For a smaller readership
Juliet Townsend
hen I became engaged, my mother- in-law-to-be pressed into my hands, from some impenetrable motive, a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking. It is a concept familiar to all admirers of Helen Cress- well's books about the anarchic Bagthorpe family, whose great merit is that they make parents realise that there may be children even ghastlier than their own. Mrs Bagthorpe is a great believer in Positive Thinking, but that does not save her from constant insult in The Bagthorpe Triangle (Faber, £9.99.) She was 'God's gift to Weight Watchers' and
if her husband had murdered her, he would have had to conceal her in more than the tra- ditional 'shallow grave'.
The familiar characters continue to amuse. There is Aunt Celia with her phantom pregnancy:
She liked the idea of motherhood in the abstract, but was not so keen on the real thing
— and who can blame her with the dread example of her frightful daughter Celia — in Grandma's eyes alone 'a shining jewel of a child'? Helen Cresswell never patronises her readers, who are expected to take casu- al references to Kaflca, Simone de Beauvoir and angst in their stride, and no doubt do.
Lovers of Ballet Shoes and the Lorna Hill series on Sadlers Wells will much enjoy Listen to the Nightingale by Rumer Godden (Macmillan, £9.99), the story of the poor but talented young dancer, Lottie, whose ambition to join the Junior School of Her Majesty's Ballet, Queen's Chase (a thinly disguised White Lodge) is complicated by her unwillingness to be parted from her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Prince. Rumer Godden is, as always, excellent on the minor characters: Salvatore, the exotic Italian boy dancer, who simultaneously infuriates and dazzles his teachers, Lottie's Auntie and guardian, wardrobe mistress of Holbein's Theatre, and 'Mr Soper, Mr Soaker', owner of the lodging house where they live, with his old-world courtesy and dustbin full of empty wine bottles. Another novel for 8-12-year-olds is Sent Away by Jonathan Croall (OUP, £8.95), the modern equivalent of all those Victorian tales of rejection with titles like Nobody's Boy. Children who enjoy gloom and doom followed by a happy ending will like this
unusual story based on the real-life experi- ences of the thousands of children sent by charitable organisations to make a new life in the Dominions in the first half of this century. We know now that times were hard for many of them, but Ellen and Joe do seem to have been particularly unfortu- nate with their harrowing experiences in Australia, and can it really have been so easy for children with both parents still liv- ing to be shipped off to the other side of the world?
If you are faced with a child who prefers to spend his time zapping aliens on his computer rather than bent over a book, Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett (Doubleday, £9.99) may win him over for a while. (It's probably a 'he' because 'girls aren't much good at comput- er games, they haven't got such a good sense of spatial. . . something or other like we have'). Johnny is merrily blasting space- ships out of the sky when suddenly the message, 'We wish to talk. . . we surrender please!' flashes on to the screen and John- ny finds that the game has become reality. His efforts as the Chosen One to save the Scree Wee fleet from destruction by all the other human computer game players is funny and exciting, as he hurtles through a space littered with the burned out wrecks of all the Space Invaders ever shot — a good sense of humour, with language on the gritty side.
Slightly younger children will welcome the return of the Church Mice in their first new adventure for six years in The Church Mice and the Ring (Macmillan, and excel- lent value at £7.50). Graham Oakley's witty text and delightful pictures are as engaging as ever, especially the vertiginous views from the top of the church tower and the scene of the mice being marched off to the police station, five to a handcuff. A good present for a dexterous 5-7-year-old with an equally dexterous parent is The Peter Rabbit Theatre (Warne, £4.99). This book, easily posted in a large envelope, can be made into a theatre with press-outs of all the characters for performing Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny, together with the text of the stories and advice on how to produce the play, make programmes, etc. There is a cut-out, too, in The Window Doll by Sian Bailey (Doubleday, £9.99) with its pretty, old-fashioned illustrations. It is the story of a neglected rag doll who sits for- gotten in the window until the cat carries her out into the garden, where she becomes ever more dilapidated as she is preyed on by a dog, a fox, a thrush and a mouse, ending up buried in the snow. Her owner's mother repairs her and gives her a new set of clothes — readers can do the same by cutting out the doll and trying on her paper dresses.
Blackie have produced an attractive boxed set of eight Old Testament stories by Tim and Jenny Wood, illustrated by Fran Thatcher (£9.99). My Bible Stories, each a little smaller than a Beatrix Potter, include Daniel in the Lion's Den and Jonah and the Big Fish. The text is full and lively without being trivial, with pic- tures to match.
An amusing book for small children, with lively illustrations and lots of repetition, is The Queen's Holiday by Margaret Wild, illustrated by Sue O'Loughlin (Hodder & Stoughton, £7.99). An elderly Queen Victoria sets off for the beach accompanied by her full retinue, including the Lady-in- Waiting with the royal potty, and some anachronistic corgis. Everything goes disastrously wrong, but the Queen moves in with characteristic decisiveness and puts all to rights.
A more robust humour characterises Wolf written and illustrated by Sami Sweeten (Doubleday, £8.99). When Leon meets a wolf on the way to school, the wolf seems very obliging. Every time Leon com- plains that anyone is horrid, 'the wolf smiled a funny sort of smile' and the worst occurs. Young children who relish the slightly gruesome will enjoy this story, and it all ends happily. Also pleasurably revolt- ing is the troll in Val Biro's retelling of The Three Billy Goats Gruff (OUP, £6.95). The pictures are excellent and the little Billy Goat Gruff particularly sweet, but am I the only connoisseur to insist that the biggest Billy Goat Gruff should never be content with merely going `trampety tramp' but should go `bim barn batter'? Is nothing sacred?
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