A Walk to the Paradise Garden

Bloom by Anne Booth, illustrated by Robyn Wilson-Owen

(Tiny Owl Books)

And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, 'You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.'

Oscar Wilde, The Selfish Giant

***

An old man is in a story. From his window he shouts at a little girl down below, telling her to clear off, away from his beloved plant. (She was only talking to it.)

The plant now refuses to bloom. The old man tries everything he can think of to make it well again. He orders it to heal. Nothing happens.

A gardener gives him advice: let someone in.

The old man seeks out the girl and he realizes the folly of his earlier actions. The young teaches the old, who have forgotten what to love really means.

Paradise is revealed at the end, or at least 'The Paradise Garden'.

***

These days seem to needs so much healing.

Reading can heal. But reading has been the thing that many have said they have struggled with in the past months. There is too much worry, too much hurt, too much shouting in the world for the calm and quiet reading voice to be heard.

But today, on the eve of Empathy Day, I would encourage everyone to find time as soon as they can to read Bloom. The story has such a beautiful clarity that it reads like best of fairy tales. Wilde's The Selfish Giant is a clear forerunner of this story and, as so often with Wilde, the wisdom of children - the hope in the future - is the message we still need to hear one hundred years on.

Gentle, elegiac, respectful, the words Anne Booth has crafted for Bloom speak directly with a wonderful voice all of their own. They enchant the ear, they urge kindly for the reader to listen, to understand; to see what is so sad about the pride and misunderstandings in the story; to appreciate the place that love for others has in the world.

The bright, happiness of Robyn Wilson-Owen's pictures paint a joyful world; goodness is everywhere they seem to say. Even in the old man's house, the bright sun-lit yellow stands out against the gloom; there is hope for all of us.

I found the last words that are spoken in the book to be extremely moving. May we all find that those words come more easily as we heal.

And then we shall truly bloom.

My warmest thanks are due to Tiny Owl  for sending me a copy of this lovely, lovely book and for authorising the use of the pictures in this blog.

My Super Nice Thoughts about "The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates"

The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates 
Jenny Pearson (Usborne)

During these days of Lockdown, as a teacher, I miss most the daily opportunities for reading aloud to my class: it’s the biggest Reading Gift I can offer the children every year.   

To tell a story well, one has to feel it, live it, hear it, and understand it first, so it’s no good trying to read aloud from something you either don’t know, don’t like, or that someone else has chosen for you. You have to connect with it, because the audience isn’t going to engage if you can’t yourself.

Humorous books for children, in my mind, are the hardest to read aloud. If, as an adult, you choose to share a funny book with the children then you are going to need to find it a laugh yourself. But things that adults find amusing aren’t necessarily the things that children do; there’s a disjunct there already before you’ve even started! But if you can find a funny book that’s been written for children and that makes you laugh too, then you’re onto ‘Connection’ Gold.

Enter Freddie Yates...

Freddie Yates is an ordinary boy who finds himself on an extraordinary journey, just as his primary school days have ended. His beloved Grams dies on his last day of Year 6, and leaves him his birth certificate with the details of his actual father. Freddie has already lost his mum and although the mutual love between him and his step-dad is strong, he needs to know who his real dad is. In search of his real dad, Alan Froggley, he travels across the UK with his two best mates, but without his step-dad knowing where he’s gone. Chaos, of the hilarious variety, ensues...

Running through this fast-paced and exceptionally funny story is a thread of belonging: Where have we come from? Where are we going? Who are our family’? The ubiquitous shouty-Year-6 end-of-primary-school hymn ‘One More Step Along the World’ that is described in the first few pages pretty much says it all really: “Who ‘travels along with you’?”

You can hear this loud and clear throughout the book, whether it’s during the annual Barry Onion-Eating Contest, or when the boys are faced with right-side-upping a sheep that’s fallen over (yes, you read that correctly). And the great thing about the message is that it’s given with warmth and a deep empathy with children, particularly boys of Year 6 age with their confidence and camaraderie, sensitivity and senselessness.

In The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates, the narrator (the eponymous boy) is so brilliantly voiced it doesn’t come as a surprise that the author is a teacher herself. She’s clearly a teacher who has connected with those children she’s taught, listened to what they have to say about their lives, listened to their jokes, listened to their fears. And now she’s sharing that, not just with other children around the world, but with the adults who take some time to listen to those voices in her book.  

The book spoke to me as a teacher. I kept thinking as I read it – “I can’t wait to be back to school! I want to share this with my class! We will love this book together!”

It spoke to me as a grown-up. (The farce is strongly reminiscent of Michael Frayn’s screenplay ‘Clockwise’; the warmth of ‘Son of Rambow’ - another film I love - is there too)

And it spoke to the boy me: the imaginative world of a child, the worries, and the adventures I had with my friends - although none of mine were anywhere near as exciting as the one Freddie has!

It ticked all three boxes to guarantee it as a read-aloud gem. But don’t take my word for it: read it yourself, connect with it...and most importantly laugh.  

The children you share it with will thank you.

Blackberries, Lions and Christmas-pudding: the short fiction of Philippa Pearce

I met Philippa Pearce just once, sadly very near to the end of her life, at a symposium conference focusing on her writing and that of Jan Mark. Everyone had bustled off at the end of a panel discussion and I plucked up the courage to go up to her to say hello. (It was odd, I remember, because it just seemed to be me and her left in the room, though that surely cannot be!) We enjoyed a very brief little chat and she seemed delighted that I had brought two books specially for her to sign. One of them was a hardback of "The Shadow Cage" that I had gleefully found in an old second-hand shop just very recently.
"Ah! Do you like ghost stories, Ben?"  A twinkle appeared her eye and she lowered her voice, just a fraction, and leaned in. "Because I do."
Of course, as I begin this month of #PearceInApril (a Twitter hashtag discussion-group set up by Jon Appleton) with a personal challenge to read all of PP's short fiction, I look back on that treasured meeting with fondness. I only spoke to her for what must have been five minutes, but she did that incredible thing of making one feel 'included' in her world, there was even a little conspiracy in our mutual love of the supernatural! I have known her work since I was a boy, and was read Lion at School in one of my primary school story-times. So now it is about time that I re-entered that special world of hers, hopefully to reconnect and discover more. 
On each day in April I will read one or two of the short stories, in alphabetical order by title (just in the same way as when during #JanMarkuary I read all of Jan Mark's stories in the collection 'The one that got away'. I'll be adding to this blog day-by-day with a short comment on one aspect that struck me most about each tale.
Abbreviations used throughout refer to the collections in which the stories appear.
LAS  - Lion at School, and other stories 
TSC - The Shadow Cage, and other tales of the supernatural 
TR - The Rope, and other stories 
WA - Who's Afraid? and other strange stories 
WTND - What the Neighbours Did, and other stories

***

April 1st 2020:   

At the River-Gates (TSC)
The setting of an old mill immediately brings to mind PP's own childhood. The mechanics of the mill workings is especially detailed which makes the final pages even more ghostly: whatever it is, the shadow that appears to open the gates is far less substantial or 'real' than the everyday workings of a mill. 

April 2nd 2020:   

Auntie (WA)
A very lovely but sad tale of the supernatural. When Auntie's super-sharp eye-sight becomes foresight, an ominous feeling hangs very strongly about the narrative. The general avoidance of using the character's proper names adds a strange sense of detachment too which throws Auntie's caring, loving nature even more strongly to the fore. 

Beckoned (TSC)
The success of this ghost story is once again found in the relationship between the old and the new. That strange tension, so often a key part of all the most successful strange stories, is perfectly realised here. The atmospheric description of the oppressive house put me in mind of Aickman. 

April 3rd 2020:   

Black Eyes (WA)
Although the supernatural is implied, there is nothing out of the realm of reality: for Jane the 'unreal' is more properly the 'unfamiliar', which more implies a sense of weirdness and unease. Lucinda's world is private and deeply, disturbingly unhappy, quite far from Jane's experiences. I found this tale to be uncomfortable reading, but immaculately written - an outstanding gem.

April 4th 2020:   

Bluebag (originally The Nest) (TR)
A different 'auntie' is the main character in this story. It is said that she knows just how to use suspense as part of her storytelling: but surely this could equally be said of Pearce herself! Here, seemingly throwaway word choices (Spot likes Auntie 'usually', for example) lend a real feeling of 'uh, oh! what's going to happen...?' just as the sense of portent is achieved in some of the ghost stories. But Pearce in this tale, also achieves that wonderful surprise effect, like a class-act magician ending a trick. A hugely satisfying and masterly piece of storytelling lasting but a few pages.

Brainbox (LAS)
A change in style for this story, the first I've read from Pearce's collection for her youngest readers. The tone is rather like that of a folktale and after the cumulative 'defining' of what makes a horse, the coda is simply delightful. 

April 5th 2020:   

A Christmas Pudding Improves with Keeping (WA)
Hidden, papered-over doors and windows are always creepy - why were they covered up in the first place? To hide something? To keep something from escaping? In this story, it seems to be both. The door has concealed a nasty secret but has also restrained something dark, ultimately bursting out in the last pages to carry out its original,horrible intention. 

April 6th 2020:   

The Crooked Little Finger (LAS)
A wicked little story, almost reading as though the author one day challenged herself to make something out of turning the adjective 'crooked' into a verb - by the end, Annie certainly learns not 'to crook' when she wants something in the future! As often with Pearce, the surface simplicity belies a deep underlying truth: here, that although others may warn, personal experience is often the greatest teacher. 

April 7th 2020:   

The Dear Little Man with His Hands in his Pockets (TSC)
Although the story could be explained rationally, the sinister 'little man' seems more like a supernatural golem. The way in which small details are mentioned casually, but carry heavy emphasis returns here: the decorative chicken feathers and the 'missing' goat's horns strongly hint towards black magic.

April 8th 2020:   

The Dog Got Them (TSC)
A variation, to my mind, of the Japanese fairy tale The Boy who Drew Cats. Dreadful rodents provide the 'evil' in Aunt Enid's spare room while the cat of the original tale is transposed into Teaser. Most notably, whatever happens in the room between Teaser and the rats happens 'offstage' to the narration, a suspenseful technique apparent in both stories.  

The Executioner (LAS)
Although this is a very simple story of a boy who tries to save a mouse from his father's deadly traps, there is more to it than that. Whose house is it anyway? The family are only renting the property as a holiday home, after all; the mouse is the full-time resident. Human arrogance is very clear here, in a story that the very youngest readers would deeply appreciate.

April 9th 2020:

The two stories I read today come from the same collection, The Rope. They both deal with the child at one remove from what is going on: in Early Translucent Nicky doesn't - can't - understand what the refugee girl has been through and does his absolute best to do what he thinks is right for her, after his initial, unthinking reaction. Charlie (from The Fir-Cone) lives in his own child-world, contrasted strongly with the adults and near-adults around him: his  'childish' ways of speaking, his memories of a trip that he made once with his parents when they were all still together, his holding on to old toys, all paint a quite devastating picture of childhood fears and confusion

In both stories, the grown-ups have their own tensions too, but which we can only glimpse in part: the kindly Mrs Chapman in Early Translucent, more understanding than her husband, and mum and dad in The Fir Cone, who both try to guide their young son through the challenges of having separated parents, but who, at the end, are shown in need of listening much more to their child.  

The Fir-Cone is hands-down the best short story of PP's that I have read so far. 


April 10th 2020:

Fresh (WTND)
There is a distinct line of connection between this and 'The Executioner', but here the tone is more pensive. The way Chance is explored in the story is interesting too, with Dan's stepping onto the branch: if the mussel falls out of the bucket, so be it; if it stays in, so be it. It is but a moment, but it holds the sudden realisation that the world has its own rules and there is little we can do about that: a fleeting rite of passage into the 'grown-up' world.  

April 11th 2020:

The Great Sharp Scissors (LAS)
A funny story for young readers (who I can imagine gasping in horror and delight at the cutting in half of a goldfish bowl!), but also one that has Max of Where the Wild Things Are not far in the background. The oddly disjunct ending of everyone sitting down to a tea of bread and raspberry jam echoes Sendak's soup-tray: a return to the real world, family love restored.

The Great Blackberry Pick (WTND)
What a sad story. There is so much that Pearce presents in her writing, but does not comment or explain: she leaves the meaning and feeling to be communicated to the reader with such subtlety. Here, the longing for the treacle tart the 'hot, dry baking', and the 'cream cheese and warm woolies' of the baby-smell are aching details, ones that will communicate the internal world of Val's struggles to young readers remarkably directly.

April 12th 2020:

Guess (TSC)
Whilst an elliptic narrative might heighten the eerie atmosphere of this weird tale, there is perhaps a little too much that is implied for the story to work completely successfully. That said, the description of being inside the tree/Jess' mind looking out into her own living room is at once deeply unsettling and startlingly original.


April 13th 2020:

Hello, Polly (LAS)
Another story which describes a rite-of-passage moment, though in the most unassuming way. Vicky is the only one who can talk to the parrot in its cramped cage;  all those repeated 'Hellos', a heavily restricted 'conversation' - I wonder how long it will last that Vicky 'loves going' to the summer Children's Zoo...

Her Father's Attic (TSC)
The vulnerabilities of childhood that shadow one's later life are captured perfectly here. The darkness in the cupboard may be frightening, but it's the image of the girl staring into that darkness that chills the most, and the echo of that moment later on as she stares at her father, bullied and broken, realising something quite awful that goes far beyond words.

April 14th 2020:

The Hirn (WA)
A satisfying ghost story, with more than a nod to the M.R. Jamesian tradition. Two elements stick in the mind: the villagers' faces looking up towards the Hirn, an anxious and ominous moment, and Edwards' inability to leave the Hirn once he has had it destroyed - Laski's short story 'The Tower' does something similar.  

April 15th 2020:

His Loving Sister (WA)
When I read 'The Little Gentleman', Pearce's final novel, I was struck by how brutal and sinister it was (despite the soft, rather 'cute' illustration on the cover); again, I'm surprised by the darkness that haunts today's short story. For a children's story, it deals with some pretty harrowing material - the death of a school-friend and his family, grief, confusion and unspoken guilt. It is very well written, the pacing excellent, but uncomfortably intense.

In the Middle of the Night (WTND)
In complete contrast to the previous story described, this one sings with warmth and family comedy. The way in which the three conspirator siblings act is all the more funny for the seriousness in which they carry out their midnight shenanigans. I'm amazed by the way in which Pearce reveals character in just a few sentences here: we know this family so well at the end of the story, but not very much has actually been said about any of them. This could have been turned into a novel or at least a series of short stories. Wonderful! 

April 16th 2020:
 
Inside her head (TR)
 There are echoes of Jan Mark's 'William's Version' here, both in the way that children need stories and in how they  challenge them too. William wants to own granny's story; Sim wants to disprove it (another kind of owning, or control). At the end of the stories, both boys are changed: they have grown a little. 

April 17th 2020:
 
Lion at School (LAS)
This was probably the first Philippa Pearce that I ever heard, on a tape, sometime in the eighties, and ever since then I've loved it but my view of it has shifted and does so every time I read it. Today, it is the lion's general gruffness that strikes me; even with Lucy at the end he decides to leave. Also, on this reading I am almost convinced - definitely more so than I have been before - that the lion is actually real...

Lucky Boy (WTND)
There is a lot that is hidden from view in this quiet, unassuming tale. The past, when Pat took pleasure in looking after Lucy, has indeed passed and he is now looking forward to a growing independence. But the fleeting glimpses of his almost-brotherly love for the younger girl are unmistakeable: the anxious glance back at her clambering across the fallen tree, the double dread invoked by the wasp on the figwort, the wrapping of his sweater about her wet legs - all of these build up a portrait of the unsaid. His frustrated tears at the end are heartbreaking. 

April 18th 2020:
 
The Manatee (LAS)
Rather like 'Lion at School', this story gives physical form to a child's emotions and helps its young reader begin to understand how to come to terms with them. The choice of a manatee for the subject of a story certainly intrigued me, but a similar bit of word-playfulness is in evidence here as it was in 'The Crooked Little Finger': to a young child, the obscure word 'manatee' is, of course, going to sound like 'man-eater'...

Then Pearce goes the whole hog to create an apparition fully redolent of Jamesian repulsion, just for good measure.

April 19th 2020:
 
Miss Mountain (TSC)
An interesting juxtaposition has inadvertently been made, reading this outstanding story immediately after 'The Manatee': both stories deal sensitively with childhood terrors. In 'Miss Mountain', a supernatural tale for older readers, the intense emotional world is more clearly and intensely drawn, though both make no bones about the absolute confusion and loneliness of being a child. Interestingly too, both employ the fear of sleeping alone in a room to connect the emotional world of the stories so immediately to their readers.

Along with 'The Fir Cone', today's story has made the deepest impression on me.  

April 20th 2020:
 
Mr Hurrel's Tallboy (WA)
Although many of Pearce's stories are called 'weird' or 'strange' tales, they rarely exhibit a ghost per se; the 'supernatural' is more 'psycho-natural', an outpouring of feeling, emotions that have been trapped up and now spilling over into the present. Today, a man's pride in his craft is lent physical form in the shape of the eponymous furniture. There are no ghosts here, but there is hurt and memory. 

April 21st 2020:
 
Mrs Chamberlain's Reunion (TR)
The build-up of this story is brilliant: a family comedy of manners, an unsettled atmosphere, and some sharp character development all combine to lay the foundations for a very surprising ending! The wicked glint of Joan Aiken's eye is occasionally discernable in some turns of phrase but also in how in every normal situation a touch of the macabre can always exist. 


The Nest-Egg (TR)
A character sketch beautifully drawn. William's story is a fairy tale, replete with the ordinary: the absent widowed father, the wicked step-mother transformed into a bullying Aunt, even a chicken that lays a 'golden egg'. No fantasy this, however, with its dark references to abuse and grief; Pearce rather shows her reader that even in the most unhappy of times people can live happily ever after, as finally William's determinedly hopeful words to his father ring in our ears: 'We will manage. You said so.' 

April 22nd 2020:
 
Nutmeg (TR)
'Nutmeg', almost bleak in places, is certainly the darkest tale I have read so far from Pearce; the climax of this story is quite a shock. Pearce manages to combine overwhelming adult grief with a child's intense love for a pet and the effect is stunning. It explores a harrowing and confusing theme, not simply either, but with incredible complexity. I have been trying to think of how children might take this story; certainly it would prove that no matter how old the child is, talk and discussion about their reading is not only beneficial but necessary. 

A Prince in Another Place (TR)
There's a distinct whiff of sulphur about this story; more than a whiff actually! The narrator's blithe voice is interesting - an adult who doesn't really see or believe what's going on - although the denouement is rather overblown and overall the tone of the piece uneven: while the description of a maths lesson employing a hand-of-glory presents a (slightly awkward) comic moment, the recounting of the children being willingly drawn into the infernal goings-on, and their ultimate wake-up call, is genuinely sinister. 

April 23rd 2020:
Return to Air (WTND)
A tiny masterpiece this, which touches on some quintessential Pearce themes. There is the idyllic pastoral quality of the water - I love the description of the 'thick greeny brown lemonade' of pond-water - and also the idea of time and memory: the tin may be unassuming, nothing important, and yet by finding it, 'Sausage' understands that everyone who lives through time, even their smallest possession, has a significance to play -  their memory, that 'return to air', is important. 

The Road it Went By (WTND)
Strange stories about supernatural vegetation are not legion but this one is deliciously unsettling - what on Earth is 'it' that is found in Mrs Hamilton's garden? The weeds spreading wide over the grave at the end has a disturbing quality too - something alien finding its feet, the beginnings of a larger terror...

April 24th 2020:
The Rope (TR)
This is a telescope of a tale and one which explores the inner world of a child, a theme to which Pearce returns time and again, always with deep respect and sensitivity. Here it is fear that she addresses. For the most part of the story we live the fear that one boy experiences from the inside, the huge, overwhelming, crippling horror of swinging across a river for the first time in front of other children - a childhood rite of passage. Then - right at the end of the story - we see a different boy's fear from the outside, his equally terrifying fear of the sight of blood. But this time, the fear is small, ephemeral, easily cast aside. Pearce says everything about coming to terms with yourself, but with the lightest of touches. Quietly virtuosic. 

April 24th 2020:
The Runaway (LAS)
An alternative title for this sly tale might almost be 'How the Mighty are Fallen'. Seemingly, the little boy in this tale is too old for his pre-school minder, now that he is all 'grown up'. But when he runs away, it gets too much for him and he is finally wheeled home in a pushchair loaned by a stranger on the market. The irony is sharp but drawn with the slightly knowing warmth of a kindly parent.

April 25th 2020:
The Running Companion (TSC)
The narration style and structure of this feels more like a modern folk-tale than a ghost story per se. Where in a tale of the supernatural there would traditionally be an feeling of uncertainty throughout, here from the very start we have a good idea of how it will turn out so the tension does not run particularly high. 

Samantha and the Ghost (WA)
Although I am not a huge fan of humorous ghost stories, there is charm here particularly in the last line. The 'ghosting' of the ancient building and its occupant superimposed on the branches of the modern apple tree is a wonderful visual effect, too.

April 26th 2020:
Secrets (LAS)
This wonderful little story from 'Lion and School' sums up the feeling behind all of the tales in that collection. The finding of the secret kittens and the description of the trusting between the mother cat and the little girl is a passage of true joy; but peering through the keyhole to spy on the older siblings and her parents is a further triumph for the young. 

This was the last story I had left to read from 'Lion at School' and the whole collection has left a very great impression on me: Pearce shows not only incredible skill here but tells very real stories full of importance and relevance to infant readers.

The Shadow Cage (TSC)
This has to be Pearce's crowning glory of her ghost stories. A children's ghost story must be horribly difficult to write: not only have you got to make sure that the horror counts but that it's kept to an appropriate level; and then there's the ubiquitous problem of short story writing too, getting to the nub of a moment or thought or happening in the most precise way possible. 

'The Shadow Cage', despite a rather finicky start, allows its terror poke out its head bit by bit. Even the frankly terrifying 'cage of shadows' itself is not enough - the revelation of the story behind the glass bottle and the skin-crawling 'whistlers' echo long after the final words are read. It's a story that owes equal parts to M.R. James' 'A View from a Hill' and 'The Ash Tree' but re-works their ideas into something original and really quite horrible. 

I'm sure Pearce, when she saw me hand over the copy of 'The Shadow Cage' for her to sign, must have been pleased to see this volume turn up in a new reader's hands. Well, Philippa, I may not be able to tell you now, face-to-face, but I loved this particular ghost story of yours. A chilling and very pleasing terror indeed.

April 27th 2020:
Still Jim and Silent Jim (WTND)
An absolute masterpiece. I simply can't do justice in my own words to this wonderful tale, only mention the highlights: the perfection of the relationship between a shy boy and his loving grandfather, the joy of youth and of age, the subtle layers of time in the graveyard scene. Utterly heartfelt, moving, funny and revelatory. 

The Strange Illness of Mr Arthur Cook (WA)
Tales of the supernatural benefit from rules: when credulity is stretched, one needs some sort of unspoken law. Maybe the individual reader who makes these laws, maybe it's an intrinsic sense gained from centuries of storytelling, built into the human grain. 

Ghosts are creepy; they are death (semi-)incarnate...but the spirit in this story has returned to ensure their garden is well-looked-after. Hmm. A 'guardian' entity is a common feature of some great spook stories, though, isn't it?  No, that's not really the ghost's purpose here either; rather the apparition is annoying and (literally) painful, unfairly so in my view. It doesn't play by the rules.

April 28th 2020:
The Tree in the Meadow (WTND)
Fleeting scenes of breathtaking impact come thick and fast in this tale - the collapse of the crown of branches, the boys' rude, pagan, ritualistic dancing around the fallen tree, the 'invisible' space once the elm has been removed: these moments are virtuosic in their intensity. When I reached the final sentence, I realised - not for the first time with Pearce's stories - that what had been told was not the whole story: the essence was something else, something far greater and more mysterious than the everyday world.

What the Neighbours Did (WTND)
Pearce is always on the side of the children, but here she shifts her sympathetic on a grown-up. Those who aren't fully understood, whose lives find comfort in the things that most adults dismiss, find a welcome place in her fiction. The ending of this may be sad, but the child-narrator has learned something vital about life, his parents specifically, and people generally. 

April 29th 2020:
Who's Afraid? (WA)
This story echoes 'Lion at School' but with no recourse to fantasy. Having said that, the weird keening is distinctly eerie and there is something otherworldly about the old woman. 

April 30th 2020:
The Yellow Ball (WA)
What Pearce does best is her exceptional way of making her readers feel the mystery of time and how inexpressible it is. This may be a story with a ghost, but it's not a ghost story; rather, its an exploration of time, its effect on us all, and the way in which past and present are juxtaposed here is simply achingly beautiful. Grief is there too - not only the living children's deep sadness but the implied grief of 'Millie's' previous owner, who has hidden away the ball in a tree. Conrad cannot comprehend the nature of grief and demands why his sister didn't just hide the ball again. It's only Lizzie who understands; only her who appreciates that although there may be pain, time will heal the wounds. 

***

It has been an absolute joy to read all of Philippa Pearce's short fiction like this during #PearceInApril. Her quiet, unassuming voice echoes through every story, her warm, encouraging spirit speaking softly, calmly to every child. 

The overall impression I have had of Pearce throughout this month is one of nurturing and supporting her young readers in their complex lives: there is no softening of real messages, no dressing-up or dumbing-down. And I recall even more strongly now the feeling I had when after that seminar I went up to this wonderful author, when it felt like it was just me and her in the room: the feeling of being welcomed into her world and that she had been waiting there...for me.

Something strange and admirable: the spirit of 'Brendon Chase'

Published in 1944, during the final days of the Second World War, Brendon Chase on the surface falls quite comfortably into that vein of children's literature dealing with the kids, separated from the adults, striking out on their own adventure in the wild. So far, so familiar -  Ransome had already so admirably rung the changes in his Swallows and Amazons books while Blyton was to continue to vary the theme many times over. Brendon Chase sets itself apart, however, the difference lying in the quality of the nature writing and what the author says about what the wild can do with us.

The world of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream haunts Brendon Chase, the comedy of both gilded by the enigmatic and strange to create a rich, complex effect. While on the surface three boys gadding about in the woods evading their adult nemeses at every turn is extremely funny -  there are some wonderful, quasi-operatic set pieces (Sir William's 'hunt', Little John's shopping trip to Brendon, the picnic...), not to mention the outrageous details of the plot ('Why does Auntie do so little about her charges out in the woods for months on end? How do children survive almost a year dressed mostly in rabbit skins? Where did they learn to cure a pig?!') - the arresting moments of stillness and calm, slipped in effortlessly, cast a spell over the reader as the Wood reveals its ancient, ineffable spirit.

Brendon Chase is not about people: as the title shows plainly, its focus is the woodland. It is difficult to think of another novel for young people which so perfectly describes the glory and mystery of the English countryside. Brendon Chase is filled with passages that draw the feeling of a wild wood as well as the physical beauty of one, just as Shakespeare's verse evokes the heady world of a summer night:

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.

From the very start of the story, the Chase is described in extraordinary detail, the tiny birds and flowers are seen as though through Robin's eyes - the 'visionary' one - and straight away we are expected to see as he does. Colours, smells, the feeling of the breath of wind or snow, everything is there. It is not simplistic picture-painting; the Wood is part of the plot, the Wood is the central character. As with Shakespeare's forest, subtle shades of personality are infused into the description of the glories of nature: the way in which the owls calling to each other and the sound of the wind in the trees are just as revealing as any dialogue could achieve. The bark of fox and grunt of pig, the sparkle of birdsong, the boom of a rutting stag all form the verses of multiple lives eternally playing out their individual parts within the woods. The oak tree and the Blind Pool on the other hand take the part of the silent observers, a mute Greek Chorus, ancient and solitary sources of a wisdom. Only gradually, with humble respect, do the children begin to understand: they must listen both to the sound and to the sense of these: knowledge of the wild is hard-earned. 

***

Despite its episodic scenes, Brendon Chase as a whole is formed loosely of two parts. The first details the way in which the boys enter the forest, become inhabitants, then learn the ways in which they are to survive. 

Like the wood in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Brendon Chase is an asylum, a place of safety for the boys, a refuge where they are simply to survive and remain hidden so as to avoid the terrible consequence of returning to school. This is not 'school' as a place of learning, or even particularly as a place of misery: it is School as Establishment, the well-worn wheel of their father's father's treadmill through life. While Shakespeare's Dream begins with the breaking of law - the arranged marriage - the boys have their own dream, to flout rules, to be free...they run away and make their dream a reality, innocent enough to be drawn to the freedom of the wild, experienced enough to understand that they must take the chance while they have it.

So quick bright things come to confusion 

All three boys, 'quick and bright', full of life and intelligence, arrive in the Chase ready to learn. The Wood will be their teacher now and, as is implied at the end of the book, will have taught them more that they will need in their lives than any established schooling could. By their 'confusion' in the wood (the word derives from the Latin 'to mingle') the brothers first freely offer up then go on to begin to integrate their own spirits with the forest. Ultimately they will  leave transfigured, but for now, they are to enjoy exploring. 

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander every where [...]

The comedy of the adults' search for the boys, the fruitless efforts they go to in order to find the children and bring them back to Established Order, is an important plot device in the first part of the book. (The hunt is of course cleverly hidden in plain sight in the title: Brendon Chase!) Having become familiar with the geography of the wood (notably, though, they never seem to grasp the full extent of it, there is always something more to be discovered), their knowledge is put to good use in eluding the tenacious Sergeant Bunting, appointed leader of the 'enemy' adults.

Up and down, up and down
I will lead them up and down
I am feared in field in town
Goblin, lead them up and down.

Puck's words 'up and down' not only describe the physical high-jinks of the hunt but also its topsy-turvy nature. The babes-in-the-wood are the ones in charge here: two steps ahead of the 'experienced' grown-ups, they manage to throw the traditional set-up of the hunt on its head:

Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase;
The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind
Makes speed to catch the tiger 

The boys are Shakespeare's fairies - knowing, mischievous, almost supernatural in their skill: once someone  is brought to the Wood, they must follow its Rules or pay the consequence. The boys, of course, fully attend; the grown-ups do not.
 
For example, Sergeant Bunting - very like Shakespeare's Bottom, oblivious to the power of the woods, so caught up is he in his own pomposity - is thrice thwarted and only after a near-death experience will he admit defeat.  Whilst his first two attempts are frustrated by the boys' puckish roguery, it is the Wood alone (in the form of a stag) that eventually puts paid to his pursuits once and for all. 

Although the Sergeant might be seen as a comic character, we are left perhaps with some sympathy for the man. He is not the stock villain that he at first appears and certainly the fright that proves to be the end of his adventures is not one we would wish on anyone. But Sylvan Rule is Sylvan Rule, B.B. seems to say, and although Bunting is offered a white flag part-way through the novel, he chooses ultimately to position himself against the Wood and invites his own fall.

O Bottom, thou art changed!

During the summer, pursuing the boys though the Chase, parched and caked with dust on his bike in the intense heat, the Sergeant stumbles across the Blind Pool. In the cool of the shade, we fully appreciate Bunting's temptation to swim.  His relief at the cold water is so grateful that he even starts to believe that he could stay here for ever, thanks to what the Chase has offered him. But no! The decorum of reality soon overtakes him as he realises that his policeman's outfit (the synthetic mark of authority) is missing, stolen by those goblin-boys, and all his assumed responsibilities flood back. In fact, rather than give in to the Wood (Smokoe Joe might have helped him!) he would rather walk home in the dark, semi-naked, and pester what turns out to be a disloyal friend. 

The second part of the story - more an extended coda - begins proper after Sergeant Bunting admits his failure to master the wild: he is never to return to the Chase alone again! From this point on, the 'enemy' (the chasing adults) have given up: the boys are free. 

They have earned their keys to the kingdom though. Consider, for example, how the multiple references to owls change through the book. Young readers may associate the bird with wisdom but its symbolic importance in Brendon Chase draws deeper on folklore. Early in the narrative owls are described as the dark spirits of the wicked, long haunting the woods to bemoan their sinful earlier lives. This passage gives space for the boys' initial wariness of the Chase to speak, yet the boys go on to choose the oak tree as their home, strongly suspecting that it is or was home to a nest of owls. They seem to know implicitly that they must conquer their fear of the unknown by couching themselves within it.  

The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders
At our quaint spirits.

Months after their arrival, the boys use a double owl-hoot as a signal to each other, by which point in the story they seem to have become far more accepting of (and accepted into) the wild world of the forest, with their rabbit skin clothing and deer-hide moccasins. Perhaps living in an ancient nesting place for so long has somehow raised them as 'owls'. We should remember that Smokoe Joe keeps one as a pet named Ben - he says he found it as an owlet in an old oak  - and at the point that Robin first visits the old man, it has become a fully-grown bird. Even after Joe has fallen asleep, the owl continues to stare at Robin and Robin stares back, both wondering at the other's 'quaintness'. When Smokoe is seriously injured, both Big John and Ben are anxious and watch over his wounded body when the doctor calls. Even when the doctor tries to shoo the owl away, it retires to a corner and continues to watch, just as Big John (knowing that he runs the serious risk of being caught) does not run off but remains loyal.


Animals often form a particular significance in children's literature and in Brendon Chase there are plenty of examples, more eloquent than any words could be, in addition to the owls: Smokoe's lost-then-found-in-the-wood dog; Robin's rite of passage to hunt down his first deer; the purple emperor that will not appear to just anyone; and the boys transformation into 'semi-animals' by donning the skins of rabbits. Shakespeare's Dream is strongly evoked when Puck's transformation of Bottom into a man with an ass's head is echoed in the mention of Bunting simulating a walrus as he floats in the pool - he is so very nearly  'transformed' by the Wood, but sadly it is not to be and like the weaver he returns to his old life unchanged. What might have been is surreptitiously pointed out only a few pages later when the boys swimming about are likened to much-more-at-home otters.


In the final hundred or so pages of the book, we are left to observe the boys' ultimate immersion into the world of the Wood. Shakespeare's 'lunatic, lover and poet' come to the fore now: we share in Harold's growing happiness at the potential of becoming a full-time wild child, we witness Big John's bittersweet internal tug-o-war between his beloved but distanced Angela and the joy and freedom of the wood, and we are afforded Robin's almost mystic glimpses of the natural way of things,

It is in this last portion of the book that Smokoe Joe's relevance is truly revealed. Early on, he is mentioned (though not seen) as a long-term denizen of the woods, a dark enigma described with a trace of fear. Then when Robin, in what becomes a life-long memory, plucks up the courage to find his dwelling place, braving whatever outcome there may be, the real Chase is over. The boys have finally found their quarry, the true object of their  searching.

And what a sight he is. The bulbous, 'elephantine' nose may be the most visually striking characteristic of the man, though one should not dismiss the smoking kilns which add perhaps a mildly infernal aspect to his appearance. Although he may lack the elegance and grace of Oberon, he is still a distant relative of the Faery King: steeped in forest-lore, wise beyond wise, loving, fierce, terrifying. 

It is from Smokoe that the boys learn most deeply. He takes them in, almost adopting them in the colder evenings, the father they always wanted but never had. He teaches Robin to smoke a pipe (in the boy's eyes, a sign of manhood), and helps out by teaching them all how to skin and animal and cure its hide. For Big John, the curing of the badger pelt as offering to his 'gal', Angela, is more important than anything; just as with Robin, Smokoe offers him a moment of grown-up solidarity. And what of Little John? Well, at this point he may be too young to 'grow up' but Smokoe continues to give him what he loves: feasts of bountiful and delicious food, all from the Wood's larder. The Christmas dinner in particular is quite extraordinary: a spread of five-star gourmet foraging! 

Although Smokoe/the Wood seems constant and unbending, he/it undergoes transformation too. Just as the seasons come and go in eternal cycles (and towards the end of the book the frozen New Year is about to thaw into the next moment of natural change), the boys - the next generation - show that they have been ready and willing to listen to the ancient laws of the Chase. In doing so, they are to learn the story in their turn. Smokoe's crafting and gifting of the walnut-wood fox, for ever present in the boys' futures, is a beautiful way to represent the ultimate moment of transfiguration: the Wood is ready to pass, to shift to its next chapter.


But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy’s images
And grows to something of great constancy,
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

Smokoe's greatest lesson and his greatest gift - forming the most eerie and portentous moment in the book - is the ghostly tale of the old trees of the Chase and the arrogant squire who refused to listen to them. Here the real truth is revealed: what will it take to ensure humans live in harmony with the Wild? 


The bittersweet peroration of the book - almost a death in itself to the reader who has invested so much in this world - points only to possibilities; yet the conclusion also reaches towards Hope, a rebirth of a kind. There are no definite answers to be found, only life-long searching - a life-long chase perhaps. But by this point, the sympathetic reader will fully understand, of course.