Perfect gifts

MOLLY LEFEBURE

The Prince in Waiting John Christopher (Hamish Hamilton .25s)

To Sunset and Beyond Alec Lea (Hamish Hamilton 25s) Telford and the American Visitor Ray Pope (Macdonald 16s) The Twelfth Day of July Joan Lingard (Hamish Hamilton 25s) Paganini Strikes Again Benjamin Lee (Hutchinson 18s) A Quarrel of Witches Margaret Storey (Faber 20s) Crossroad Glyn Frewer (Heinemann 20s) Whitey Ernest Claes (Oxford University Press 20s) One thing now emerges very clearly from the great spate of children's books released this season : although the English adult novel may well be a spent creative force, children's fiction, on the other hand, in this country is achieving real creative stature and signifi- cance. It is highly contemporary in the truest sense, intelligent, quick-witted; it is deeply concerned with human and social problems; it anticipates the future imagina- tively, probing the past for experience which can illuminate today, it is often witty, occasionally profound; it is exceedingly well written.

The question 'why?' poses a problem akin to that of the chicken and the egg. Has hildren's fiction changed because a new kind • f author has turned to it? Or have authors ho hitherto wrote for adults, or who at first ntended to write for adults, turned to the

oung people because they, for reasons rising from the recent deep and complex hanger in our society, are now demanding a ery different kind of reading matter from heir former diet of school-holiday treasure- roves and pony-club shindigs? It seems rather to be a case of the latter. We authors (not necessarily the same as ving authors) require live readers; else the tiling shrivels and calcifies. Our adult popu- ion has now largely become so processed d conditioned that it cannot stomach any- ' tog but a gravely restricted and tediously petitive diet, the regular provision of which Pelts death to the creative writer. But the der-fifteens have so far, thank heaven,

escaped the full pressure of the processing system—our adolescents have themselves rejected television, the destructive agency of so many of their parents. Children and really young people are still able to respond to the demands made by original and mature writers. And in turn these young readers make reciprocal demands upon the writers; so that each side stimulates the other. These, and these alone, are the conditions which can produce and preserve a viable art form.

This is admirably demonstrated by a clutch of new novels for young readers, each one of which deserves attention, regardless of the age-group at which it is aimed. John Chris- topher's The Prince in Waiting, for example, is immensely thought-provoking, and they are far from being easy, comfortable thoughts. His theme leaps forward in time to go back in time: human progression has be- come regression, England has reverted to a state of civilisation resembling feudalism, but it is a feudalism forged from the ruins of the twentieth or twenty-first century. The action of this almost too convincing and entirely absorbing, as well as exciting, book is not Anno Domini, but After Disaster. It is both spine-chilling and humanly moving reading. Luke, the boy around whom the action revolves, the Prince in Waiting, is a complex, yet spirited character, who is telling his story in the first person.

This book, we are told, is the first in a new trilogy. The Tripods trilogy, John Christo- pher's previous long work, won him young readers all over the world and, if one can judge by The Prince in Waiting, he is going to repeat his success, although not his mater- ial.

The Prince comes from Hamish Hamil- ton's stable and so does To Sunset and Be- yond by Alec Lea; a marvellous book. Alec Lea, a true countryman who knows his Dartmoor and his dairy cattle (which has important bearing on the quality of his writ- ing) confesses to having been obsessed by the theme of this novel—a small boy lost on the moor in a fog. This, I think, is going to be recognised as a children's classic. The moor lies beyond the intake; ten cows and a bull standing at the top of the second field watch the children as they approach; the writing puts the reality of it all fair and square under the nose of the reader, the be- haviour and habits of cattle, expertly obser- ved and recorded, are essential to the plot and become of riveting interest to the reader, who breathlessly and helplessly follows the little boy after the cows, through the moor gate, into the fog. There is also a beautiful, eerie and Grimm-like dream-sequence which must have been most tricky to write, but which is perfectly done. So are the heart- moving scenes of the final chapters. This is an outstanding achievement in writing.

For Alec Lea it's dairy cattle, for Ray Pope it's model railways. It doesn't really matter what it is, just so long as a writer can really write. Telford and the American Visitor, successor to Mr Pope's The Model- Railway Men, is primarily intended for model railway buffs, but it is written with such conviction, as well as delightful ingen- uity and wit, that one can guarantee it as unputdownable by anybody who ventures beyond the first paragraph. From the moment that old Telford. the midget railwayman, climbed out of the drawer under the table that supported the railway layout, to hobble down number one platform, I, who have always been bored stiff by model railways, was virtually glued to this book. After I had reached the bottom of the final page I was able to get my breath and sit back and consi- der, amongst many other virtues, the beauti-

fully meticulous attention to scale: study the sellotape incident in chapter one, for in- stance, and the later adventure with the spool of film. This is exactly what it would be like if one were an inch tall!

Joan Lingard's The Twelfth Day of July (another winner from Hamish Hamilton), her first book for young readers, is a distin- guished and confident venture into junior fiction. Its subject, religious prejudice in modern Belfast, a highly relevant theme, is handled without forcing; Mrs Lingard makes her points without contorting either her

characters or story-line, indeed one is not aware that her book has a specific message until one realises, at the close of the final

chapter, that she has put it across most con- vincingly. The book is packed with good, taut action scenes, some frightening, some, like the chip-pan fire, very funny, though

pregnant with warning (my own son set fire to my kitchen in precisely this same way).

This novel, though written for young people, can be read without the slightest condescen- sion by adults. In fact, it's the most illumin- ating inside story of what's happening in I Belfast that I have come across.

Paganini Strikes Again, by Benjamin Lee, is a junior detective-thriller that makes many senior detective-thrillers look pretty grotty by comparison. Ingeniously plotted, fast- moving, well written, to the point and very funny; also entirely credible. I shan't be mean and reveal the plot. One can tell that the author is medical,. for the characters are ob- served with clinical nicety (as well as with

wit); Mike's teenage sister, Nicola, for instance. And most musicians will have had

a Gertrude Lanyard in their early lives.

Trevor Stubley's illustrations match the text for meticulous, humorous detail. This is a perfect gift for a nephew or niece you don't know very well, because it's the kind of book you can't go wrong with, whoever the lucky recipient may be.

It takes an English author to show us what witches are really like; I am totally convinced by Margaret Storey's A Quarrel of Witches, which reads like Ivy Compton-Burnett out of Ronald Firbank. These witches are unmis-

takably met together in some large country

house near a village called Far Cathay; sounds Cotswold. They have names like Fanfaronade, Fennel, Fanny and Dulcimer, which you are always coming across in the Tatler; instead of dogs there are a lot of small dragons trotting and snuffling about. The action is mostly conveyed in dialogue:

lather fun, perhaps, isn't it?'

'Yes. Whaf a crowd.'

'Isn't Melinda clever? I wonder where the bed was.'

People vanish and reappear, there is a lot of talk about who is going to sleep where- bedwise, not who with—and loud authori- tative voices say things like, 'I can't see you, dear. Light yourself up, will you?'

There is also a small, very polite, boy called Timothy who is given a bag of toffees and then left to shift for himself.

Yes, it's English country life, the domain of witches and warlocks. It's a dead cert that

no American would ever be able to make

head or tale of this as a children's book, but I imagine it will be lapped up, here, with

relish by people of upper fourth level. It Will also go down terribly well with bachelor uncles, intelligent great-aunts, and grand-

mothers who get so fed up with being given talcum powder. In short, it's Super, as the witches themselves keep saying.

Glyn Frewer has researched Crossroad carefully: Ken Greenly, fourteen-year-old secondary-mod bulge-kid. Slightly disturbed. Socially ambitious and conformist mother, work-engrossed father, successful grammar- school brother. Ken does poorly at school, is nagged at home. Gets involved with local undesirables, is saved by an understanding schoolmaster. He was never in any real danger, anyway. A pity that Mr Frewer gives the impression of belonging to the anti- youth-club league, because if he looked into them a little more closely he would discover that these are the places which are helping the Ken Greenly kids most. I don't claim, by the way, that Crossroad is in the same class as these other novels mentioned here; but it is a good example of the kind of theme that children's writers are now tackling. It's a serious attempt at a serious subject.

Of course, there always have been some outstanding books written for, and about, children. One classic, which has not reached British readers before now because of the language barrier, is Ernest Claes's Whitey, translated from the Flemish by Charles Dowsett. It was first published as De Witte in 1920; this English translation marks the book's fiftieth anniversary. It proves to be a small masterpiece which should be on the shelves of all self-respecting junior libraries; public and private alike.

The translator has appended an interesting and useful postscript about the book and its author, there are also extracts from Claes's autobiographical leugd (Youth) which first appeared in 1940. These extracts, as good as anything in. Whitey itself, parallel the boy- hood battle games of Richard Jefferies's Bevis.

The fact that Whitey reminds one, fre- quently, in vivid flashes, of other classics of boyhood is good evidence that Claes has made, in writing about Whitey in particular, a pungent contribution to the literature of boyhood in general. Which leads one to muse upon the sad and remarkable absence of any comparable literature of girlhood.