Jumbo set
MOLLY LEFEBURE
Uncle and Claudius the Camel J. P. Martin illustrated by Quentin Blake (('ape 21s) Benign, incorruptible, generous to his friends, a terrible foe to his enemies, Uncle, the millionaire elephant, appears yet again in all his feudal might and glory to spellbind further his old admirers and to enchant readers who meet him for the first time in this fifth instalment of his saga. Fantastical. but never whimsical, these remarkable adventures of Uncle and his good and faith- ful followers—incessantly harried by the hideous cohorts of Badfort--extend the frontiers of the fairy-tale, yet adhere to the fundamental rules of a very ancient tradi- tion: they enchant the reader and produce that secondary world which Tolkein insists upon—they illuminate, they give joy.
'These important considerations apart, they are above all tales for children, not for adults seeking books which they think that child- ren should like; the perspective of child- hood is instinctively maintained throughout. Children prefer the, big things to be left mysterious, but the smaller things at hand most be most 'meticulously detailed. J. P. Martin understood this and thus, whereas Uncle's palace. the Castle of Homeward, is merely vaguely described as a vast com-
pound of mysterious skyscrapers linked by aerial railways, Miss Amy Wolf's boarding- house at Sunset Beach, where Uncle and his friends snatch occasional brief holidays, is described in great detail, down to the very advertisement brochure: 'There is a recess on the cliff opposite, through which the sun shines as it sinks. Striking colour effects.'
Precisely which country all these aston- ishing things happen in we never discover ; but, in contrast, whenever Uncle gives a present to one of the faithful we learn exactly what he gives, be it a splendid fiat with a gold-curtained bed, a grand piano, a good cooking stove and a silver umbrella- stand, or a knitted jersey with pockets! And this of course is as it should be ; has any- one, over the centuries, ever learned more of Soria Mona Castle than that it stands west of the moon and east of the sun?
The visual images of the Uncle books are vivid, clearly owing much to the author's own travels in Africa and Palestine. The dialogue, on the surface quite zany, is really perfectly logical. The illustrations are more than satisfying, as Uncle would say ; only one quibble presents itself, which is that to depict Uncle's aunt, Miss Maidy, as homo sapiens is an error. She, 'a massive figure', must surely have been an elephant!
Previous page
