The New York Review Children’s Collection

[rachelmanija]

Prompted by this post by osprey-archer.

The New York Review of Books has been releasing lovely editions of children's books - some old classics, some new classics, and some newly translated into English - since the early 2000s. There are books by Rumer Godden and Madhur Jaffrey and Russell Hoban, and many more.

I could not find a single site with a list of all of them. The official site has newer releases, but not all the out of print ones.

This site includes a bunch that are out of print, but doesn't have all the new ones. (Page down for the complete list - the left-hand button allows you to select "show 100 entries," which is all of them.)

The series includes some books I love, some I do not love, and many I've never even heard of.

Books I have read:

The Little Grey Men and its batshit sequel, The Little Grey Men Go Down the Bright Stream, by BB

The Abandoned and Thomasina: The Cat Who Thought She Was A God, Paul Gallico. A pair of stories about intelligent cats and their adventures and travails. Both the main character cats survive, but there is a LOT of animal harm along the way. They're melodramatic and vivid and I loved them both when I was a kid, but The Abandoned more because that one involves a boy who turns into a cat and has great "what it's like to be a cat" scenes.

Bob, Son of Battle, by Alfred Ollivant. ALL the dogs die in a giant dog-on-dog battle!

Charlotte Sometimes, by Penelope Farmer. A dreamlike timeslip story, which I recall being unusually concerned with issues of identity and reality. I should re-read this.

An Episode of Sparrows, by Rumer Godden. An updating of The Secret Garden in which a pair of scrappy London kids find a bit of earth and begin cultivating it. I LOVE this book.

The House of Arden, by E. Nesbit. Fun time-travel story featuring a talking mole.

Loretta Mason Potts, by Mary Chase. Strange, surreal fantasy by the author of Harvey, which is about a man whose best friend is a six-foot invisible rabbit.

The Magic Pudding, by Norman Lindsay. Classic Australian fantasy about a bad-tempered talking pudding, an old sailor, and a wombat. I adored this as a kid, largely for the hilarious illustrations of the angry pudding.

What books have you read from this series? What would you recommend? What would you emphatically not recommend?

Comments

[scioscribe]

Oh, I love NYRB! Beautiful editions. I've got a bunch of NYRB Classics but not as many of the kid ones, although I do have Charlotte Sometimes. I really want An Episode of Sparrows.

[rachelmanija]

Have you read it?

[conuly]

Charlotte Sometimes, by Penelope Farmer. A dreamlike timeslip story, which I recall being unusually concerned with issues of identity and reality. I should re-read this.

Some people who have read Charlotte Sometimes don't know this, but this is part of a loose series, the other two books being The Summer Birds and Emma in Winter. Those books are thinner than Charlotte in both senses in the word, but still pretty good.

[rachelmanija]

I've reviewed both those! I like them.

[sovay]

What books have you read from this series? What would you recommend? What would you emphatically not recommend?

This list seems to be split entirely between "books I have read" and "books I have hardly even heard of." Just running down the list, I would automatically recommend—

Any of the Esther Averill Cat Club stories. D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths on which I imprinted in second grade under its original title of Norse Gods and Giants (1967). Madhur Jaffrey's Seasons of Splendour (1985). Daniel Pinkwater's Lizard Music (1976). T. H. White's Mistress Masham's Repose (1946). Jean Merrill's The Pushcart War (1964). Rosalie K. Fry's Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry (1957), although I encountered first and feel more strongly about the Sayles film. Otfried Preusler's Krabat and the Sorcerer's Mill (1971), which I had not encountered before the NYRB reprint. Frank Tashlin's The Bear That Wasn't (1946), whose story I had remembered for years without attaching it to its author. The two by Eilís Dillon look familiar to me, but I have nothing beyond familiarity associated with them. Ditto a couple of the Eleanor Farjeons and Rumer Goddens.

[rachelmanija]

What's the Cat Club like?

[pameladean]

In one of the more exciting moments of my mundane life, they asked me to write a blurb for Barbara Sleigh's Carbonel, the King of the Cats and its sequel The Kingdom of Carbonel. I first read these books in elementary school and love them unreservedly to this day.

P.

[sovay]

In one of the more exciting moments of my mundane life, they asked me to write a blurb for Barbara Sleigh's Carbonel, the King of the Cats and its sequel The Kingdom of Carbonel.

All right: I will go and look those up.

[sartorias]

I read most of these as a kid, except for Golden and the Australian one. Oh, and I heard about Bob Son of Battle but the animal-book loving kids all hated it, so I never touched it.

Penelope Farmer had one called Summer Birds that was all my favorite tropes rolled into one, but for the ending.

[glinda]

Oh, The Box of Delights by John Masefield is in there! I read it and the book it's a loose sequel to The Midnight Folk as a child and found them really compelling. (Though I seem to remember the ending of Box of Delights disappointing me at the time.) It had much of the same atmosphere as The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper so if you enjoyed that I think you'll like that pair.

[ethelmay]

I really wanted to love those books when I was on my big T.H. White kick, because he loved them so much, but I found them disappointing. I might try them again sometime.

[vaznetti]

I have a feeling that my childhood copy of The Provensen Book of Fairy Tales is still in the basement -- with that cover and those illustrations! (It was not my favorite fairy tale book as a child -- that was The Princess Book -- this thing here. The one I remember best is the one where the princess is chasing her giant wheel of cheese all across the kingdom.)

[cyphomandra]

I love Krabat, which I’ve read in an earlier translation as The Satanic Mill (a title small me found irresistible!). Blast Off, a picture book about an African American girl who wants to be an astronaut, is great. I love Catherine Storr for Marianne Dreams but Polly & the Wolf is good as well, though for a younger audience.

I loved Uncle as a child but I don't think benign capitalism will have aged well, although the crazy enormous castle with constant new distractions is probably still cool.

[carbonel]

I love Krabat, which I’ve read in an earlier translation as The Satanic Mill

That's the one I read as well. I found it as a teen in a pile of remaindered books for sale and bought it because it was the only one that looked like fantasy. I really enjoyed it, and only later realized that some of the oddities in the prose were because it was a translation.

[landofnowhere]

I think I read at least part of Mistress Masham's Repose as a kid but may be getting it confused wih other Lilliput fic.

I read Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories as a kid (as well as various other Shakespeare adaptations) and enjoyed them but probably not that worth it to read if you already know the plays.

Lizard Music by Daniel Pinkwater is a surrealist childrens' classic. My dad and I heard Pinkwater reading from it on NPR, and were intrigued enough that he tracked down the book to read to me. (Also available as a free audiobook on Pinkwater's website.)

I remember finding Thurber's The Wonderful O charming when I was a preteen, but don't remember it very well.

Oh, they have Winter in Wartime by Jan Terlouw -- which I have not read, but maybe that gives hope that they might republish his How To Become King/Koning van Katoren, a book that hits a delightful spot somewhere between Prydain and The Phantom Tollbooth but is near-impossible to find used in English. (One copy available online for $350.00. I used to have a library discard copy that I bought at the library booksale, lost that, and now have a scanned PDF copy thanks to the thoughtfulness of an internet friend.)

[asakiyume]

An Episode of Sparrows sounds excellent.

[rachelmanija]

You specifically would love it. It's beautifully observed.

[ethelmay]

I loved Terrible, Horrible Edie (and the other Cares family books). Beyond the Pawpaw Trees and The Silver Nutmeg, too. There are a bunch of others I know - The Little Bookroom, A Traveller in Time, The Pushcart War, Mistress Masham's Repose, etc. - but I expect those more people have heard of.

[ratcreature]

I've only read the ones by Ottfried Preußler from these, except Krabat. My favorite was the Little Witch one, the Hotzenplotz ones were good too, the Water Sprite I don't really remember. I think that was his first book. I never read Krabat, which was a later work, and I heard was him working through his adolescence in the Third Reich via some allegory.

Charlotte Sometimes

[ironymaiden]

Is the Cure song named after the book, the book after the song, or just coincidence?

Re: Charlotte Sometimes

[rachelmanija]

It's named after the book, and some of the lyrics are from the book!

[landingtree]

I read The Magic Pudding after seeing the movie, and my main memory is how different it was! I saw the movie at a cinema we seldom visited and maybe with an aunt we seldom went to movies with? so the whole thing is in one of those childhood memory-silos that make me think, 'Wait, that happened?'

I read and loved Barbara Sleight's Carbonel books, about which I remember having to collect various accoutrements for the king of the cats in order to... reverse a witch's spell? And also a scene in which someone brings all the cats-eyes on a road to life and they get up and start wandering about like crabs. I can recommend them, but only based on my feelings at about age twelve.

Oh! And like Carbonel, we had my mother's old tattered copy of The Thirteen Clocks & The Wonderful O, the first of which is especially good - language so rhyming and rhythmic it dances on the edge of poetry. Contains a Duke so evil he killed Time and stopped all the clocks in his castle, and about whom locals say, "He'll feed your liver to his geese!"

The cover of Jim at the Corner is hauntingly familiar, but I couldn't tell you a thing about it.

[luzula]

What a lovely cover An Episode of Sparrows has!

[wateroverstone]

I remember Carbonel being a cracking read but the BB books weren't quite up my street(a similar no to John Masefield.)I'm not sure if I've read The House of Arden but I've read a lot of other E Nesbitt books and loved them. Penelope Farmer is a familiar name but the book titles aren't ringing any bells.I might have read something similar by Penelope Lively.

[ethelmay]

I confused the Penelopes for years. Incidentally, it amuses me that Eleanor Cameron wrote about Penelope Farmer's early books (without naming book or author) very critically in "Of Style and the Stylist," but later wrote an afterword to Charlotte Sometimes, which she clearly got on with much better. (Cameron objected to expressions like "She was a thin girl and moved like a lot of sticks" from The Magic Stone, and "skimming like cream off the green lawn" in The Summer Birds. She said you can't skim like cream, because cream is skimmed.)

[cupcake_goth]

Ooooh, Charlotte Sometime. I should reread that.

(And of course, I am now earwormed with the song by The Cure.)

[adrian_turtle]

I loved An Episode of Sparrows, though it wasn't at all what I expected after Godden's doll books.

I utterly loathed Bob, Son of Battle. I bounced off it twice a year for 6 years because I was getting so very much pressure that it was the best book in the world and I'd love it when I was old enough.

[rachelmanija]

Wow! I wonder who actually liked it.

[starlady]

Aside from the previously mentioned Masefield and The Pushcart War (all of which I recommend!), I also read The Thirteen Clocks in this series. It was good but I think it was sort of over-hyped for me personally; I think it's probably best read aloud.

If you haven't read Lizard Music, it's a classic. I've heard good things about A Traveller in Time and The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily but I haven't read them.

[osprey_archer]

I enjoyed The Thirteen Clocks, but now that you say it's probably best read aloud, YES I can absolutely see that. It seems like a book designed to be read aloud to older children.

[nevanna]

I’ve read Brookie And Her Lamb (as well as several other books by the same author), The Night of Wishes, and The Wonderful O.

[rachelmanija]

What did you think of them?

[hippogriff13]

T.H. White's "Mistress Masham's Repose"--which I discovered in the gift shop at Mount Vernon, of all places--was one of my favorite books as a child. I actually liked it better than "The Once and Future King." Although admittedly the later, post-"Sword and the Stone" sections of "Once and Future..." weren't really intended for the kid demographic.

I loved "Carbonel, the King of the Cats," which I read multiple times. (I found the chapter in which Rosemary and John hijack the antique china from the Wilkinson Bequest at the museum to help out at some sort of charity fete or struggling cafe where the existing supply of clean dishes has run out, then magically return them the next day with some of the priceless china still wet and/or dripping leftover dish-soap bubbles especially memorable.) I also read the sequel, "The Kingdom of Carbonel," but didn't like it as much. I had no idea there was a third book, "Carbonel and Calidor," until I spotted it on the NYRB list. Fortunately, my local library has it--unlike the first two, for some reason. Although the "Carbonel is upset because his son and heir wants to ditch his role as crown prince to be with an ordinary cat of inferior social status/become the familiar of a shady(?) apprentice witch" storyline described in the library blurb doesn't sound particularly promising by modern-sensibility standards.

This doesn't seem to be on the NYRB list, but if you like "Carbonel," you'd probably like Nicholas Stuart Gray's "Grimbold's Other World." This is also about a magical/magic-adjacent cat. In this case, Grimbold the cat's involvement with an apparently ordinary human child leads to the boy slipping back and forth between our world and the realm of night, where he has various adventures.

I also really liked John Masefield's "The Midnight Folk" (which I originally found at a relative's house) and its sequel "The Box of Delights."

I'm pretty sure I read Thurber's "The 13 Clocks" as a kid and liked it. But I don't recall any of the details, except that I think there was a princess involved somehow. I thought the titular clocks actually struck the hour of thirteen (or something along those lines) as well, with some sort of magical consequences. But I couldn't confirm this when I tried to look it up via Google.

I read Paul Gallico's "Thomasina: The Cat Who Thought She Was a God" (assuming that this is an alternate title for the book I read around age seven or eight under the title "The Three Lives of Thomasina") in a paperback tie-in edition issued after the Walt Disney live-action film based on it came out in 1963. The movie starred Patrick McGoohan as the short-tempered Scottish single-father veterinarian (doctor?) who prematurely--but ineffectively, as it turned out--chloroformed his young daughter Mary's beloved pet cat Thomasina when it became seriously ill or injured. (The cat subsequently revives--convinced that she's some sort of avatar of the Egyptian cat goddess Bast, and with no memory of her life as Thomasina--under the care of a local woman named Lori, who is widely reputed to be a witch. The cat eventually "dies" a second time, this time reviving as Thomasina again, and is ultimately reunited with Mary.)

I haven't read Gallico's "The Abandoned." I think I'd vaguely heard of it, but didn't know that it also involved the adventures of a sentient cat until now.

This "boy turns into cat" premise is pretty similar to the basic conceit of the current manga "My New Life as a Cat," in which a boy named Nao gets hit by a car, then wakes up in the body of a cat which may or may not have been involved in the same car accident. At first Nao thinks he may have died and been reincarnated as a cat, but he subsequently discovers that his human body has been taken to the hospital. Initially Nao's body remains in a coma for quite a while. Cat Nao later spots his human form being pushed around the hospital grounds in a wheelchair, apparently conscious but still thoroughly out of it. This confirms his revised hypothesis that he and the cat somehow switched bodies as a consequence of the accident, since a cat who suddenly woke up in a human body would probably have an even more difficult time speaking and otherwise adjusting to its new form than a boy-turned-cat.

Nao himself is initially thrilled with his new cat form's ability to do things like jump several times his own height and squeeze through tiny openings that appear to be a fraction of his size. He's soon disillusioned once he gets hungry and has no idea how to catch any sort of prey, then is attacked and chased by hostile local cats.

Luckily, a cute teenage girl finds the exhausted, beat-up Nao lying in the grass on her way home from school. She takes him home and takes care of him, renaming him Nyao (a pun on "nya," the Japanese equivalent of "meow"). Nao/Nyao has been happily living with her ever since, occasionally sneaking out to check on his human body at the hospital and make ineffectual attempts to figure out how to get switched back into his original form.

I also read E. Nesbit's "The House of Arden." I think this is actually one of two books featuring the same wish-granting(?) talking mole, although I don't recall whether it's the first book or the sequel. (My childhood local library had a lot of books by Nesbit.) I liked both talking-mole books pretty well, although not as much as Nesbit's "The Enchanted Castle" or her magic-amulet series. However, I didn't care for her non-magical/fantasy books (which the library also had) at all.

I highly recommend American author Edward Eager's similarly-themed books such as "Magic or Not?", "Magic By the Lake," and "Seven Day Magic," which Eager openly admitted were inspired by Nesbit. Unfortunately, I didn't spot any of these on the NYRB list.

I've read Margery Sharp's "The Rescuers" (aristocratic snob white mouse Miss Bianca is sent by the Prisoners' Aid Society to rescue an imprisoned human poet, with the help of faithful plebian mouse sidekick Bernard, who obviously adores her, although she considers him beneath her touch), but thought it was overrated. I read it when I was an actual kid, so possibly the whole "Miss Bianca is a snob who could never lower herself to treat Bernard as anything more than a servant" element was intended to be satirical, but went over my head at the time. Based on what I recall of her adult novel "Cluny Brown"--some elements of which were apparently intended to be somewhat satirical of the British upper class, but in an extremely limited way--I wouldn't bet on it.

I found "The Rescuers" underwhelming enough in general that I'm disinclined to reread it to find out, although it was popular enough at the time that Disney made not one, but two, animated movies inspired by it in the 1970's. (Judging by the library blurb about the movie version of "The Rescuers," they changed the human rescue target from an adult male Norwegian poet to an oppressed little orphan girl.) According to Amazon.com, Sharp wrote at least five more Miss Bianca books, most of which have titles like "Miss Bianca in the Antarctic" and "Miss Bianca and the Bridesmaid." I think I read at least one of the sequels as a child, but my current library system in Queens doesn't seem to have any of them.

Didn't the New York Review of Books also do editions of a couple of Walter Brooks' Freddy the Pig books at some point? I seem to recall seeing some Freddy books either in NYRB ads or in a display at their booth at the Brooklyn Book Festival, although I couldn't find them on either of the webpages linked to above.

[osprey_archer]

"My New Life as a Cat" sounds adorable. New life as a cat... if only...

I suspect that Edward Eager's books remain too popular and readily available for the NYRB list, which seems to be focused on books that are mostly forgotten, but remembered with raging adoration by the few people who do recall them. I'd love to know the process they used to compile the list.

[osprey_archer]

Foolish of the website not to include all the releases, not just the newer ones! So many interesting books here. I'll have to read The Pushcart War and Carbonel, the King of Cats, since they've been so enthusiastically recollected in the comments here.

I enjoyed the movie Harvey but never realized it was based on a book. Might give it a try... possibly after trying Loretta Mason Potts first. Did you enjoy Loretta Mason Potts? Surrealism can be very hit or miss for me.

[rachelmanija]

You know, I don't remember it very well! I should probably re-read.

I think Harvey is actually based on a play. I also like the movie.