Exploding Croissants, Anyone?

Bridget Vanderpuff and the Ghost Train by Martin Stewart (Zephyr, 2023)

As the late summer days start to get chilly and the lengthy evenings become gradually shorter, my reading begins to turn to those gently spooky autumnal books that herald the beginnings of traditional Ghost Story Time.  

Bridget Vanderpuff and the Ghost Train, the second in the Vanderpuff series is so beautifully written that it's not necessary to have read the first - though I'd heartily endorse doing so simply for the sheer pleasure! The story is sure to delight its readers with its marvellous baked treats and a mysterious Ghost Train steaming into Belle-on-Sea at the start of the SPOOKY season. 

Bridget and her friend, Tom, hear a strange rumbling noise just as Captain Lufty tells them of the Ghost Train heading towards the town. Naturally, Bridget's curiosity is piqued and a mystery beckons, especially when some of the locals go missing too! Something's not right and it's up to the two children - and the bakery elf, Pascal - to set things straight. 

A great read for Years 4 and 5, Ghost Train has a fast-paced, highly entertaining and humorous plot, with just the right amount of spookiness. Add to this plenty of opportunity for characterisation and you've got yourself the perfect read-aloud for these years, too. 

There are many nods to Dahl, who also really understood what children enjoy in their reading. The magical objects that Bridget relies on during her adventures have a touch of James' Giant Peach minibeast friends - each with their own characteristic strength, they willingly lend Bridget their help. Above all else, I am certain that children will hugely enjoy the the Vanderpuff bakery, a cornucopia of goodies that invoke Wonka's chocolate wizardry at their zaniest: glowberry jam (made from fruit with glow-in-the-dark seeds), and exploding croissants are just a few whose delicious scents rise from the pages. Invention is at a wild and wacky high throughout, though my favourite scene in the book involved a ferociously hot baklava 'volcano' (itself faintly reminiscent of Diana Wynne-Jones' Calcifer) and a voracious Cake-Safe!

Anyone who has devoured Anna James' Pages and Co. series is sure to gobble up this deliciously warm hug of a book. It's just crying out to be enjoyed with a hot chocolate...and maybe just a few pastries on the side!

***

Bridget Vanderpuff and the Ghost Train was published by Zephyr on 31st August 2023. Thanks to Courtney Jefferies and Zephyr for the review copy.

And be sure to follow the blog tour to celebrate publication! 

Silly? Serious? It's Something Extraordinary!

 Stuntboy, In-Between Time by Jason Reynolds and Raúl the Third (Knights Of, 2023)

Portico was being silly (he really wasn't being silly, he was being serious, but his serious was silly, seriously). 

(p. 105)

There's something extraordinary going on in Jason Reynolds' and Raúl the Third's Stuntboy series and I couldn't put it more eloquently than in that one line quoted above. 

Open the most recent Stuntboy novel and straightaway you'll appreciate an illustrator and a writer working in tandem, to tell a story with all the hyperactive brilliance and breathless energy of a Loony Tunes cartoon. The pace never lets up. Far from exhausting, the experience of reading about Stuntboy's adventures leaves you excited to read more (and, as with the first book, there's a 'To be Continued...' panel at the end!). 

Look a bit closer and the interplay between text and drawings will remind you of the best graphic novels. The zipping around between storyline and popular culture references (being an 80s kid, I particularly enjoyed the invocations of Beetlejuice and  Garbage Pail Kids trading cards) combine to become much more than the sum of their parts. Words and pictures jostle for attention, bounce off one other, merge together in a perfect kind of counterpoint. It seems 'silly' to the untrained eye, but it is 'seriously' so far from that. When Stuntboy invokes one of his special moves - the 'Stare Well' - for example, Raúl the Third's illustration has him literally 'looking daggers' with actual knives flying from his eyes towards his enemy! 

At the very heart of the book, the 'what is actually going on' is two storytellers who just 'get' what it is to be children in a confusing world. Here, 'real world' issues of anxiety, bullying and parental separation are explored deeply, but are never shoehorned in, or fall back into didacticism. The story is these issues (the subtitle of the book is positioned as such towards the end of the novel) though the whirling exuberance of the telling makes you think you are enjoying a slapstick comedy...one that keeps you turning the pages, faster and faster, to the very moving end. 

 

I mentioned the vocabulary and language the authors draw on in my review of Book 1. Anyone who (dare) claims that books like these with a lot of pictures, a lot of panels, and a lot of speech bubbling are more 'fun' than 'proper' reads, should really take a much closer look. (And yes, I'm looking at you, Mr. But-are-graphic-novels-really-as-good-as-a-'normal'-book!)

I'll explain. And for the sake of space I will simply provide a few examples in the form of...

Finally Seen

Finally Seen by Kelly Yang (Knights Of, 2023)

Everything I have read by Kelly Yang has been a jewel of children's literature. I started by reading Front Desk back in 2018 and shortly after finishing it, the book travelled round readers in my class and found new Yang fans in the process. Then came Parachutes, a novel for much older readers - and one which genuinely shocked me - in which could be felt the same compelling narrative drive. Last year I read aloud New From Here to my class. This one had a special resonance as the plot touched on the repercussions of Covid, and gave us an insight into the racism that accompanied those years of Lockdowns...and beyond. And then there was Key Player which continues Mia's story from the Front Desk series and which is possibly my favourite novel by Yang yet! 

So I am very proud to be a part of the blog tour for this author's latest novel, Finally Seen, and I'm doubly delighted to have been allowed to share the first chapter here! If you've not read any of Yang's work, you are in for a treat and, from just this one chapter, the author's stylistic fingerprints are immediately recognisable... 

The novel opens with Lina Gao travelling from China to America, something that echoes Yang's own experiences as a girl and as a mum. That sense of displacement, finding oneself in a very different cultural landscape, is a feature of her books too, and Lina's strong voice, similar to Mia's and Claire's and Knox's in their turns, tells her story with charm and wonder. (It's this voice that I think is the key to what makes Yang so very readable!) 

Alongside this, there's also a lot of very relatable experiences and reactions very familiar to many children; Yang's young readers immediately see the main character as a friend, one who seems to have been so for years. Here there's the deep connection with her grandparents, the drawing of them in her sketchbook...even the throwaway mention of collecting up the free airplane goodies. Like all Yang's main characters, Lina is fully drawn in the first few pages - she bursts from the page - but is has taken just a few elegant brushstrokes to do so.

One final thing that always grabs my attention - maybe a bit more personal, but something I think appeals to many children, too, in my experience! - is the tempting mention of different foods. White Rabbit sweets intrigue me most here - what are they? They sound glorious! - but also the baozi, the hawthorn flakes, the wheat flour cakes. I want to try them all!! 

Finally Seen is a great way to start (or continue!) your exploration of Yang's novels and I'm sure that the following extract will show you why...

***

Finally Seen by Kelly Yang

Chapter 1 (extract)

A hand on my arm pushes me awake.

“Lina Gao?” the flight attendant asks. I rub my eyes awake. She smiles and says to me in Chinese, “We’re moving you up to first class. So you can get out first when we land!”

I blink in confusion. I reach for my sketch pad. I was in the middle of working on a sketch of Lao Lao gardening, but as I look up, my eyes nearly pop when I see the flight tracker on the screen. We’re almost there!

“Your escort will be waiting as soon as we get to LAX to take you to your parents.”

I leap up from my seat. Let’s gooooo!!!

I follow the flight attendant up the long aisle to first class, staring at all the people stretched out in beds with their noise-canceling headphones and candyfloss slippers. These are airplane apartments.

I take a seat in one of the cabins and reach for the fancy first-class cotton slippers. I’m so saving these for Lao Lao. I wonder if she likes her new nursing home.

I feel a tug of guilt thinking about it, but Aunt Jing said it was necessary. She and Uncle Hu both live in Shenzhen, which is about twelve hundred miles away from Beijing, and they both have 9-9-6 tech jobs. A 9-9-6 job means you work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. They’re the envy of the country, because they make the most money. But it also means there’s no way my aunt can be a tea brewer for my lao lao.

So they took me and Lao Lao to visit the nursing home. I remember the floors were very shiny, almost like you could go roller skating on them. I pictured a bunch of elderly folks roller skating, and then had to bite on my cheeks to stop myself from giggling. Because it wasn’t funny.

The rooms were bright, with big windows that allowed the team of nurses to look in at all times. Aunt Jing said she got Lao Lao the biggest room of all – a private room. It was the nicest room in the entire nursing home. But to Lao Lao, it was like living inside a fishbowl. She didn’t like the idea at all.

“No way!” she said, stomping her walking cane down on the ground. “Not happening! I am a free spirit – I need to be able to roam around the park and go to see my friends!”

“They can come see you!” Aunt Jing insisted. “That’s why we’re putting you into a retirement home in Beijing – so your friends can come visit. Anytime!”

Lao Lao has two good park friends: Chen Nai Nai, a grandma who loves to dance, and Wang Nai Nai, whose daughter is also in America. I’ve never seen either of them come to our house, though.

“Why can’t I just stay by myself?” Lao Lao asked, peeking at my aunt.

“Because, Ma, your arthritis and osteoporosis, it’s all getting worse. And now that Dad’s gone . . . Frankly, you should have gone into a retirement community a long time ago,” Aunt Jing said. “But you had Lina –”

“And I loved every minute of it, sweet child,” Lao Lao said, patting my hand.

I felt a tear escape. This was all my fault.

“No, don’t you cry,” Lao Lao told me. She nodded to my aunt, and with a shaking hand, she signed the papers.

I put my hand to the airplane window and whisper with all my heart:

“I’m so sorry, Lao Lao. I promise I will find a way to bring you over. I will find a way to get you out of the waiting city, too.”

“Fifteen minutes to landing!” the captain announces on the speaker. 

I immediately grab the stash of free goodies next to the candyfloss slippers. I stuff as many as I can into my backpack. Socks, sleeping masks, you name it. I add the stash to my collection of Chinese snacks I’ve brought over for my
(almost) new family. I’ve packed wheat flour cake, hawthorn flakes, pumpkin chips, and White Rabbit sweets for them, hoping the sweets will fill them with sweet guilt for leaving me behind.

I gaze out the window at the wispy clouds. The Los Angeles houses sprawl across the land, stretching all the way to the shimmering blue sea! I’ve never seen the ocean before. Before Lao Ye passed, we talked about going to Beidaihe, the closest beach to Beijing. But it was always too hard, with Lao Ye’s work and health. He was a magazine editor. Even after he “retired” he kept going into the office. He said working was the best way to stay young, but Lao Lao secretly suspected it was so he could keep eating lunch at his favourite fried dumpling place next to his office.

My lao ye had heart disease and diabetes. He used to joke that at his age, heart disease and diabetes were like stamps in a passport – signs of a life well lived. 

I wish Lao Ye had had actual stamps in his passport, though, and more time to get them. But at seventy-two, he had a stroke in the taxi on his way home from work.

We didn’t believe it even when we were sitting in the hospital waiting area. Lao Lao and I were still talking about going to the beach and pushing Lao Ye to actually retire after this. When the doctor delivered the news, all I remember is my grandma falling to the ground, pounding the cold stone floor, crying, “You get back here, you old goat! Don’t you dare leave me!”

But her beloved goat was already gone.

Lao Lao’s voice comes burrowing into my head as the plane starts to descend.

This is different. Remember, we may be six thousand miles apart, but I’m right there in your heart. Anytime you want to talk to me, just put your hand over your chest and I’ll feel it, sweet child.

As the turbulence jiggles my butt, I open my mouth, like I’m about to eat a gigantic baozi, the tears running down my cheeks. This is it, Lao Lao! I made it!!!

We touch down at 9:58 a.m. As the plane taxis, a flight attendant comes up to me. “Are you ready?”

“I’m ready!” I announce.

***

With many thanks to Courtney Jefferies who provided the extract from Chapter 1 and the permission to reproduce it for the blog. Thanks are also due to Sabina from edPR who sent me a copy of the book. 

Finally Seen was published by the amazing Knights Of on 6th July 2023 and is available from all good bookshops.

All aboard!

Peril on the Atlantic by A.M. Howell (Usborne, 2023)

Ann-Marie Howell's latest novel, out in August, is a rollicking who(-nearly-)dunnit set aboard the ocean liner Queen Mary in the 1930s. As always with this writer, it is packed with historical detail par excellence with references to the Titanic, and even a cameo from Fred and Ginger. But, possibly even more importantly to young readers, it is intricately plotted with a final denouement that I really did not see coming. (In fact, I'd already hedged my bets on a different character being revealed in a new light.) Howell does this - mighty successfully, too - every time. 

Ann-Marie's storytelling is old-fashioned in the very best sense, unfailingly warm and cosy; the author doesn't fall for any grand gestures or awkward 'with-it' nods to the 'modern' kid. What she does so well - and what all children love and appreciate - is to tell a magnificent story, and hers are ones that are full of mystery and twists and turns, the ones that keep you guessing and the ones that children year after year have told me they have enjoyed particularly. 

Of course, setting a crime story aboard an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic places Howell's novel in the very best category of "closed room" mystery, a form which has attracted the talents of many a crime writer over the years: there is a limited number of suspects, there's no way out (or off the boat) for anyone until the final docking, and there's that ominous sense of claustrophobia knowing without a doubt that someone you've read about is the one to blame. Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, And then there were none (the plus ne ultra!) and Death on the Nile are not far from the world of the Queen Mary in Howell's novel.

For children, there's an added bonus. It's no secret what makes Enid Blyton so popular with younger readers: it's that 'cosy' security knowing that the mystery will tighten but then unravel towards a satisfying end, the sense of knowing the children-heroes and them becoming your own friends, story after story. And while Howell's books (at least up to now!) have always focused on different characters, there's a connecting thread with boys and girls helping each other in their search for respective solutions. In Peril on the Atlantic, I was most reminded of Blyton's Famous Five - four children and their pet (here Timmy is translated into Rocket, the mouse) - all pulling together, using each other's strengths to foil those dastardly villains! There was even a bit of the old-skool lingo - 'Jolly good!' says Alice at one point. 

But although I'd always praise Howell for the very particular way she embraces these more traditional modes of storytelling, I also love the very gentle nudges towards the needs of modern children. There's often slightly darker currents swirling beneath the 'jolly good'  fun of the surface escapades: in The Garden of Lost Secrets there's the deeply sad sense of being let down - badly - by a loved member of one's own family; and the plot of The House of One Hundred Clocks deals with mental illness and guilt. It is the presence of these currents that add a coloration to the narrative that would never have appeared so explicitly in children's books of an earlier generation, at least not in the Howell context of how children are encouraged to understand, to learn, to accept, to empathise and, most importantly, to adjust and cope with life-truths that might take any of us by surprise, and at any moment. For this, I for one am very glad of the presence of Ann-Marie's books, there to help guide, as well as entertain, the new generation.

Peril on the Atlantic by A.M. Howell is published by Usborne on 3rd August 2023. With many thanks to Fritha Linqvist and Usborne for sending me an early proof copy.

The Named and the Unnamed

Vivi Conway and the Sword of Legend (Knights Of, 2023) 

In the nineties, Robin Holloway, a British composer wrote a huge piece for two pianos expanding kaleidoscopically on one of the great cycles of all time, J.S. Bach's "Goldberg" Variations. He wrote: 

[...] the ‘Goldberg’ Variations is one of the supreme monuments by the greatest of all musical constructors. Like a Forth Bridge, like a mighty power station, Bach’s structure is so secure that it can take anything. Or rather, because less subject to change and decay, he resembles a mighty force of nature itself. Yet the actual stuff of his music is infinitely malleable, reproductive, fertile in new growth, perpetually inviting renewed collaboration down the ages.

There are many other works that do a similar thing;  - Mozart has been the launchpad for many reinventions;  Shakespeare perhaps even more so; most recently, even William Blake became the intense spark of inspiration for S.F. Said's magnificent Tyger. In the case of the latter, I asked the question, "Why do we need William Blake today?" in a blog piece to celebrate publication. There are a few suggested answers to my question there, but this 'reinventing' is something artists, musicians, writers and designers continue to do, almost impulsively, and I keep thinking: WHY?

Now, at the heart of her new novel for younger readers, Lizzie Huxley-Jones takes another 'supreme monument', the first branch of The Mabinogion, along with nods to Arthurian and Celtic myth, and re-invents characters, places, animals, monsters and heroes for today's generation. Into their 'Cauldron', Huxley Jones brews a narrative spell from direct legendary cameos, a few modernisations, some decorative embellishments and even some complete transformations.

Here are a few of them you'll encounter in Vivi Conway and the Sword of Legend (and I'd very much recommend you heading over to @familybookworms' blog for a more thorough introduction to these creatures)...

Afanc - a monster, rather like an alligator with a thick tail like a beaver's, lurking in Welsh lakes. Legend says that either Sir Peredur or King Arthur were responsible for killing it. 

Gelert - a wolfhound who saved his master's baby children from wolves. Unfortunately when the master returned home, he found Gelert's maw smeared with blood and, misreading what had happened, killed Gelert. Only after killing the dog, did he hear his children gurgling away, safe and sound...and the bloodied corpses of the wolves who Gelert had savaged. In Huxley-Jones' version of him, Gelert is droll, slightly wearied perhaps by a thousand year afterlife, but still as ferociously loyal as ever. 

Nimuë - a powerful faery sorceress, also known by other variant names...including Viviane and 'The Lady of the Lake'. She provided King Arthur with Excalibur. Vivi's pithy description of her is 'floaty but nice'. 

Eirlys - Huxley-Jones uses this Welsh word to name (no spoilers!) a particular pure-white horse in her story . Quite appropriately, the word actually means 'Snowdrop'; but perhaps ironically, the tiny flower has given its name into a steed of enormous size! 

Then, adding a distinctly Welsh folkloric flavour to the mix, and mentioned briefly in Vivi Conway, are: 

The Morgen - water spirits who lured humans to their doom. Similar creatures include the lorelei, mermaids and sirens. 

Coblyn - a Welsh 'goblin', rather like the Knockers of Cornish legend. They help miners to find the veins of precious metals. 

"the warring dragons" and "dormant dragons": These are the famous red and white dragons, their fighting said to represent the disputes between the ancient Britons and Anglo-Saxons respectively. 

"the girl made of flowers": this is Blodeuwedd who was created by the two magicians Math and Gwydion in The Mabinogion. Later in her story she is transformed into an owl. The tension between 'owls' (violence) and 'flowers' (peace) is at the heart of Alan Garner's The Owl Service, an earlier fantasy based on Welsh legend. 

An exciting mix! 

Many of these legends that will be known widely, some more vaguely familiar from other, geographically separate, folklore. Huxley-Jones reveres their source material to such an extent that even their reinvention of it becomes an act of real love: beloved Gelert stands unaltered and his place in the legend as Protector Supreme translates exactly into Vivi's own adventure. That wolfhound can take any amount of 'gilding' (as Holloway said of his treatment of J.S. Bach)!  

But there is one 'Variation' that is very different to the rest: The Coraniaid. In the Mabinogi, the Coranaiad was a race of supernatural creatures whose hearing was so sharp they could apparently hear everything the wind touched, i.e. anything. As a result, they were virtually invincible: logically, they could hear any attackers in good time to make their escape or put up a strong defence. 

The Coraniaid are traditionally more hobgoblin-like, short humanoid in form, perhaps. Huxley-Jones, however, transforms them into something else - they have 'red eyes' and are accompanied by regular references to 'long legs', 'spider-like' movements, and 'scuttling', all of which for me strongly invoke the M.R. Jamesian world of evil. Quite rightly too: Huxley-Jones wants these things to be really scary - the fact for half of the novel, they draw the creatures as though only really seen as though out of the corner of the eye, which is unnerving enough, but they surpass this at one point with their description likening them to a blur, the 'outline pulses like the most twisted toddler's scribble come to life'.

Such are Huxley-Jones' monsters, demonic and persistent in their attacks on the heroes of the book. Appearing almost without notice, disappearing through hidden passageways, they are by far, at least for me, most frightening in that, for a long chunk of the book, they are given no name. (There's a precedent here with another part of The Mabinogion where something reaches its claw out to snatch Teyrnon Twrf Liant's young foals from his stable. We never see the creature, only its claw, and it is known simply as 'The Monster'. Like M.R. James, Huxley-Jones knows that the 'unseen' is where true fear lies, even echoing this moment from The Mabinogion - and its effect - when they write: 'A dark meaty claw reaches around to grab me'...but then nothing more.)

While everything else in Huxley-Jones novel has a name linking it clearly to Welsh folklore, the heroes (and the reader!) must learn what their foes actually are. As we near that revelation, we understand that they have appeared in this world before, and a booklet hidden in the British Library reveals their identity, calling them a 'Plague' (as does The Mabinogion). It is here that young readers will connect most authentically with Huxley-Jones' bringing to new life of old legends. Because those young people, now of an age that the book suits well, know what a Plague is from first-hand experience - they have lived through those Lockdown days; they know the chaos of uncertainty, they know that something without a name is unknown, and the Unknown embodies True Fear. 

Fortunately, those evil things are eventually named (and I am sure many young readers will recognise something about their name...) and - once they have a name - the children-heroes have power over them. 

So finally, returning to that question about why do we need these reimagined worlds and stories, I'd argue that whether it is a keyboard piece by Bach, some poetry by William Blake or, as here, the ancient Welsh legends, such Great Works exist precisely to be reborn over and over again. Today, they peek through the 'gilding' to connect with us. Like Gelert, they are there to protect us (maybe even the title of the Huxley-Jones' book points to this - "legend IS a sword"). Such a book as Vivi Conway speaks directly to the young, that vital audience: the old myths born again once more, guiding strength of purpose, signalling confidence, providing hope. 

And that's, coincidentally, exactly what good books for children should do.

***

Vivi Conway and the Sword of Legend by Lizzie Huxley-Jones was published on 1st June 2023 by Knights Of.  With thanks to Courtney Jefferies for providing me with an advance copy and for inviting me on this blog tour. Don't forget to check in with all these other fantastic bloggers, too...!

On the Coaxing of Horror: some ghost stories by Robert Westall

I have long wanted to read the shorter supernatural fiction of Robert Westall, ever since becoming aware of the M.R. Jamesian influence on Antique Dust, his collection of ghost stories published in 1989. This volume begins with the overt dedication (both to the man and to the style): 

To M.R. James, 

most ecomonical of writers, 

who could coax horror 

out of a ragged blanket. 

James had been dead for some fifty years when this collection was first published, making Westall's inscription more homage than 'gift' to the master of the ghost story. 

There are three parts to the dedication that fairly define the Jamesian style: 

1) "most economical": James had an exceptional (and exceptionally influential) prose style. In his ghost stories, hardly ever longer than 7,000 words each, the voice is inimitable: a diffident, donnish plainness simply recounting a story once heard over sherry in the Combination rooms of a Cambridge college; a barely contained, sly humour, inwardly laughing at the silliness of the innocent protagonist; a ruthless, razor-sharp nastiness at the climax.

2) "coax[ing] horror": the verb here is perfect. James himself wrote:

Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage.

The "ominous thing" is always "coaxed", lured out of hiding, unobtrusively, hardly noticed...until it is too late. The prose, of course, has a lot to do with it - that calm, level, logical tone only once allowing itself to reveal the terror beneath the surface...by which time, as the reader, you're trapped. It's a very clever - and utterly addictive - style. 

3) "a ragged blanket": in so many of James' ghost stories, the central stimulus of the supernatural terror, often comes from something very mundane, something we would all be familiar, something homely, unimpressive, ordinary. Westall is referring to "Oh, Whistle, and I'll come to You, My Lad" where the finding of a little pipe in the sands calls the 'thing' to the bedroom of the protagonist which then manifests itself physically in the raising of twisted bedsheets. It's a horrible moment, doubly so in that the bed represents the place of personal safety, peace and calm, but which has been invaded. Elsewhere, James draws on the most commonplace of objects - a pair of binoculars, a library book, a framed picture - to let loose the most terrifying of shocks.

I will be reading a fair few of Westall's ghost stories this Easter vacation and, as I have done before with the short fiction of E Nesbit and Philippa Pearce, will regularly blog my thoughts. But it will be the Jamesian influence that I shall explore specifically, the economy, the coaxing...and the ragged blankets of Westall's development of the master's style. 

"The Devil and Clocky Watson" (from Antique Dust)

A haunted clock comes into one man's possession and then very quickly leaves it to wreak a different kind of effect on the life of a more unscrupulous antiques dealer.

There is an overtly sexualised atmosphere in this story which James, who although it might be said infers it in his stories, would never have made so explicit: 

They [contemporary ghost stories] drag in sex too, which is a fatal mistake; sex is tiresome enough in the novels; in a ghost story, or as the backbone of a ghost story, I have no patience with it. [JAMES, 1929]

Ghost stories can, however, very successfully break this standard. Certainly the exceptional work of John Gordon, for one, calls out James' rather prudish ruling; in any case, I can't think that James expected 'his' kind of ghost story would develop in the hands of other writers if all of his pronouncements were kept to the letter.  

I'm trying not to hold up Westall's tale unfairly against James, despite the dedication at the start of the book, but if I didn't know the M.R. James connection with the volume, I'd be hard-pressed to establish a Jamesian influence. Overall, I found "Clocky Watson" an uncomfortable story. The 'possession' of Ashden after buying the clock felt distasteful; and I wasn't particularly taken by the ending, with Clocky hardly falling foul of the ghost/devil. Surely this was meant to follow the intended formula, or have I missed something? What was particularly good, though, was the grubby depiction of the  the world of antique dealing. I'm sure James with his obsessive detailing of ancient manuscripts and dusty tomes - his daily bread and butter - would have been pleased with Westall's invocation of his own world, too.  

"The Woolworth Spectacles" (from Antique Dust)

Before I begin reading this one, I've seen the title in a few reprint anthologies and immediately thought of "A View From a Hill", James' very eerie story about a cursed pair of binoculars which can see into the past. Let's see if there's a connection...

...well, certainly there was a 'curse' of a kind, on the sort of everyday object that James liked to invest with malice. However, Westall breaks the 'no sex please, we're Jamesians' rule again. I liked the antique trade setting - Mr Hazlitt here taking the place of Ashden - and the enticing possibility that something rare and wonderful (or evil!) could be waiting hidden in the local junk shop or cash-and-carry. That is very in keeping with James' formula and Maude takes the role of that innocent bystander caught up in something terribly dark through no fault of her own. I found the ending quite terrifying and felt Maude's horror more acutely for all her original goodness. There's something about this story, too, that makes for a better 'explanation' than the straightforwardly supernatural one posed rather abruptly on the last page: James would have stuck at a straightforward curse; Westall shifts things forward quite a bit, focusing on character more than his dedicatee would have done. 

"Woman and Home" (from The Call and other strange stories)

A boy skives from school, his last resort from a group of bullies, and finds himself drawn to an old house that both tempts him and, at the same time, withholds its secrets. 

This was a very successful story, largely from its burgeoning sense of something very wrong going on but ultimate lack of any supernatural explanation. The description of the smell of rottenness, likened to the pork that went off when the boy's parents' freezer broke down, is an especially horrid touch; in fact, for me, it was the most uncanny thing about the story. I like that something so rationally possible holds a heavily nasty influence on the reader, inexplicably so when the smell returns later in the story...but this time, fainter. This is what 'coaxing' of horror means!

"The Making of Me" (from Echoes of War)

Memories of a boy's grandfather that go deeply into long-lost stories...and how the past comes to affect us all.

There is nothing supernatural about this but it has made me consider what a ghost story is for. I guess one reason for their telling is to connect us to our past; M.R. James, one of the great masters, used it predominantly as a warning against arrogance (not curiosity, as one of his stories might lead one to believe!). In "The Making of Me" it's a similar message, how the past when 'treated gently' might bring peace to the present. There is a line near the end of the story: 

The world goes forward to drugs and violence and fruit machine addiction. I go backwards, to where I am truly free. 

A line that rather sums up James' own view of life in way, a man who spent his life in libraries cluttered with ancient manuscripts, within cloistered walls of equally ancient colleges - Eton and King's, as even his own memoir establishes - and whose private, inward-looking real self was kept in check behind a deceptively donnish exterior. While the grandfather in Westall's story is a very far distance from James, there is perhaps more of that Cambridge academic lying not far beneath the surface than may at first appear.

One further line: 

But he's done enough. Taught me that every object tells a story, and every dent in every object tells a story. 

Yes. Westall puts it very well indeed. 

=IF ("Into Programming" = TRUE, GOTO Line 1 )

Super Questers: The Case of the Missing Memory by Lisa Moss and Dr. Thomas Bernard; illustrated Amy Willcox (QuestFriendz, 2023)

The Eighties were a great time for programming. Spending hours typing in lines and lines of code, eyes smarting from squinting at the minuscule type, fingers jittery from anticipation of the game that would finally emerge (or maybe from the litres of Cola consumed during the process), I was one of those teenagers who grew up glued to my Spectrum 48K (with the rubber keys), who read "Your Sinclair" magazine, and who ADORED programming. I loved Maths too - though it wasn't exactly my forte! - and even when I got to post-GCSE, it was decision maths that was my favourite discipline. Although I wasn't aware of it at the time, I guess the mathematical-logical side of my brain seemed to know what it was doing! 

Thirty or forty years may have passed and those Spectrums are now collector items...but programming lives on! It's there, quite rightly, at the heart of the Computing strand of the National Curriculum. For young people from the very earliest age these days to find pleasure in developing perseverance and problem solving is a truly vital attribute to grow. I heard Ian Livingstone (he of Games Workshop fame and mega computing genius) speaking to Nikki Gamble recently. He talked about his experience of school as a young person himself then specifically of his involvement with the development of the curriculum in 2011: 

ICT, as was taught at the time, was largely a hybrid of Office skills. Kids were learning Word, Power Point and Excel. They were being taught  how to USE other peoples' software but had no insight how to create their own. What that meant of course is that they were effectively being taught how to read but not how to write. And for the world that's being transformed by technology, for them to be operators in this world, [they] have to have an understanding of how code and programming works, even if they don't become programmers themselves.

Enter the Super Questers books...

I am truly delighted to see the second adventure now published in the series - this time, titled "The Case of the Missing Memory". This book, like the previous one in the series, is perfect for every Year 2 and Year 3 child. The bright, colourful illustrations by Amy Willcox (diverse and vitally inclusive) are key in attracting this age of readers. These work beautifully in tandem with the carefully graded puzzles that introduce, with the very lightest of touches, many key programming skills and understanding of the knowledge behind the code; in Quest 5 for example, we have a bit of Decision Maths in the form of the Bake-O-Matic problem (I wish I had got a doughnut sticker when I completed my A-level homework like this!!); while Quest 7 is a full-on programme, so elegantly written that the 'language' is perfectly understood - another example of the brilliant interplay between pictures and puzzles. Ian Livingstone's goal for children, those 'operators of the future', to learn how coding works, really couldn't be in safer hands.

I'm so glad a series like this exists today, that treats young children with the respect they deserve in the field of programming: coding is only complicated when we have our 'grown up glasses' on; kids massively enjoy it and they succeed as a result. Getting such young children, who are moving from the infant to the junior stages, excited and keen on computing and problem solving is absolutely what these SuperQuester books are about and I can't recommend them highly enough! 

Before I go, and to whet your appetite for the sort of puzzles in "The Case of the Missing Memory", here's an example of just how approachable and expertly written similar problems are in the books. Leo has a Python programme for you to solve. I'm thrilled that this language is highlighted here - I spend a lot of my Year 6 computing time using Python and the kids love it. Once you've found Leo's object, explain why the remaining objects are NOT the ones he was looking for!

Ahhhhh! Takes me right back to post-dinnertime evenings at my Spectrum, battling with BASIC...except this is even more fun!

 

Super Questers: The Case of the Missing Memory was published on 28th February. Do support your local bookshop where you can!  

Also, you can listen to Nikki Gamble's interview with Ian Livingstone here: https://justimagine.co.uk/podcast/ian-livingstone/