Hey! Harry Potter has cousins!
Donnelly, Daria
Hey! Harry Potter has cousins! Daria Donnelly K. Rowling has the Midas with an unforgettable narrator. Cassan- black working class in the...
...He loathes, in having just relinquished his studies piece...
...The story equally belongs to his dental...
...Both are attracted to the inci- est abusive foster home...
...This too is set in Flint's black up), Saint Martin's Press quickly repack- embodied in a narrator just ready to exit working-class community, though duraged their backlist staple and saw a five- childhood...
...In saturated with myths...
...As a chosen craft, writ- habitation and acts of the dead, which, He has collections of British tales which ing has allowed Garner to integrate the if inscrutable to the living, evoke inex- are out of print (check your library) and personal, cultural, and linguistic dislo- pressibly deep emotion...
...It's Jane "I guess it was just a matter of time...
...This is a fun and grace, is bridged...
...A young girl several picture books which are still cation (Garner identifies his first lan- discovers a fossilized handprint and available, including The Well of the Wind guage as North-West Mercian, and his stands in mute wonder...
...Garner talks about the abthe 1967 The Owl Service (Magic Carpet, the recently republished 1976 The Stone solute necessity, for our souls, of achiev$6, 219 pp., age twelve and up...
...He is the proxicontemporary children's fiction...
...and Once Upon a Time perienced as the first in his family to re- books) later is found by a boy who though it Wasn't in Your Time and it wasn't ceive a grammar-school in my time and it wasn't in and university educa- anybody else's time (DK, tion...
...The Owl Service, which is complex terror and joy...
...It has pologist and archaeologist of place...
...The landscape testifies to the Garner an excellent re-teller of fairy tales...
...layed epiphanies, and sweet impulses, mate cause of the family's trip to his Readers of I Capture the Castle will feel Bud seems an utterly authentic boy...
...Be- mother's native Birmingham, where his as if they have wandered into a stylish cause Curtis has created a perfectly ren- parents trust that the stricter climate of Broadway farce, with reason...
...American Bud Caldwell is in flight from focus on a single family...
...Cooney (Miss Rumphius, back into print (ACC Children's Clas- deceased son and on the precipice of Eleanor, Island Boy) died March 10, in sics, $24.95,158 pp., age twelve and up), birthing a new one...
...He almost entirely forgoes conven- dant of the family expelled from it...
...very bracing look at the sexual and so- tioned give pleasure, Garner achieves Garner is England's great artist of cial tension between the visiting English something much rarer: a sense of awe place, and Joan Bodger is our most apand a native adolescent, Gwyn, who is before the marvelous...
...rejuvenated the children's fiction in- book for adults, and a perfect one for Curtis's easy blend of the social and dustry (children's paperback book sales adolescent girls...
...He sets out by Kenny...
...Dodie dered character rather than a sociologi- his grandmother's home and city will Smith (1896-1990), though now best cal fact, he conveys, without a drop of help...
...Garner is widely regardEngland awaiting inspiration, or ed as the finest postwar chilat least a source of income...
...This Basket Moon (written by Mary Lyn pose (1947), and an estate-sale handbill is a gorgeous, lyrical story of an unearthly Ray, Little Brown, $15.95) is Barbara that details items which appear in this child who stays, for a year and a day, Cooney's one hundred tenth, and final, great classic...
...This for this persuasive dissent, but for the tional suspense in favor of the fear at- hint that the bump the children sled interest and intelligence with which tendant on getting the task done-a fear over hides a ruined foundation grips Garner approaches subjects as various the children must push back lest it over- the story's more sensitive boy with a as Cheshire archeology, Welsh mytholwhelm them...
...This is a multilayered narrative...
...Daria Donnelly K. Rowling has the Midas with an unforgettable narrator...
...And predate them and which will remain after mension stone can be used to build the it has left children vulnerable to the dithem, stories whose outcomes depend vicar's garden wall, remains as an earth- dactic and the reductive in both literaupon their right action...
...But Bodger is a smart guide and a smart mother...
...It too is narratIt is easy to see Smith's appeal to his Depression-era orphanage and lat- ed by a fetching ten-year-old, named Rowling...
...Sisters of the Atonement, contact: The desire to see the real places in Vocation Director *L which the fictional Pooh, Rat, Mole, Graymoor PO Box 300 ~` Squirrel Nutkin, and Puck wandered Garrison, NY 10524-0300 could easily descend into a dreadful lit- 914 424 3671 eralism...
...And she shows what it is like Compass and The Subtle Knife, make sure particularly liked the way the writer to travel with an eight-year-old and a they do...
...23.95, 249 pp...
...not simply from the characters' contact In 1958, this American storyteller and Partly as a result of his training in with an uncannily peopled and storied children's book reviewer (who had an classics, and partly to honor rural reti- topography, but from Garner's judicious English parent and who now resides in cence, Garner strips his writing to the integration of his region's dialect and Canada) traveled to England with her Commonweal 24 April 7,2000 historian husband and two young children to find and visit the sites (and even some authors) of their favorite chil- "Experimenting dren's books...
...from tender to embarrassed to cruel, malism and dreary realism of so much With his goofy coping strategies, de- alienated, and terrified...
...El story of a girl coming into her power at capturing the Christian joy and hope and learning how to manage it...
...the particular, and his immense warmth are up an astounding 24 percent...
...They provide wel- his father, who he believes is the leg- fide juvenile delinquent, who careens come relief from the derivative mini- endary band leader Herman Calloway...
...Bodger might also drop in on and artist integrate the artifacts of contwo-year-old (should I leave the latter William Mayne, another contemporary temporary life (computers, cell phones, sleeping in the car while I dash up to English giant unknown here...
...The writing is fabulous, as is the late Moby-Dick into a picture book with- ing learned that the world regards him wry commentary on civics, authority, out losing its edgy argument with God, as a hick...
...The effect comes preciative and insightful literary tourist...
...Look for the picture of the wonder of wonders, a group of Lil- about the works of mercy and global mother comforting her son, after he reliputians, related to those found by Gul- poverty...
...This is the so he is, unsurprisingly, very good here the silence, painful and reparative...
...Drummond managed to trans- turns from his first trip to the city, havliver...
...Both have a penchant for vivid foot from Flint, Michigan, in search of thirteen-year-old brother Byron, a bona throwaway scenes...
...While in the guise of two rich young most strongly associated with bachelors who have just inherit- fantasy, Garner has written for ed the estate next door...
...ogy, aboriginal theories of time, and his particularly deft, layers on top of this a While all the authors already men- long struggle with manic depression...
...I have never read en bump in Tom Fobble's Day which ture and the teaching of literature...
...This is especially true of $24, 244 pp...
...These interlocking stories-The equal measure, versions of the old stoaimed at becoming a professor of clas- Stone Book, Granny Reardun, The Aimer ries which value relevance and accessisics in favor of returning to his native Gate, Tom Fobble's Day-trace Garner's bility above all, and those that are insisCheshire...
...the essays, he argues (These are not invented that the rise of a separate but are real stories spe- sphere called children's cific to the real sites: Gar- literature has had spiritner is a serious anthro- wasting effects...
...Her understatement a wicked vicar and governess who are by Mother Teresa (Element, $15.95, 24 and gravitas brought an emotional depth cheating her out of her estate, an ab- pp., age three and up), is a good way to picture books, and reach their apothsent-minded and wise professor, and to begin a conversation with your child eosis here...
...She always shows and tells and enjoys in a way that nurtures, today, I imagine she would put Garner ing with life and energy...
...The novel has just come with a Cornish family that is mourning a picture book...
...What they do not anticipate is that known for The Hundred and One Dalma- the dreary or the maudlin, the loneli- the shift in his behavior, as well as tians, was a playwright before a novelist...
...White's Mistress Masham's Re- $11.99, 126 pp., age eight and up...
...not confines, her children's imagina- on her "to visit" list as well as Philip Pull- Benny's Had Enough, written by tions...
...The latter his only book set out- is felicitously illustrated side East Cheshire...
...ically detailed, technically graceful, and estate on the endpapers...
...a house torn put adults beyond the reach of myth children are swept up into stories that down in Granny Reardun, so that its di- and tales that they urgently need...
...of view of a charming seventeen- One of the less creative reyear-old diarist, Cassandra Mort- sponses to the Harry Potter phemain, younger daughter of a pen- nomenon has been that adults niless and hopelessly blocked keep pointing book-hungry chilmodernist writer...
...I habitants...
...in rural landscapes that In all his work, Garare linguistically and ner extends the reach of physically exotic and children's literature...
...She gives a wonder- Spyglass, his long-awaited conclusion to er...
...It is an astonishingly Maine, at the age of eighty-three...
...at the heart of Mother Teresa...
...The ten-year-old African- ing the civil rights struggle, and with a fold increase in sales...
...Her Harry Potter se- dra is sharp as a tack, awkward, and still And he beautifully captures the divide ries has drawn even the young enough to greet her awakening between young children and concerned J most recalcitrant nonread- desire and finer perceptions with as- adults, which sometimes, by great effort ers into the orbit of literature, and has tonishment and hyperbole...
...Garner Book Quartet (Flamingo, $17.50,172 pp., ing a language which brackets stories wrote Weirdstone at age twenty-two, all ages) which I regard as his master- off from the everyday...
...by Norman Messenger, Both novels center on who visually underoutsider children com- ° scores Garner's emphaing to live temporarily sis on repetition...
...the first literate child of his family...
...The Owl Service is $12.95, 29 pp...
...Knopf, Swedish author Barbro Lindgren, and Bodger provides a superlative guide to $15.95, 163 pp., age eight and up) is, by illustrated by Olof Landstrom (R & S English children's books...
...man, whose latest, I Was a Rat...
...Still, these books are dense with one in which we think we dwell makes real occupation," Garner has written, feeling...
...a cheap pipe is (illustrated by Herve Blondon, DK Ink, second as Standard English) that he ex- dropped and four generations (and $14.95, 44 pp...
...is the result, an underground classic that has just come back For information about the Franciscan Friars and into print...
...Allen Drummond's Stories Told Cooney's work...
...The focus is on human That commitment to a language which has lived for three hundred years, work- labor, not aspiration or regret or senti- opens us to a larger temporality than the ing as rural craftsmen...
...If you missed it I have been neglecting picture books, faithful to the emotional reserve of rural the first time around, the novel involves and will mention a few new ones in laborers...
...Curtis immense shock of the Birmingham a coming-of-age story told from the point also masterfully unfolds a portrait of the church bombing of September 15,1963...
...How the Heather Looks: A with tradition Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children's Books (McClelland & Stewart, since 1898...
...of T.H...
...I reca novelist who handles terror like Gar- merely thrills the sled-riding descen- ommend his essay collection not only ner...
...Here it local knowledge accrued by village in- agers have not yet read The Golden is given an especially fine treatment...
...These values are hallmarks of a fetching young orphan named Maria, closing...
...Her in an edition handsomely illustrated by subtle exploration of childhood con- illustrations for this story about a famMartin Hargreaves with a very wel- sciousness, as embodied in the family's ily of Taconic basket makers are historcome pictorial map of the Malplaquet twin girls...
...His 1976 A satellite dishes) without being cutesy...
...A toddler struggling against mom fully detailed portrait of 1950s England, the trilogy, His Dark Materials, is official- is not an innovative subject but it is an the open doors, lack of telephones, and ly "forthcoming," so if your favorite teen- essential and inexhaustible one...
...ness, fear, and grief with which Bud has Kenny's world-view, will turn on the I Capture the Castle is her crossover debut, lived since his mother's death...
...In his 1997 collected Brisingamen (Magic Carpet/Harcourt gesture is necessary, and its absence essays, The Voice That Thunders (Harvill, Brace, $6, 286 pp., age ten and up) and unimaginable...
...The Amber in rebellion against his fastidious mothliterary research...
...In this picture, you can hear and children's education...
...The prizes it as his birthright...
...It is in this geologically and family from the Victorian period to tently pure in their use of dialect...
...all ages, and in several genres...
...Austen meets Noel Coward, Of the fantasy novels, my faCommonweal 2 3 April 7, 2000 vorites are the 1960 The Weirdstone of bone: each word, each scene, and each standard English...
...She conveys turns, a disturbing, poignant, and farcical Books, $14, ages two to six) finds a pig the persistence and felicity at the heart of riff on the Cinderella story...
...The dren's writer in England, but he latter appears, anachronistically, is scarcely known here...
...linguistically rich region that his family World War II...
...Commonweal 2 5 April 7, 2000...
...This widower, dren to other fantasy literature along with three children and rather than to whatever is good new bride, Topaz (a former artist's regardless of genre...
...it is to be here...
...touch...
...But even this model who wanders around in can be forgiven since it seems to less than everything), is hun- be what is behind the recent rekered down in his deceased publication of Alan Garner's wife's decaying estate in rural opus...
...Last Christopher Paul Curtis's Newbery also animate his highly praised first year, when Rowling professed admira- Medal-winning Bud, Not Buddy (Dela- novel, The Watsons Go to Birminghamtion for Dodie Smith's 1948 I Capture the corte, $15.95, 245 pp., age ten and up) is 1963 (Yearling, $5.50, 210 pp., age ten Castle ($13.95, 343 pp., age thirteen and another novel radiant with charm, as and up...
...Cassan- black working class in the Depression...
...His al- Daria Donnelly is Commonweal's associWere Bodger to go back to England ways oddly scaled drawings are teem- ate editor...
...this castle with the other...
...If I have any ment...
...Year and a Day, to which Pullman's rat is Landstrom draws in the economical and One of my favorite scenes in How the weirdly indebted, has just been repub- witty manner of James Marshall, Jules Heather Looks is when an excited young lished in the lovely Candlewick Treasure Feiffer, and William Steig-artists who librarian helps Bodger discover the site series (illustrated by John Lawrence, know that less can be more...
Vol. 127 • April 2000 • No. 7
