Underrated Children's Books - The Independent

[Anita Bensoussane]

I've just enjoyed reading the following article by John Rentoul in The Independent, which looks at underrated (perhaps arguably in some cases) children's books:

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/to ... 28396.html

I'm not sure that Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series is underrated, or Helen Cresswell's Moondial or Alan Garner's The Owl Service, all of which have been adapted for the screen (a slightly odd film was made of the second book in Susan Cooper's series, and Moondial and The Owl Service were turned into popular TV serials). As for The Family from One End Street by Eve Garnett, it's often used in schools.

Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner isn't all that exciting in my opinion, although it's a fun read and I enjoyed watching a stage adaptation at the National Theatre a few years ago.

Antonia Forest's Marlows series is engaging, intelligent and wonderfully wide-ranging. It tends to be highly regarded by those who have been lucky enough to come across it but I agree that it deserves to be better-known. All the books revolve around the Marlow family (mainly twins Nicky and Lawrie and their siblings, but sometimes their ancestors!) though some are school stories, others are about family life, a couple are historical novels, others are adventure books and some defy categorisation altogether!

Of the remaining titles, I've only read Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth (as a child, and I can't recall the first thing about it now). I know I own a lovely vintage Puffin paperback copy of The Otterbury Incident by Cecil Day-Lewis but I haven't yet read it, sadly, and I've never read The Load of Unicorn by Cynthia Harnett or The Mouse and his Child by Russell Hoban, though the Cynthia Harnett book in particular does appeal, described as being set at the time when print arrived in medieval London.

Interesting stuff, and apparently there's another installment next week!

[Debbie]

I agree with you.

They're books that children won't necessarily read today, but the only one I didn't read as a child is "The Otterbury Incident". They may be less well known today, but I wouldn't say underrated. I see a number of those often given as suggestions for children when parents are asking for ideas.

I'm not sure exactly which books I'd regard as being underrated. I could give a list of lesser known books by authors who are generally well known. Ones like "The Hostage" (Anne Holme-I am David) or "The Pinhoe Egg" (Diane Wynne Jones), I would say would be bought far less than better known books by the same author. I'm not sure if I'd say they were underrated, perhaps more overshadowed by better known ones.

The only one I can think of offhand is "Demon Island" by Cecil R. Baldock. I got it from a charity shop years back and it's a very good adventure story. But I suspect one of the reasons it's underrated is I think that was the only book he wrote and it's Australian, so it may be better known there!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Interesting thoughts and suggestions, Debbie. I loved Diana Wynne Jones' The Ogre Downstairs as a youngster (I borrowed it from the library) but I haven't read much of her work simply because I haven't come across many of her books in charity shops, which is where I tend to do most of my buying.

As a child, I used to wonder why nobody I knew had ever heard of When Marnie Was There by Joan G. Robinson, a tender and haunting book about loneliness and friendship which I felt ought to be as popular as titles like Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce and A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley. Maybe When Marnie Was There was simply little-known rather than underrated, though the fact that an excellent Japanese animé was made of it in 2014 doesn't seem to have raised its profile much. I've always found it special and have read it numerous times over the years.

(Incidentally, there's also a very enjoyable Japanese animé of Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle and an absolutely gorgeous one of Mary Norton's The Borrowers - retitled Arrietty - which is so exquisitely animated that I watched it twice in quick succession when I first got the DVD.)

It disappoints me that Nina Bawden is associated primarily with Carrie's War and The Peppermint Pig. Both are great but the Nina Bawden book that really impresses me is The Runaway Summer, about a girl named Mary who struggles with adjusting to life after her parents' divorce. It's so very real and thought-provoking, and beautifully written. I'm surprised it doesn't receive more attention.

[Katharine]

That's interesting Anita.

The only book I've read with Emil and the Detectives. I can't remember much about it, but I think it was quite enjoyable - I only really bought it for nostalgia as I remember a teacher reading it to us at school.

Several of the others I do remember seeing had been made for TV, although I don't think I watched any of them.

[Judith Crabb]

What an interesting topic.
I suspect that here 'underrated' means that were the books better known they would be highly regarded, not that they have been unjustly disparaged. Rosemary Sutcliff and Violet Needham are two authors who wrote such minor masterpieces.
Debbie mentions an Australian book, 'Demon Island' by Cecil Baldock and suggests that it might be better known in Australia. I've discovered over the years that children's books set in Australia and published overseas are likely to be quite unknown here in Australia. There are plenty of copies for sale on the internet (it was even reprinted) but perhaps the only copies to reach these shores came in the suitcases of migrant children who handed them down as family heirlooms.
Anyway, a marvellous topic to help add to the reading list. I've been meaning to read 'Marnie' for years.

[timv]

I'm glad that the Marlows books are in this list, as I feel that they are masterpieces - and quite apart from the brilliant characterisation and interactions , they are often rather subversive and provide unexpected twists of plot so they should be more appealing to modern readers and editors alike. The element of 'realism' in the books is perhaps not what some editors would concentrate on as 'relevant' so worthy of republishing , ie urban poverty, drugs (though drug-running does appear), and mixed-race relationships (though Nicola's friend Miranda is Jewish and suffers from mild discrimination by her headmistress for this) - but it is not just 'privilege' either.

(A few spoilers here!)

The 'wealthy family living in a largeish country house with ponies and landed gentry friends' scenario may put some publishers off - though the Marlows are not rich and have difficulty running their crumbling farm/small mansion, Trennels, inherited via a RAF pilot cousin's death in an air crash (heard but not seen by our 'stars') and the neighbouring landed Merricks are Catholic 'outsiders' whose ancestors have been martyred. Teenage Patrick M is hardly a stereotypical 'posh boy', though he can be insensitive, selfish, and mocking - there is a bit of the Sebastian Flyte about him. But there is much in the series that is really subtle and thought-provoking, and it was rare for the era to have an author (an 'outsider' North London Jewish girl in origin) writing about semi-sympathetic spies (Marlows and the Traitor), semi-sympathetic teenage drug-smugglers and louts (The Thuggery Affair), a classmate of the twins suddenly dropping dead and the girls being uncomfortable as they never really liked her (Cricket Term), a crooked and jealous prefect who has a dislike of and sabotages Nicola but is still almost sympathetically treated (Lois throughout the series), a devious and often lying or manipulative 'Best Friend' (Tim Keith ditto), and a useless and grudge-driven Head (Miss Keith ditto, a contrast to most series' Wise and Noble Headmistresses). Our heroines the twins, plus Tim Keith, are also ruthless in excluding not being nice to classmates and keeping them out of things for no apparent reason (Pomona), reflecting real 'cliquey' attitudes: they are not morally approvable 'Chalet School Girl' types.

Also sidelined and deserving of a lot more modern acclaim, as similarly realistic and semi-subversive, to my mind are Geoffrey Trease's 'Bannerdale' series, 1940s-50s, set with state school children (our leading two' have divorced parents and the father has gone off to the US) at a state grammar school and in a Lake District holiday location . A leading female teenage character with a mobility semi-problem that may stop her becoming an actress despite her talent, a crooked landowner, the 'baddies' sometimes getting away with their crimes, one book centred on a callous Govt department not bothering to hurry and return a 'temporarily taken over for wartime training' farm to its owners after 1945. Another book centred on our teenage heroes (c. 1955) helping a local man who as a soldier on the run from the German army in 1940 in France stole money from a woman he was hiding with after he thought she had betrayed him to the Germans and has found he was wrong but cannot locate her as his geographical knowledge was minimal so he asks the children, about to visit that area of France on a school drama group trip, to try to find her and return the money (Black Banner Abroad). G Trease was indeed a 1930s radical writer who specifically argued for 'realistic' non-boarding-school books that more readers could relate to, plus new story themes , and wrote in this manner - including a whole series of historical novels which I devoured as a child (we had a full range of them in our school library) but which were in hardback and were rarely reprinted except for one or two well-known ones like 'Cue For Treason' . The plots got a bit repetitive, but it was innovatory for the era.

Also some of the best Monica Edwards books - conservationist and in some cases tackling very modern themes for the 1950s-60s, eg oil covered seabirds (Operation Seabird), a commercial 'sea circus' park owner trying to put a friendly dolphin in his water circus and make money out of it, trying to bribe Our Heroine Tamzin to help him capture it as it is friendly with her (Dolphin Summer), and a foot and mouth farm epidemic leading to our stars 'locking down' in their local farm to keep its livestock safe (No Entry). Plus 'doing wrong that good may come of it', with Lindsey at Punchbowl Farm proposing to kidnap and shoot her family's bull calf (due to be sent to the slaughterhouse) as it is doomed anyway, to provide meat and keep her secret puma cub protege fed and away from alarmed farmers with guns who want to shoot it to protect their cows. In one book we have Tamzin helping the local Sussex smugglers, not rounding them up like the Famous Five, and the police and the customs men are the 'baddies' - rare for books of c. 1950. Animals routinely die and occasionally characters get shot by accident (never fatally) - this was real life not sanitised farming, just as Antonia Forest's countryside and schools were non- 'comfortable'.

There are a lot more by genuinely good and 'thought-provoking' authors which I think are really classics and which it is so frustrating that people today rarely read and most have never heard of - publishing tends to have short memories! Top 30 more than top 10 - it will be interesting to see what else gets mentioned.

[Debbie]

@timv

I'd agree with your list, although I think I'd put Antonia Forest's non-school stories as more hidden gems than the school ones. The historical pair (The "Player's Boy" and "The players and the Rebels") have some similarities to Geoffrey Trease's "Cue for Treason" and "The Marlows and the Traitor" has a lot more depth than standard child spy stories.

I'd also add Violet Needham, best known for "The Black Riders", but other ones like "The House of the Paladin" and "The Stormy Petrel" are pretty unknown. And Malcolm Saville, who I never quite understand why his books haven't lasted. I staged his best known, "Mystery at Witchend" with a youth group before lockdown and the group really enjoyed the story. I'd put his Nettleford series into the unknown but deserved to be known category.

[jrw]

I'm surprised that the fantasy books The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander aren't better known than they are. Fantasy seems to be popular these days (Narnia, Lord of the Rings) but Prydain would appear to have been largely forgotten. Darker than Narnia, they follow the adventures of Taran and his friends as they battle against King Arawn (now there's a scary villain for you) and his kingdom.

[Courtenay]

Have to admit I haven't read any of the books in The Independent's list, although I've heard of most of them and I know at least some of them (The Dark is Rising series, for example) were quite popular when I was at school. Maybe they're just ones that haven't remained as popular over the years since then?

I'm surprised that the fantasy books The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander aren't better known than they are. Fantasy seems to be popular these days (Narnia, Lord of the Rings) but Prydain would appear to have been largely forgotten. Darker than Narnia, they follow the adventures of Taran and his friends as they battle against King Arawn (now there's a scary villain for you) and his kingdom.

I loved those when I was 9 or so — especially Fflewddur Fflam and his harp with the strings that snapped whenever he decided to "add colour to the facts" (i.e. exaggerate wildly, if not outright lie, just to make a story more interesting)!! But for some reason, even though I did have a complete set of them, I didn't go on re-reading them over and over, whereas Narnia and LOTR have remained a huge part of my life ever since I was introduced to them in primary school. I probably ought to re-read the Prydain series some time and see what impression it makes on me now...

[timv]

I've only read some of Violet Needham due to the difficulty in finding copies ever since the 1970s, but I'd agree that some are forgotten classics with meticulous detail and characterization, especially the historical ones set in medieval/ Renaissance Italy eg 'The Changeling of Monte Lucio' and 'The Woods of Windri'. They are up there with the Rosemary Sutcliff Roman and post-Roman books, of which 'The Eagle of the Ninth' is the only well-known one thanks to the film ('The Eagle') and an earlier TV adaptation. Again, we luckily had the lot in original 1950s hardbacks at my school library so I read them one after the other, eg 'The Silver Branch' , 'The Lantern Bearers', 'Sword at Sunset' (with 'Artos the Bear', the post-Roman Celtic warlord struggling against societal collapse and inter-ethnic rivalry who becomes King Arthur in myth) and 'Dawn Wind'. There is a sense of the fragility of civilization and the mixed heritage and inter-ethnic rivalries of early Britain ('Celt'/ Briton, Roman, and Anglo-Saxon) which gave me a crucial 'feel' for what history felt like when people were living it, and RS (who had major mobility problems and could not live a normal active life) also used 'outsiders' and once, in her Iron Age novel 'Warrior Scarlet', a hero with a disabled arm seen as an outcast in a warrior society. Very unusual for the era.

I agree that the Nettlefold books are perhaps Malcolm Saville's best, 'All Summer Through' being one of my favourites too - though some of the Lone Pine series also have a sense of location and season, eg 'Wings Over Witchend' (Shropshire) and 'Sea Witch Comes Home' (Suffolk). Saville in fact lived for much of the time he was writing the Nettlefold series at Guiildford, hence putting it in 'Lone Pine London' as Miss Ballinger's lair, and not far from where Rosemary Sutcliff lived at Shere ; and later Saville, who was brought up in Hastings, lived at Winchelsea near Romney Marsh, in the 1970s when I was there a lot - just down the road from where Monica Edwards was brought up at Rye Harbour. A sense of place has always been a major part of a 'classic' to me; in this sense I think you can also count as classics Alan Garner's early Cheshire books that mix magic , legendary beings from Celtic and Nose myths, a sense of the Otherworld intruding, and real places and people. 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen' and 'The Moon of Gomrath' , set at Alderley Edge in particular, some of which is powerful, beautiful, and eerie as well as scary - though the writing and plots have been seen as a bit 'unfinished' and not up to Tolkien's level. AG was intruding magical worlds into ours well before JK Rowling and co, but did not publish much after the late 1960s when I read his early books.

[Debbie]

Violet Needham books have been re-published by the Girls Gone By Paperbacks, which is how I've got most of mine.

I'd agree about the sense of place. I remember how excited I was when I found that Monica Edwards' Wrestling books were set in almost the same place as Malcolm Saville's Rye ones!

[Fiona1986]

I've only heard of three of those - The Family at One End Street, The Phantom Tollbooth and Emil and the Detectives. The first I have in paperback, the second I have on my Kindle (I think) but I haven't read either.

[John Pickup]

We shall all remember fondly our favourite books but mine remain those from my childhood.
Apart from Enid, I think Malcolm Saville is sadly underated, the Jillies series being my favourite. His descriptions of place made me want to explore those settings which I've been fortunate to do in many cases.
I also think the Billy Bunter books by Frank Richards are hugely underated, the characters of Mr Quelch and Vernon-Smith stand out for me. I've now got all 38 hardbacks in their bright yellow wrappers. Another school series was by Anthony Buckeridge featuring the indomitable Jennings and his friends which I've always loved.
Tim mentions the Bannerdale books by Geoffrey Trease. I have all five but the stories don't grip me like Saville's or Enid's. No Boats On Bannermere is ok but the subsequent titles lack fluidity and excitement.
Of course, different age groups will have books from their era at the forefront of their minds but the authors I've mentioned are, in my opinion, worthy of special note as memorable children's authors.

[GloomyGraham]

I've only heard of three of those - The Family at One End Street, The Phantom Tollbooth and Emil and the Detectives. .

They were the three from the list that I had read as a kid. I think there was an Emil sequel too which i read as well.

Not sure if the One End Street book had a sequel - I have a vague memory there might have been three in the series, though my mind may be playing tricks on me.

[Debbie]

I've only heard of three of those - The Family at One End Street, The Phantom Tollbooth and Emil and the Detectives. .

They were the three from the list that I had read as a kid. I think there was an Emil sequel too which i read as well.

Not sure if the One End Street book had a sequel - I have a vague memory there might have been three in the series, though my mind may be playing tricks on me.

Both had sequels. There was "Emil and the Three Twins." The author also wrote "Lottie and Lisa" which was dramatised as "The Parent trap".
The "Family from One End Street" also had "Further Adventures of the Family from One End Street" and, I think it was called "Holiday at Dew Drop Inn".