Do try and get hold of A Fearless Treasure if you can. It's quite different from Noel Streatfeild's normal style. I would also disagree with The Painted Garden being one of the best; to me it's a very typical one (and if people haven't heard of it they may well have heard of "Movie Shoes" which is the nothing-like-as-good modern title) with the middle not-talented girl shining in the end.
I read the 'Just So' stories when I was small, so I know 'Rikki-Tikki-Tavi', but though it is well written and characterised it rather put me off snakes lurking in the undergrowth! 'Minnow On The Say' is a favourite of mine, set in the Cambridgeshire area like its author Philippa Pearce's 'Tom's Midnight Garden', and like a lot of her books has a great sense of atmosphere and locality. It's based on real places with a river canoe journey on the River Cam upstream from Cambridge and Grantchester, mostly around Great Shelford; the mill in the story is real. I had a caravan holiday there once which helped with its appeal, though in PP's time it was no doubt a lot quieter (which the book gets across well) with far fewer leisure motor-boats around; it's now close to the M11.
At the time that the book was written there was the start of a revival of interest in canal and river holidays on barges, which the naturalist Peter Scott and other well-known countryside champions were involved with; possibly PP was tapping into this market. There's also a similarity between the quiet E Anglian rivers and the canoe exploration in this book and the 1930s Ransome books set on the Broads (which AR sailed on in real life - I've talked to one of his child guests), where Tom Dudgeon paddles about in a converted 'punt' and you also see Nature 'close up' from the protagonist's point of view. The 'riverside life' theme in children's writing presumably derives from Kenneth Graham's 1908 masterpiece 'The Wind In The Willows'; in the mid-1960s I remember that there was a well-filmed British children's TV series about the adventures of a group of wild animals (including a non local guinea pig as well as a water-rat and a hamster) living on a river, 'Tales of the Riverbank', which had film of real animals and countryside plus a made-up storyline told by a narrator. This was repeated on and off for years and given the scratchiness of the film may have been filmed back in the 1960s, and served to introduce me to that sort of location even if the animals in it were mostly 'pets' not actual UK riverside ones!
I used to watch Tales of the Riverbank around 1973-75. In about 1975 there was also an animated TV serial of BB's The Little Grey Men, in which three gnomes build a boat and set off on a voyage along Folly Brook in search of their lost brother, Cloudberry. It's a beautiful story, poetic and wistful, and I went on to read the book and its sequel (Down the Bright Stream).
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.
"There is no bond like the bond of having read and liked the same books."
- E. Nesbit, The Wonderful Garden.
timv wrote: ↑06 Aug 2022, 08:15
I read the 'Just So' stories when I was small, so I know 'Rikki-Tikki-Tavi', but though it is well written and characterised it rather put me off snakes lurking in the undergrowth!
Way off topic, but I do remember a true story about a cobra in India. A family lived in India in the late Raj days, and every breakfast time the little boy took his bowl of porridge round the corner of the house; so one day the father followed him to find out why.
The little boy was sitting on the ground with a cobra coiled in front of him. He would have a spoonful of porridge himself and then feed one to the snake. And when the snake leaned forward out of turn, he hit in on the head with the spoon!
Anyway, back to the subject. If there was ever a better short story by Kipling, or possibly by anyone else, than "The Maltese Cat", then I look forward to reading it.
I've just dipped in to 'Demon Island' by Cecil R. Baldock mentioned by Debbie in an early post on this topic (which I've just reread for ideas). It is most Blytonesque - attractive 16-year-old twins and their slightly younger friend Bob pitted against a gang in search of treasure on an island. It's shaping up to be a yarn similar to those in the Adventure series. The title is in the 'Tower House' series, which includes the six Mary Pollock books. Three other titles - by Agnes Miall, C. Bernard Rutley and Cecily M. Rutley - are by authors who were prolific at the time, though forgotten today. The other three authors - Bridget Mackenzie, Jill Latimer and Baldock - I haven't heard of before. Pseudonyms perhaps? Altogether twelve titles listed but only one author still widely read. Not uncommon when you look at old lists of 'recent publications'.
Maybe not. I googled and found that a book called 'The Story of Australia' was written by both of them. I know that publisher 'Faber and Faber' was one person but I think a publisher would be reluctant to promote a book by Rutley and Rutley knowing them to be one individual.
Judith Crabb wrote: ↑09 Jan 2023, 23:32
Maybe not. I googled and found that a book called 'The Story of Australia' was written by both of them. I know that publisher 'Faber and Faber' was one person but I think a publisher would be reluctant to promote a book by Rutley and Rutley knowing them to be one individual.
It wouldn't be unknown. John Wyndham published at least a couple of books by "john Wyndham and Lucas Parkes", both of which were himself.
How extraordinary! Mind you, the German journalist, satirist and writer Kurt Tucholsky also wrote under the pseudonyms Kaspar Hauser, Peter Panter, Theobald Tiger and Ignaz Wrobel...but as far as I know not in combination with each other.
Glad you're enjoying Demon Island. It is very EB-like with twins, an island, treasure and an exciting adventure away from the adults.
The main criticism of it I'd have is the children tend to suddenly think "oh, what if this happens" after long enough to have thought about it plenty of times, then five minutes later the baddies come in with exactly the same idea-by which point they're too late as the children have already taken preventative measures. However I think it's a fairly standard children's book plot, so I forgive him
