Fling/Marry Kill: Oldie Children's Books

[rachelmanija]

Please comment if you've read any of these or others by the same author.

Poll #18676 Oldie Children's Books

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 38

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Beginner's Luck, by Oriel Malet. Jenny is sure she'll be a famous ballerina. Victoria is sure she has no talent. James (9) writes a poem: "O venerable is our old Ancestor, to finance our first trip to the theater."

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Fling
10 (50.0%)

Marry
4 (20.0%)

Kill
6 (30.0%)

Cherry Ames, Army Nurse, by Helen Wells. An entry I haven't read in a series I loved as a kid; a young nurse helps her patients and sometimes also solves mysteries.

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Fling
12 (54.5%)

Marry
8 (36.4%)

Kill
2 (9.1%)

The Kelpie's Pearls, by Mollie Hunter. "The story of how Morag MacLeod came to be called a witch is a queer one and not at all the sort of thing you would expect to happen nowadays."

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Fling
16 (61.5%)

Marry
7 (26.9%)

Kill
3 (11.5%)

The Little White Horse, by Eleanor Goudge. When orphaned young Maria Merryweather arrives at Moonacre Manor, she feels as if she's arrived in Paradise.

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Fling
18 (62.1%)

Marry
8 (27.6%)

Kill
3 (10.3%)

The Magic Book, by Willo Davis Roberts. Apparently the only other sff novel by the author of "The Girl With the Silver Eyes," an old favorite of mine.

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Fling
14 (60.9%)

Marry
9 (39.1%)

Kill
0 (0.0%)

Otto of the Silver Hand, written and illustrated by Howard Pyle. A historical adventure by the author of fairy tales I used to love as a kid.

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Fling
10 (50.0%)

Marry
8 (40.0%)

Kill
2 (10.0%)

The Time of the Kraken, by Jay Williams. Thorgeir Redhair must go on a quest to save his people from the kraken, since they're too busy fighting another tribe to do anything useful. By the author of my old favorite, "The Hero From Otherwhere."

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Fling
12 (57.1%)

Marry
5 (23.8%)

Kill
4 (19.0%)

We Rode to the Sea, by Christine Pullein-Thompson. Horse story by an author of other horse stories I liked as a kid.

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Fling
13 (61.9%)

Marry
4 (19.0%)

Kill
4 (19.0%)

Comments

[zdenka]

Howard Pyle wrote Men of Iron, about a medieval squire who want to become a knight and avenge his father. I haven't read it for decades, but I loved it when I was growing up. He may also have written a Robin Hood retelling I enjoyed as a kid, but I don't remember for sure.

[mme_hardy]

He did indeed. He also did his own engravings; I remember the ones in his King Arthur best. Damn, I loved Howard Pyle.

[mme_hardy]

Also, Otto of the Silver Hand and The Door In The Wall were two of the few books I read that had protagonists with disabilities.

[zdenka]

Oh, right! I think I read the King Arthur one too and liked it. I didn't know he did his own engravings, but the illustrations were great.

[liv]

I vaguely remember The kelpie's pearls and The little white horse from reading a lot of similar children's fantasy when I was at the chapter books age. I remember the Hunter as being more engaging and the Goudge as being a little slow and old-fashioned seeming. But I haven't looked at them in over 30 years so I can't give you more than a vague impression.

[oursin]

I wrote the following about The Little White Horse when I read it a few years ago:

Two older works of YA fantasy, both of which have female protags with agency who are also depicted as fairly appropriately girly for the time and place in question, though I suspect politically they come from very different places, even if they are both about healing wrongs from the past: Naomi Mitchison's The Big House (1950), and Elizabeth Goudge's The Little White Horse (1946). Both good in their very different ways.

I too enjoyed the Pullein-Thompson pony books in my youth, but cannot recall which ones by which sister.

[movingfinger]

I kind of love Howard Pyle. Men of Iron, The Wonder Clock, Pepper and Salt, Robin Hood (OMG his ending still gets me), the Arthurians, and yes Otto of the Silver Hand... and his illustrations are perfectly iconic.

[rachelmanija]

I read about The Wonder Clock about a billion times. Gorgeous descriptions and illustrations. All those women with hair down to their ankles!

[asakiyume]

Yes! I loved The Wonder Clock. One illustration was of a princess all wrapped up in her own hair, up in a tree, being comforted by doves :D

But that's not the illustration I uploaded to Tumblr--that was this:

Ooops sorry too large: I'll just link

[asakiyume]

I should scan that other picture, though; it's magnificent ....

[the_rck]

As I recall, the Cherry Ames book is heavy on the WWII propaganda. I read it when I was in elementary school, so I can't speak to the various Ism Fairies. I do remember, though, that, when I worked in a small public library in the early 80s, the woman who checked out books for the retirement home would get Cherry Ames books when she ran out of other clean nurse romances because, as long as she didn't tell the residents that the books were written for children, they were beat for beat the same.

I love The Little White Horse. It's one of those books that a person can slide off of or fall deeply into depending on whether or not they run into it at a point when it works for them. I like it less well than Linnets and Valerians (by the same author), but like that book, it's a gentle fantasy where the magic is fairly subtle. In this case, there's an ancient family curse that needs breaking. There's a relatively recent movie adaptation, The Secret of Moonacre, but that (of course) changes the story a lot to play up scary parts and make things more dramatic.

I think I encountered Howard Pyle at the wrong point because I didn't enjoy any of the things that he wrote that I tried. I just have a general recollection of being really peeved.

[cyphomandra]

I read a handful of the Cherry Ames books - not this one, but I'd be interested if it's set in wartime (I did read all the Sue Barton books, which had some interesting early public health and rural community stuff). I loved The Girl With The Silver Eyes as a kid but have never read anything else by the author , and I also loved Time of The Kraken and actually tracked down Hero From Otherwhere because of it (despite that, I remember almost nothing of the book except its great cover).

Mollie Hunter is an author I am aware of because when I went looking for more books by Monica Hughes (I loved Devil on my Back) I would see her, get excited and then realize the name was different. Her books sound like the sort of things I might actually like but younger me never read them due to that lingering disappointment :D

I can never remember which Pullein Thompson sister is which, nor which book I've read, but on checking this is her first and I'm pretty sure I haven't read it. I like horse books a lot but preferred the ones by her mother (Joanna Cannan)

[rachelmanija]

That is a high rec for Time of the Kraken, because I tracked it down on the strength of The Hero From Otherwhere. The latter is an occasional Yuletide fandom; it has a really nice central relationship, lots of playful touches, and poetry magic, just really fun and well-done.

I never heard of Joanna Cannon - what was she like?

[cyphomandra]

I will be interested to see how Time of the Kraken stands up!

I find Joanna Cannan's characters more believable than the Pullein Thompson ones. I really liked her I Wrote A Pony Book, which does just what it says. The Pullein Thompsons actually have a joint memoir, Fair Girls on Grey Horses, which is interesting although not as horsy as I'd hoped. Oh, and this may be a terrible time sink, but here's the relevant page on Jane Badger's incredibly thorough pony book book website.

[melannen]

I adored The Girl With The Silver Eyes as a child and still have the copy I read to death! And then I kept looking for more by her and feeling SUPER betrayed when it was all suspense-type stuff instead of more of Silver Eyes. So you should read that one and tell me if it is the more I have been looking for all this time.

[torachan]

Pretty much same, yeah! I haven't reread The Girl with the Silver Eyes as an adult, so I've no idea how it would hold up, but I liked it a lot, so I'm curious about the author's other stuff.

[naomikritzer]

THIS.

[indywind]

One more vote.

[yhlee]

I loved The Girl with the Silver Eyes as a child and read the library copy to death. I miss that book.

If you ever, uh, tire of the ballet book, I will be happy to take it off your hands...I am a sucker for ballet books. ;)

[pameladean]

It's been a long time since I read that Cherry Ames book, but I recall it as one of the more serious (not that that's saying much) and historically interesting of that series. It also has a vaguely (very vaguely) stfnal plot. But I'm sure the racism fairy has been at it.

P.

[adrian_turtle]

Oh me oh my! I read that Cherry Ames book so many times! It has much better training bits than Camp Nurse or even Flight Nurse.

[pameladean]

Yes, they're very immediate and persuasive. I read the first six or seven of the series over and over too; after that they weren't just formulaic as the genre is, but formulaic inside the particular series. I did read and sometimes reread them, but the first few, including Army Nurse, were way better.

P.

[carbonel]

I reread the first half-dozen of the Cherry Ames books many times, too. I remember being taken aback at the graduation scene when Cherry just kind of realizes that oops, there's a war on. It seems like a rather important thing to slip one's mind. And the entire class volunteers to go into the army, which seems awfully convenient.

I guess even at the age of eight or so, I had an eye out for plot holes and structure issues.

[pameladean]

According to my grandmother, that kind of thing actually happened -- whole classes of graduating nurses all volunteering. Of course a lot of peer pressure was involved.

P.

[carbonel]

In WWI, some bright spark in the War Office came up with the idea of Pals regiments, where friends from the same town could serve together. The idea was very popular and increased enlistment considerably -- until you had things like 3/2 of a particular group being killed or incapacitated in the first few minutes of the Somme. A town could lose all its young men at once, instead of piecemeal.

Of course, the medical personnel weren't supposed to be on the front lines, so the same concepts didn't necessarily apply.

[adrian_turtle]

I remember the war being oddly distant from the book, despite it being about her joining the army. I read it during the war in Vietnam war, and I knew it was about an earlier war. But I was a little vague about WHICH earlier war. Cherry and her friends don't go off to fight Hitler. (I was, maybe, a little young for the books.)

[skygiants]

I have not read any of these, but I did pick up a Willo Davis Roberts Gothic in one of the many bookstores I visited last week on the strength of my love for Girl With the Silver Eyes and it looks kind of bonkers, so my hopes are high!

[rachelmanija]

Oh, please review!

[rushthatspeaks]

Oh, man, it would be so nice if the Willo Davis Roberts actually is More Like That, because, as apparently everyone else did, I desperately loved The Girl with the Silver Eyes.

Elizabeth Goudge is one of my favorite writers for children; her adult stuff is tedious. I freely admit she isn't for everybody. My favorite of hers is Valley of Song, which you can't get. I don't own one. I got one for sovay from Australia. The Little White Horse and Linnets and Valerians are tied for second-favorite. I think Little White Horse has higher high points and more obvious flaws, whereas Linnets reads a lot like E. Nesbit only better. What Goudge is really good at is combining the numinous with everyday life, and also places, people, and things that you desperately want to see, live with, and encounter. What she's bad at is not getting too much religion all over, and also she has some... peculiar gender stuff. Basically, if you love her you will really, really love her and if not you will probably find her actively annoying.

[melannen]

...okay am officially requesting Girl With The Silver Eyes for YT this year, apparently I am NOT the only one who still desperately wants More Of That. (If I had known about fandom at that age, I would have been writing so much post-book fic. Actually pretty much all I remember about it plotwise is that it cried out for post-book fic.)

[rachelmanija]

It really did.

[ellenmillion]

I probably read The Little White Horse two dozen times as a kid, but I don't know how it would hold up to a re-read.

[landofnowhere]

I know nothing about Mollie Hunter's fantasy, but her presumably autobiographical novel A Sound of Chariots about a sensitive, intelligent girl growing up in Scotland is quite good. There's are lovely family relationships and a lot of the protagonist introspecting about grief and mortality and what she believes in. Also the protagonist lives in a neighborhood with a lot of disabled WW1 vets (including her father).

(There's also a sequel Hold On to Love which I want to reread but expect I'll like less than I did as a teenager.)

[rachelmanija]

Oh, that sounds right up my alley.

[landofnowhere]

The Internet Archive lending library has a copy!

[littlerhymes]

I imprinted on The Little White Horse at an impressionable age and can't be objective about how much I love it. I CAN objectively state that it has some of the most amazing food descriptions ever - I learned words like 'syllabub' from this book! Also the clothing and interior descriptions are amaze. I want to live in Maria's room with the little door and the sun & moon engraved on the roof and the box of sugar biscuits in the tin on the mantlepiece.

I am 100% sure I read a million Pullein-Thompson horse books as a child and I can barely remember any of them.

[rachelmanija]

You make a persuasive case.

[asakiyume]

I read a different Elizabeth Goudge: The Herb of Grace. It was for adults and moralistic, but I found it very thought provoking. It was the first book I can recall reading that tried to address living life if you're not happy. What I mean is, rather than solving that problem by having the unhappy person get happy, it talked about living a good or meaningful life IN SPITE OF unhappiness. ... I mean, a lot depends on how you define happiness or good or meaningful, but at the time I read it, it was a new, somewhat uncomfortable, perspective.

[rachelmanija]

Interesting. I might have to check that out.

[asakiyume]

I should add that I read it like 20 years ago, when I was maybe not as discerning a reader as I (maybe) am now.

[alessandriana]

It never even occurred to me to look for other books by Willo Davis Roberts; I think I may need to check that out myself... like everyone else apparently, The Girl with the Silver Eyes was one of my favorites as a kid.

[ethelmay]

I resented that book because there was an obscure fantasy novel I'd read in which a girl had silver eyes and I kept picking up The Girl with the Silver Eyes thinking of course, that must be it, and it never was. (I think it was A Walk out of the World by Ruth Nichols.) I am not the only person who has had this problem.