The Chronicles of Narnia – C. S. Lewis

Having spent a ridiculous amount of time watching Moondial (the last post explains that, if you are a bit lost),  I restumbled upon a another classic from the archives,  The Chronicles of Narnia.

This is from way back when the BBC made great kids stuff all the time with seemingly no effort.  Part of the charm of the series is how extremely dated it now looks.   I’m amazed how enthralled I was at the time but it’s still a lovely romp through hilarious special effects and some wonderfully overdramatic acting.

Of the four books they made (The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Prince Caspian,The Voyage of the Dawntreader and The Silver Chair), it was Dawntreader that had the most effect on me and still does.  Those silent windswept islands with their secrets and mournful solitude.  They are still endlessly fascinating to this day, like a ghostly Polynesia if you will.

when rereading the books years later, I found that they are so much more wonderfully effective.  Imagine everyone who has ever picked up The Magician’s Nephew seeing in their mind Narnia being created from the same words but with millions of different versions floating around the cosmos of collective imagination.  Great stuff, not only that but each of these hundreds of thousands of Narnia’s grows ever more complex and old throughout the books, giving you the pleasure of your own ages old world to explore.

The Watchers: A Mystery at Alton Towers – Helen Cresswell

Two children Katy and Josh, are for various reasons, living in a foster home where bullying and beatings are commonplace.  They dream of escaping and after a day trip to the theme park Alton Towers, they dream of running away and living there to have fun, feel happy and soak up the atmosphere and try and grasp what it means to have a loving family life.

Upon arriving though, things aren’t what they expected, with strange goings on and a mystery to be solved in a valley with much history, Josh and Katy are drawn into something much deeper than just their daily survival.

We’d all like to escape for a bit and where better than a theme park, the rides, the thrills, the over expensive drinks and all that.  It’s a great idea until the realist in you sticks the boot in and asks, “where would you live, eat, wash etc”, and that’s when the thought of a comfy bed and some chicken fried rice has you trudging back to the monotonous work fest that is life.

Children on the the hand don’t think that far ahead and if they do they make it into something magical and adventurous, where there are no real consequences and that will be really fun and exciting.  Luckily for the reading public, a book like that may be dull so authors have to spice it up somewhat.

These days children’s literature seems more sanitised than it used to be whether it’s the censoring of Enid Blyton novels or possibly the fears of the author being sued for a child copying something that one of his or her protagonists did.  Well this book was published in 1993 and has a rawer edge, the language is sometimes phonetic or colloquial, there are subtle hints of abuse at the care home in which the children lodged, not to mention the harshness or indeed brutality of daily life.  We later see the protagonists stealing from shops and eating food out of bins.  with all this of course comes consequences, there are nods to the issues of illnesses, disease, unfit parents and the failures of The System, it’s a nice subtle commentary that kids of all ages will take in and learn from and adults will find the extra realism satisfying, if that is the right word.

This isn’t to say that the book is all doom and gloom.  The euphoria of being in Alton Towers, of being free is tempered by the realities of life but Cresswell never makes her stories to saccharine with ideal escapes and adventures, the element of danger from the mysterious people’s inhabiting Alton valley to the very real danger of illness in a place where there is no help despite the amount of people milling around.  The constant strange events coupled with their everyday struggles set to a cyclical backdrop of first, the eerie silence and shadows of night and then the bright days and laughing families is a reminder of how far away from their original goal the children are.

The Riddles of Epsilon – Christine Morton-Shaw

  children’s books have become undeniably more sophisticated of late and this can only be a good thing, not only for the young of age but also of the young of mind who still enjoy dabbling in the genre of adolescent people’s literature.

I can’t quite remember how I came across Christine Morton-Shaw’s debut novel, The Riddles of Epsilon, but I’m glad I did as it has all the classic ingredients that still retain an air of excitement no matter your age.

Jess is not pleased when her parents drag her off to live on the weird little island of Lume. But then she encounters and eerie presence in an abandoned cottage, and her anger turns to fear when it begins to lead her through a series of creepy riddles.

So far so good then, we have mysterious happenings on an island which is classic children’s fare, but what separates it out from other books is the sheer scale of the mini mysteries that are posed throughout the text. For each question answered another two or three pop up to take its place, meaning that there is always plenty of scope for speculation on possible plot twists.

To begin with, we have our main protagonist Jess, a lonely child new to the isle of Lume, because she spends much of the time on her own she is instantly identifiable to the reader, who is taking part in said pursuit by themselves. That singular connection, coupled with some of the riddles that can be worked out by the reader if he or she chooses, or if you lack the capacity to put the book down can leave it to Jess to do all the graft, make the book a more intimate affair.

You’ll probably appreciate that this is one of those books where a reviewer has to be, or should be, at any rate cagey in talking to much about the actual plot for fear of giving something away.  The joy of this book is comes from being  dragged around by the throat at frenetic pace as lots of conundrums are posed and solved to form a rich tapestry of atmospheric mystery.

Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift

I always assumed Gulliver’s travels to be primarily a children’s book, most probably from the cartoons that were always around of the titular Gulliver being tied down to the ground by the Lilliputians and generally harassed through no fault of his own.

Thankfully, this book is so much more than that now iconic view of Lemuel Gulliver.  You see Mr Gulliver is a luckless (depending on your view, of course) ships surgeon who gets involved in many crazy voyages, chronicled within.  You would think he would notice the pattern of his lucklessness at sea and just stay at home, but there you go.

Like all classics, and indeed all good books in general, there is plenty of biting social commentary, satire and parody of the era to be enjoyed, that in many cases still rings true for today’s society.  Some of the references can be a bit obscure and so for maximum enjoyment it’s preferable to get an edition with notes for historical context, it’s definitely worth it.

From a modern point of view it is interesting to note the cyclical nature of history or perhaps the more honest view that we never learn from past mistakes.  Happily (for me, at any rate) Swift is always pushing you to consider the flaws and unjust way of society as a whole, and your place within that system.

Aside from all that though there is, in fact, a story to be enjoyed, it’s a ludicrous set up but one to inspire the imagination. Anyone who has ever looked at the old maps where they drew pictures of mythical creatures  and added the legend, here be dragons, cannot have failed to get that sense of curiosity and wonder about what might be there.  This book does exactly that even for todays totally globalised populace.

Five on a Treasure Island – Enid Blyton

‘There’s a shipwreck off Kirrin Island! But where is the treasure? The Famous Five are on the trail – looking for clues – but they’re not alone! Someone else has got the same idea. Time is running out for the Famous Five, who will follow the clues and get to the treasure first?’

As a child this was high octane stuff!  It had everything I could want, a sense of danger and adventure, risk and excitement, mystery and discovery, a WHOLE island owned by a child my age! castles, caves, smugglers and a dog to boot!

I reread this a few years ago, for the first time since I was about eight and true it is a little bit dated now and very much a book of its time. The plot is not as sophisticated as say, Harry Potter, (that being the new yardstick with which to measure children’s literature it seems), but there in lies the pleasure of these books.

The first of a series of 21 stories, this book really sets the scene for what is to come throughout the series; straight forward plotting, mysteries, much eating and drinking of nice victuals and usually lovely weather for camping and mystery solving.

Where’s Wally?

There it is that big, bright, bold cover asking that immortal of questions, Where’s Wally?

I approached these books with a somewhat blasé attitude. I get involved, find said chappie and his hangers on(and dog), job done, simple.  Of course that is not the way of life. What followed was not just an elaborate paper based game of hide and seek. Oh no! It was a journey into the very depths my humanity….

It was Sartre who once said ‘Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have’.  I believe he was refering to my predicament of hunting for Wally in the middle of a viking war zone or in a black and white silent movie scene.  You see I came to the realisation that to hunt for ‘Wally’ is to hunt for oneself,  to seek oneself out of the body.

Having realised that to find myself I must look into various bits of history (and the beach), there came the revelation that (as the philosopher  Soren Kirkegaard said): ‘The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read a