the threat from the evil Black Thing. They learn that Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which are angels, who help them travel to another planet, Camazotz, controlled by an autocratic mind reader, IT, where the children must battle to save their father.

First published in 1962, A Wrinkle in Time is considered a classic in the USA. It is interesting to compare the portrayal of angels in the book with those in Tensy Farlow. The three Mrs Ws remind me strongly of Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby, Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid and Mother Carey in Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies: 

Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid by Jessie Willcox Smith

not because they are strict, didactic and punitive, but because they are they holders of knowledge and power. The children must learn from them (particularly Mrs Whatsit) to obtain their desire, as Tom must learn from the fairies in The Water Babies. The angels in Tensy Farlow are fallible beings, unreliable and confused. The power (although not the knowledge) lies with Tensy and her ability to inspire others to act for themselves. This is an interesting contrast. L'Engle was an Episcopalian, a commited Christian- however this has not stopped the books being on the American Library Association's list of the most frequently challenged books, for its unconventional approach to religion.

I would recommend A Wrinkle In Time and Tensy Farlow for 9+. A Wrinkle In Time and other books about the Murrys are still in print in the UK.

Holiday reading

Earlier this month, I went to Lake Garda in northern Italy on holiday. The friends I went with are keen climbers, mountain bikers and kayakers, and unfortunately I have a shoulder and back problem which means that the most strenuous activities I could do were walking and swimming in the pool. However, this enabled me to do some reading while they were off being active!

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness was the choice of the children at the book club I hope to run, and I must say I was a little nervous when I first started reading it, since although the club is for 8-12 year olds, most of the members are 8-10. Todd Hewitt is about to turn 13, and in his world, he will become a man. Todd belongs to a pioneering community of settlers on another planet, and like the Pilgrim Fathers, the original settlers were escaping what they perceive as a a sinful world. Todd grows up in Prentisstown, totally inhabited by men. He has been told that germ warfare released by the indigenous people of New World planet (the Spackles) killed all women, including his mother, but the only side effect it had on men was making all their thoughts audible. Todd appears to be growing up in a world with no secrets. Even dogs and men can read each others' thoughts.



Image: walkerbooks.co.uk

 Then, in the swamp, Todd encounters a pocket of silence. Living in a world of constant noise from others' thoughts- really well depicted in the book as overlaying sentences of text- this is a new experience for him, and unfortunately not one he can keep secret: Mayor Prentiss uses thoughts as a way to control his population. He also encounters the preacher, Aaron, who attempts to provoke a fight with him. On returning home, his foster fathers Ben and Cillian realise what has happened and perceive the danger Todd is in. They have been planning Todd's flight for 11 years. They give him Cillian's hunting knife, Todd's mother's diary, a map and a bag of supplies, and Todd and his dog, Manchee, must escape. However, Todd cannot read: Mayor Prentiss has banned books and shut down the school, so Todd discovers only by degrees that everything he has known about his world is a lie.

This is an amazing book, which reminded me in many ways of Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker, particularly in the narrative voice and in premature adulthood thrust upon Todd. I was a little alarmed that the bookclub would find it too violent, and that the (very mild) references to sex might be too much for them, but I needn't have worried: these aspects seem to have passed them by. They found the death of one of the characters more upsetting (and I won't spoil it by saying who). One boy in fact carried the book around for days, even reading it at playtime at school!

image: nnedi.com

The second book was Nnedi Okorafor's The Shadow Speaker. Set partly in Niger in 2070 and partly on Ginen, the planet where Okorafor's earlier work Zahrah the Windseeker is set. Post-nuclear event, the portal between the world of Ginan and Earth has opened, and there are metahumans, such as Ejimafor who can speak to shadows. Her father was a local politician, who imposed a strict interpretation of Islam on Ejii's town. He enforced veiling for women, and took other wives, before throwing Ejii and her mother out. Hypocritically, however, he still had Ejii sitting on the platform at a political rally when the ruler of Ejii's state, Jaa (who is from Ginen) arrives and beheads him. Ejii hated her father, but still feels both attracted to and repelled by Jaa. However, when she arrives at Ejii's house with news that the inhabitants of Ginen intend to attack rather than have the corruption and pollution of Earth damage their planet, Ejii is determined to go with Jaa and help. Her mother forbids her to leave, so she sneaks off in the night with Onion, her talking camel. On the way she encounters talking desert cats, murderous sentient sandstorms and a boy who was sold into slavery in a cocoa plantation by his own family, who has powers of his own.

This is a good book, but not a great one; it is interesting to see how much better Akata Witch is, where Okorafor appears to be keeping her imagination a little more under control, leading to a much more coherent narrative in my opinion. However, a less-good book by an amazing writer like Okorafor is far more worth reading than anything by a mediocre writer, and it gripped me from beginning to end.

Image: bookdepository.com

The third book I read was The Last Elf by Italian author Silvana De Mari. It is a little obsession of mine, reading on holiday a book written by an author of the country I'm visiting. We publish very few children's books in translation in the UK, sadly. Yorsh the elf is discovered by a woman and a hunter as a little child. Elves are both despised and feared in his world, and the trio are imprisoned by the dictatorial leader of a town where they are discovered. In prison, Yorsh discovers part of a prophesy which implies that his destiny, as the Last Elf, is tied up with that of the Last Dragon, and they travel to the abandoned library where the dragon lives.

Some years later, a girl named Robi is in an orphanage in the town where the trio were imprisoned. The overseers of the orphanage abuse and underfeed the children, and set them against each other. However, one day when the children are working in the fields picking fruit, they see a dragon flying overhead, with a small figure riding it. How is Robi's destiny tied up with these two?

This novel is more gently paced than Young Adult novels in English. It has a dreamlike quality which was very enjoyable, although in places I felt it lacked impact. Unfortunately it seems that no other De Mari novels have been translated; but I'll be seeking out more translated works than I have so date. My horizons need broadening!

I'd recommend all these novels for confident readers of 12+.

The Tao of Ged

Once there was a poor boy who was neglected by his family. Strange things started to happen around him, and he was taken in by a man with affinity with the natural world. His powers earned him a place at a school for wizards, a place of esoteric learning and strange rules, where he was teased and humiliated by a boy from a high born family. The boy was impetuous and hot tempered, and well aware of his poor home life, and as a result of using magic in an unauthorised way, called up a dreadful threat which only he could defeat.

 A Wizard Of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin was first published in the UK by Puffin books in 1971, as the rather psychadelic/ pre Raphaelite cover above suggests. This is the cover I remember as a child (I think this was my Mum's book; at any rate it didn't feature in my bedtime stories from my Dad. Maybe he thought it was too scary- but somehow had no compunction about reading the far more gory Hobbit!) I didn't read this as a child. I first read it a couple of years ago. It is a very different beast from the plot-driven fantasy of much popular modern children/ Young Adult fantasy such as Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl or the Lemony Snickett novels (and I don't mean this dismissively- these are all very enjoyable and often challenging reads). But Le Guin is writing in a different era, from a different stand point.

The novel was first published in 1968. This was an era of race riots, Black Power, Vietnam protests, USSR and China testing nuclear weapons, strikes and riots in Europe, hippies, "free love" and women's liberation. Ursula K Le Guin is a feminist, she is concerned with ecological issues and in Taoist philosophy, and these themes are often explored in her novels. Le Guin has stated that she feels that too often Science Fiction is about white men colonising space; she writes specifically from a feminist perspective in her later novels (see The Tombs of Atuan and Tehanu, the fantastically creepy sequels in the Earthsea novels). A huge innovation in her Earthsea novels is the diverse nature of her world; Ged and most other characters are described as having copper skin and black hair (although you wouldn't know it from the cover above or the recent television dramatisation.) Ged's friend Vetch is black. Le Guin drip-feeds this information about her characters throughout the first few chapters; a clever ruse given the year the novel was published in, and clearly sadly the producers of the television series didn't feel that staying true to Le Guin's vision would be popular either with viewers or with advertisers. See Le Guin's comments about this here.

I have stated that this novel is not plot driven, like much modern fantasy. Ged is on a quest, to defeat the evil that he releases due to his vanity and egotism. However, I believe that the novel’s key theme, the necessity for Ged to restore balance to Earthsea and thereby to learn moderation and self-control, are Taoist in origin. His growing maturity is demonstrated in his changing names: he is Duny as a child herding goats, then Sparrowhawk when he is with Ogion before going to school, but his true name is Ged, which must be guarded, for knowing a person’s true name gives the hearer power. (I know very little about American Indian beliefs, but Le Guin’s mother was an anthropologist who wrote a famous book about Ishi, a Yahi  man. I wonder if the idea of the power of names came from her mother’s research.) Ged must learn a dragon’s true name in order to gain power over it, and this section of the novel, where very little action occurs, but a great deal of character progression happens, can be related to the Taoist principle of inaction. Ged must learn to be in harmony with the universe.

A BBC audiodrama was recently repeated on BBC7. It is still available to listen again for a few days, and I strongly recommend it.

Deeba's Adventures in Un Lun Dun

I love fantasy fiction because it does what recent literary fiction in my opinion doesn't do very well at the moment- it discusses the big issues. Much literary fiction seems to be to a miniature portrait of a particularly urban existance- and really, how many novels about the mid-life crises of well heeled urbanites can we read without throwing them out of the window? I imagine that there will be a slew of novels about the trials of former employees of Lehmans or Goldman Sachs within the next year or so, down to their last Ozwald Boateng suit and bottle of Chateauneuf.

As Amanda Craig wrote a year ago, recent novels with a broad sweep that have attracted praise recently seem to be historical novels. However my argument unsurprisingly would be that fantasy novels, or at least well written ones, contain the wealth of characterisation, and the big ideas, that Craig and others have praised in the work of Sarah Walters, Sebastian Faulks and AS Byatt. Since fantasy and speculative fiction is not depicting a familiar world, it must, in order to be convincing, portray a range of characters that are compelling yet believeable. Since it is creating an alternate world, successful fantasy/ speculative fiction must create a whole society, so the characters must represent all strata of that society. Fantasy and Sci Fi tends to put it's new worlds in peril, so speculative fiction deals with the big ideas: destiny, our place in the world, the future of humanity, the viability of the planet to sustain life (whether the planet is ours or not).

China Mieville is an awardwinning fantasy/ speculative fiction author. I have been reading his breathtaking existential crime novel The City & The City, about the investigation into the murder of a young girl in a Balkan city in a formerly repressive country. However, this novel explores String Theory: the idea that two objects can coexist in a single physical space. So while Inspector Borlu is investigating a crime in the city of Beszel, he must negotiate around the city of Ul Qoma which inhabits the same geography, but it is illegal for the citizens of the two cities to acknowledge each other, and to ignore the separation, or Breach, is akin to treason. It is a fascinating novel, leading me to consider the ways that in our cities, different people experience physical space in completely different ways.

During the summer I read Mieville's Un Lun Dun. It is the story of two girls who live on a London housing estate. Strance things begin to happen to the girls, Zanna and Deeba, and their friends, and they find their way into Un Lun Dun (Un-London), where all the rubbish and broken appliances thrown away in London end up. In Un-London, the girls discover that Zanna is the Shwazzy, the Chosen One who must defeat the Smog threatening to engulf the city.

Mieville has acknowledged the influence of Lewis Carroll in an interview; the inventive language and the fantastic characters Deeba and Zanna encounter (a sentient diving suit, a man with a birdcage for a head, a ghost boy), and the familiar inverted- evil flesh eating giraffes, houses and even Westminster Abbey becomes Webminster Abbey, with Black Windows that seek to destroy the group on their quest.

It was an enjoyable read, challenging and absorbing, but somehow it didn't quite work for me. Mieville has stated that he set himself some challenges for this novel: to liberate the sidekick, who in fact turns out to have the heroic qualities required to save the city, and to make an animal universally considered cute into a baddie. Maybe this is what jarred for me: I couldn't quite buy into his world; it didn't seem to me that Mieville fully believed in it himself. In addition, I couldn't properly visualise Zanna or Deeba, so it was difficult for me to become emotionally involved in their quest. It feels at time as though Mieville is winking at the adult over the child reader's head. A successful fantasy novelist for adults (such as Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman) seems to me to have far more respect for their child readers of their juvenile fiction.

Hobo Journeys to Unknown Destinations

On Monday 22nd November, I went to The Guardian bookclub to hear the great Russell Hoban speak about his novel Riddley Walker. He was witty, pithy, interesting and although clearly physically frail (he is hard of hearing and needed some help to get to the stage) he is still inventive and playful with language and still has an urge to write. It was a joy to be there and to meet up with other Hoban enthusiasts, and while it can sometimes be disappointing to hear writers talk about their work, on this occasion it was illuminating.

Re-reading Riddley Walker, I thought about other Hoban novels I have read (or had read to me) over the years. The absolutely delightful Frances books, especially Bread And Jam For Frances, are great fun for adults and children to read together, with rhymes and songs that Frances sings and beautifully observes egoccentrism of small children. But I felt that many of the themes and images in Riddley Walker are preceded in The Mouse And His Child.

The novel was first published in the States in 1967, and in the UK by Faber & Faber in 1969. My Puffin edition was published in 1976. It is the story of a clockwork toy, a mouse holding the hands of a child mouse. When their clockwork is wound up the larger mouse turns in a circle, lifting the smaller mouse up and down. When the novel starts, they are living in a toy shop with other clockwork toys: a rather snooty elephant and a seal. The child longs to live in a very superior dolls house in the shop with the elephant as his mother and the seal as his sister.

The Mouse and Child are bought as a Christmas decoration, and for some years they are packed away for most of the year and come out for Christmas. The children of the house are not allowed to touch the clockwork toys, which begs the question: are they toys if they are not played with? and what is their purpose? However, the toys are broken and thrown away. They are rescued by a tramp, who tries to repair them. He leaves out some cogs and wheels, so the Mouse is now walking forward, pushing the Child backwards in front of him. The Tramp winds them up and sets them off on their journey. On leaving them, he bids them "Be Tramps".

The Mouse and his Child suffer a series of misadventures, including rusting apart, but eventually achieve their heart's desire- to be self winding, and to have a home and a family. Along the way, with their allies, they defeat the tyrannical Manny Rat. At the end of the novel, the Tramp peers at them in their home and bids them to "Be happy".

There are several themes in the Mouse and His Child that I feel are also present in Riddley Walker. Firstly, prophesies. Lorna, the Tel Woman in Riddley Walker, prophesies "the old going out and the new coming in", the moves to reclaim the lost "clevverness" that created the "1 big 1" that lead to the great explosion that destroyed civilisation. The Frog in The Mouse and His Child is in fact a fraud, but he prophesies that "a Rat shall fall and a Dog shall rise", which is how the defeat of Manny Rat comes about.

In both novels, Hoban makes use of rhyme, drama and story. The dramatisation of the Eusa tale in Riddley Walker leads to Riddley leaving his home, and sets him on his way to Cambry. The discovery of the Punch puppet puts him at odds with authority. In the Mouse and His Child, the encounter with the Caws of Art theatre group enables the Mose and His Child to make their first defeat of Manny Rat. Both novels have songs and rhymes running throughout, which both further the narrative and comment upon it.

Finally, both novels have protagonists who are searching for their place in the world. Riddley is a 12 year old boy who loses his father very shortly after his "naming day", which in Riddley's world is an entrance to adulthood. So he is both officially and practically independent, but he is still an adolescent. He is in Hoban's words, "looking for his space in the cosmos". His journey is both a spiritual and a material quest. The Mouse and his Child are similarly escaping from a life of gruelling hardship (they are put to work for Manny Rat in a dump; Riddley works with his father at the diggings, on a treadmill) and are also looking for their place in the world, their own "territory": a home and a family.

Riddley Walker is an incredibly challenging read. Hoban created a new language- a post-apocalyptic English- to write in. But I feel it is well worth the effort, and I recommend reading the novels in tandem.