Children's books you still love..

Definitely The Dark is Rising sequence, The Hobbit, Diana Wynne Jones, Charlotte Sometimes, Tom’s Midnight Garden and some of Alan Garner and Narnia. I also liked some Sci-Fi, including a book called Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein (I think).

School stories: Chalet School, Malory Towers and without a shadow of a doubt, Antonia Forest. I can’t believe someone who has so clearly made such an impact on children has been allowed to fade into obscurity. I did like Spring Term!

Ballet books: Sadler’s Wells, Drina and most Noel Streatfeild books, particularly The Painted Garden and Curtain Up. I liked the Mara Kay book, A Circling Star, mentioned earlier. The description of a Russian ballet school was like entering another world. Jean Ure’s, Hey There, Supermouse and all the Pamela Brown books about the Blue Doors.

Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn was my favourite as it described such lovely parts of a country life. Anne of Green Gables would be my chosen classic.

Has anyone read The Stone Cage by Nicholas Stuart Gray?I always ask and no one ever seems to have read it. It’s an amazing retelling of the Rapunzel Story, very Diana Wynne Jones in style. The author also wrote the Grimbold books. And now I’m adding the Carbonel series to my list!

I think the reason why Antonia Forest’s books faded into obscurity is that they were easily dismissed, mostly by those who hadn’t read them , as boarding school- and- pony books about middle class children at a time when these things were becoming unfashionable in the world of children’s books. Whereas her superb characterisation lifts her into a different class from Malory Towers etc, readable though these are. Ironically following the success of HP boarding school stories are now quite popular again, though they usually feature magical academies of some sort.

@BustopherPonsonbyJones I am also very fond of Citizen of the Galaxy. A lot of Heinlein’s books are tinged with a macho and misogynistic vibe I find off putting, but COTG is set firmly against big corporations exploiting and owning people, and is also a very exciting story.

I don't know, because Autumn Term is far easier to get hold of than most of the other books, because it's the one that's been reprinted, and I think that's because it is a more typical school story.

I think it’s partly too that a quick glance at a plot summary suggests they’re standard school stories and ‘holiday’ or ‘pony’ books or spy stories — I think AF says somewhere that she thought of Falconer’s Lure as a pony/holiday book, but with falconry. But they’re extraordinarily sophisticated works in terms of characterisation and range of reference, and far more odd in many ways than they appear. I mean, in many ways lots of them have religion and belief as a main theme, and they operate in interestingly grey areas, like the bullying of the repellent Marie Dobson and someone who would be a straightforward antagonist in Enid Blyton books (Lois Sanger) being given a narrative POV and presented not unsympathetically.

Thanks for mentioning Saffy's Angel @TheeNotoriousPIG - what a lovely book :)

Three :) I bought this copy from Abe a few days ago and it arrived Saturday morning. Was £4.50 shipping included

@Waawo

That's the exact version I have (although mine is a former library copy, which I've owned since about 2001.)

I hope folks like it; I'm not sure descriptions from people like me are enough to get across the nature of the novel - though I think the review I posted from Amazon is one of the most accurate descriptions. Have you made any headway with it yet?

And I think anyone who does go to them, particularly after the first two 'term' books, expecting a straightforward cookie-cutter Malory Towers style school story is going to be disappointed and also, as was my experience when I only had the four 'term' ones, frequently baffled by the amount of references to the other books - like I remember reading End of Term and being perplexed about who TF this 'Patrick' was, and why everyone lived on a farm now, and references later to things like 'when me and Binks and Patrick smashed the Thuggery'. And just the amount of references to literature, the Bible, and so on, not to mention the slang (which changes with every book because they're so spaced apart). Like you can't imagine Darrel Rivers saying 'dies irae' or taking up an algebra lesson with an in-depth discussion of Zionism and the Jewish diaspora.... Forest asks a lot of her readers, which for those who love her (including me) is great, but one can see why she didn't have the easy mindless appeal of Blyton.

Yes, I had a longish journey yesterday and read most, and finished this morning.

I like it. One nice thing is, the reminder that when it comes to school stories, there is something in between Mallory Towers et al and Hogwarts!

[ Anyone else thinking of reading Albion's Secret for the first time, beware! Spoilers ahead! Oh, and if you do want to read, it is available on Open Library. A different cover there too, but still a Faber edition. https://archive.org/details/albionsdream0000norm/mode/1up ]

On first read, I have to say the ending feels a little weak. But I think the metaphor of the game being really just life is very clever. "Beware, every action you take in the game can have an effect in life": well, yes, in the 'game' of life that's true! So perhaps the apparently entirely non-supernatural conclusion is inevitable. I'm sure the Doctor was just considered something of a crank!

Anyway, I'll look forward to re-reading - the story is quite a page-turner, so I'm sure I missed loads of little detail.

I don't know how I've managed to miss Antonia Forest. Back copies seem quite expensive but there are a couple on Internet Archive, so might have a read.

I had a look online and there are a great many YA/adult school stories: ones I might not have considered as well as more obvious ones like the Brontes.

Adult School Stories

@Waawo

Glad you liked it! I definitely think that it's a book that could do with re-reading; there are a lot of mythological and magical references packed into what is a relatively short novel, all things said, and I think it can be easy to perhaps overlook some things.

SPOILERS

On first read, I have to say the ending feels a little weak. But I think the metaphor of the game being really just life is very clever. "Beware, every action you take in the game can have an effect in life": well, yes, in the 'game' of life that's true! So perhaps the apparently entirely non-supernatural conclusion is inevitable.

I have a different perspective; in that I don't think the metaphor was meant to be that the game was just life - but more that it's exactly what's said in the novel that the game (and the dice) are artefacts of some kind of magic which influence what happens in life. But the magic in the novel operates (and appears) subtly and invisibly. Hidden in plain sight, if you will.

Here's a quote from Roger, the author, himself, from my correspondence with him a few years ago which may shed some light on his thought process:

"I’m edging towards my own attempt to roll up the matter of Britain and the Arthurian cycles and the ancient secrets of the Island into a work of fiction, and I should say at once that your idea of the game as a ‘bridge between the worlds’ is exactly what I had in mind. If the Caer Sidh (which seem to have various spellings) are locations on the surface of the earth from which the otherworld or underworld can be accessed, then the Game with its charmed dice is also a key to the gate, as Doctor Death recognized. As others have done, he took literally what should have been understood metaphorically, ending up speechless at the bottom of a pit."

Interesting list. I spotted an author on there also known for children's books - Rosemary Manning. I have the four in the Dragon series - which are a vehicle for telling younger children about some of the Arthurian legends. So a bit of another theme here with the posts above.

That’s a really interesting list - thank you. One of the AF non school stories, Peter’s Room, is actually heavily Brontë influenced and contains a fascinating discussion of the family and their writing. It’s one of my favourite AFs.

@SorcererGaheris that quote is absolutely fascinating- thank you. The Caer Sidhe is often referred to as a revolving glass castle and is used by Susan Cooper in Silver on the Tree. I think Robert Graves discusses it in The White Goddess, his take on Celtic myth, which I believe is now regarded as inaccurate, but which I loved when I read it ages ago.

Treasure Island, always loved that book. But I am from Bristol so perhaps seafaring and piracy is in my blood.

@pollyhemlock

Roger and I exchanged several very interesting messages on the subject of not just Albion's Dream, but mysticism/spirituality/occultism generally. 'The White Goddess' was a book that was indeed influential upon his thinking, as was John Michell's 'The View Over Atlantis.' Even in his 70s, Roger considered himself a beginner in the realm of esoteric knowledge, but he was convinced that there was more out there than just the material world, and 'AD' is a book that very much reflects his inner feelings on that matter, IMO.

It sounds like a young adult version of Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse. A game that's a metaphor for life. I might give it a try. I've got low focus now and perhaps young adult fiction will break the logjam?

I've read most of Nicholas's books. They're not easy to find now.

Maybe. That’s just my take though: a more straightforward “fantasy” or even mystical reading seems to have been more what the author had in mind. I haven’t read Journey to the East though, I might look it out

@Abhannmor @Waawo

I certainly don't want to come across as dismissive of your reading of it; it's a valid perspective - it's just from having communicated with the author personally, the mystical angle is definitely what he was going for with the story. Forces were at work through the game and dice.

Definitely worth spending on her books. Superb character description and some of the most beautiful use of language in (fairly) mundane settings. Her writing sticks with you.

At last! Did you like them? The Stone Cage’s ending really stuck with me. It’s a book I was allowed to take from the reject pile at junior school and I’ve keep it since as I’ve never found a replacement copy.

Yes, I just wanted to highlight for @Abhannmor that that was just my thoughts after a first read 😀

What are the other books like? Can't seem to find a copy of Red Die anywhere...

The Dark Is Rising (just the second book not the whole series), William books, Diana Wynne Jones (though the fat shaming is more noticeable as an adult).

I would probably read more but my childhood books are buried in my parent's house - would like to reread some horsy books like The Jill series, all my Monica Edwards books - have her autobiographical ones which are good, Helen Cresswell's Bagthorpes series. Also from the library: the Silver Brumby (the earlier ones with talking horses) the Penny books by Stephen Tring and The Little White Horse.

Found The Pullein-Thompson’s 1996 memoir Fair Girls and Gray Horses a couple of years ago and enjoyed it - think I preferred the ones by Josephine, bit too much fox hunting in some - even as I child I was entirely on the side of foxes and cried my eyes out at Fox Cub Bold. Still not a fan of Tragic Animal Death in fiction/reading, so much trauma in Tarka, Ring of Bright Water etc.