Allan Ahlberg

 This week, the great children's writer Allan Ahlberg died. (As with everything, people will have their own opinions as to what's 'great' and what's not, but I really doubt that anyone who's read Alan's books with children would dispute that accolade.)

Some of Allan's books.

You may not be able to see it very well from this small picture, but these books are very well-worn. Pages are creased, some are even torn: one has a couple of pages missing. That's because they have all been read many, many times, first with our children, now with our grandchildren. They are very, very well-loved.

All these were illustrated by Allan's wife, Janet, who died much too soon. (He went on to write more books with other terrific artists, but I don't think they will mind me saying that his partnership with Janet was particularly special.) The illustrations are brilliant: so detailed, with so much to look at and talk about. Peepo, for instance, describes what a baby can see when he looks around him. It is set in wartime - the baby's father is in uniform - and much of what he sees is familiar to someone who can recall a fifties' childhood, but I really don't think that matters: Peepo is for small children, who take in and are fascinated by everything they see - it doesn't matter if what they see is different to their own world, the point is that it's interesting - and that it's about a family, about everyday goings-on. So on one particular spread, these are Alan's words:

He sees a bonfire smoking

    Pigeons in the sky

His mother cleaning windows

    A dog going by.

He sees his sisters searching

    For a jar or tin

To take up to the park

    And catch fishes in.

Janet takes up the pointers in the text and runs with them - but she also adds so much more: an outdoor toilet with a coal-hole next to it, an old-fashioned pram, a skipping rope, a toy tricycle, the mother's pinafore, the baby's toys, a little dog, and much more besides. So much to talk about and discuss, so much to share and enjoy.

Each Peach Pear Plum takes figures from nursery rhymes and fairy tales and spins a tale that includes all of them, ending in a triumphant page turn that reveals all the characters having a joyous picnic together: the Wicked Witch chortles happily, Little Red Riding Hood strokes a sheep, Robin Hood feeds Baby Bunting, and so on. Pure genius. And the words are perfectly balanced, so that each page of text leads you into the picture opposite, and then, with bated breath, onto the next page. (This book is very well-worn.) 

The other books in the picture are for older children. They too are absolute classics. They're just lovely to read aloud. The text is perfectly paced, leading you to pause in just the right places for a reveal or a joke, and again, the pictures don't just illustrate the text, they add to it. I'll leave you with this picture of one of my favourite spreads in this or any other book. Allan, thank you for the stories. The angels are lucky to have you. I can just imagine them sitting around chortling - and asking for just one more before bedtime - please!

The Seal on the Beach, by Mara Bergman

 

Full disclosure: Mara Bergman is an excellent editor as well as a writer, and some years ago, she edited two of my books, The Willow Man and Warrior King. But much as I like Mara, I wouldn't be reviewing her book if I didn't think it was something very special.

It tells the story of Maggie, a little girl who is on holiday at the seaside with her aunt and uncle. We soon find out that, much as she is enjoying her holiday, all is not well in Maggie's world; her baby brother is seriously ill, and her mother is consequently having to spend alot of time in the hospital - with the baby, and away from Maggie.

One day, she goes for a walk with her uncle and aunt and spots a baby seal, alone on the beach. Worried, they tell the lifeguards, who are reassuring: the mothers often leave their babies alone on the beach while they go hunting for food: this one's mother will come back, they assure Maggie - everything will be fine.

But Maggie isn't so sure. She feels a connection to the seal - she dreams about it at night - and she is worried about it. She goes back to check on it, and it is still there, but it's becoming listless and sad. The lifeguards, prompted by her, call the RSPCA, who came to the rescue and take it away to be cared for.

So then the two stories - of the sick baby seal and Maggie's sick baby brother - run in parallel, and are both resolved happily at the end.

It's a simple enough story, so what makes it stand out? Partly, of course, it's the emotional heft - it's not overdone, but we very much feel for Maggie. But it's also, I think, to do with the solid, real world which Maggie inhabits. When I first read this story, just last night, I emerged feeling that I had been inside this world and out of my own - and for me, that's one of the most important things I want from a book: I want to be immersed in a different world to such an extent that for a while, I quite forget my own. That this happens is partly because of the strength of the story - but also because of the space which is taken by Mara to describe the detail of this world and make it real. For example:

Then a walk along the sand's

    pebbles and seaweed.

Maggie found a bright yellow shell

    and a smooth white stone,

Like a gull's egg.

    Another, sleek black and blue.

It's seen, of course, through a child's eye: the colours and the textures are what Maggie notices - she doesn't know what kind of shell it is: she doesn't need to, and neither do we.

And notice too the way the words are set out: this is not quite poetry, and not quite prose. It's somewhere in between the two. (Like that bit of the shore between the sea and the land - liminal.) And it creates a spell, an atmosphere, which again binds this world together. It is, literally, enchanting.

There is one thing that puzzles me. Maggie's father is not mentioned at all - where is he? The only hint I could find was this:

She wished she could make 

    everything all right, the way it used to be. 

Before the baby got sick.

Before

    everything

        went

            wrong.

Was Maggie's father one of the things that went 'wrong'?

I hope I've not given the impression, though, that this is a heavy, message-laden book. It really isn't. It's full of the delights of the seaside, the joy of a child's feelings for other small animals, and it's full of hope.

And I haven't mentioned the illustrations, by Brita Granstrom, which are just lovely, and full of details that children will love to pick out. Really, a beautiful book.

The Glass Mountain: Tales from Poland - by Jan Pienkowski

I'm not sure where I came across this book - browsing somewhere or other on the internet, I suppose. I noticed it partly because of the bright colours and unusual style of the cover art, and partly because I have two grandsons who are half Polish - so this seemed like a good fit.

Folk tales are often pretty brutal. Think of Hansel and Gretel, abandoned orphans who save themselves by bundling a witch into an oven and lighting it - or all the suffering Gerda has to go through to save her friend, Kai, from the cruel Snow Queen. Many have been softened around the edges to suit sensibilities more delicate than those of their original audiences, but these stories have not: they're strong and fierce and told crisply and with gusto by David Walser. The first one, for instance, called The Fern Flower, is about a young man who enters the forest on Midsummer's Night to find a magical flower which will confer on him huge riches - provided he doesn't attempt to share them, and provided he finds it before dawn.

The first two times he tries to find it - in the process missing out on all the fun everyone else is having on Midsummer's Eve - he fails. The third time he succeeds, and becomes rich beyond his wildest dreams. But, like Midas, untold wealth results in loneliness. Eventually, he goes to visit his mother - ironically, she was the one who told him about the flower - and finds her in poverty. He is about to go in and give her some money, but stops when he realises that this would negate the terms of the deal. He goes back again a few weeks later: now she is ill - but he weighs things up and makes the same decision. He returns a third time - and she is dead. Bogdan turned away. He cursed himself with a bitter oath. As he did so, the earth opened in front of him and swallowed both him and the fern flower which he still kept in his tunic next to his heart.

Jolly stuff, eh? But I guess that when these stories were first told, the world the storytellers lived in was a harsh one. Some years ago, we were in the Carpathians, in southern Poland. We walked through a forest where there were signs warning travellers to beware of bears and wolves. At one point I had fallen behind - I usually do on a walk - and looking round at the trees which stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction, I felt disorientated. Suddenly, the world of 'fairy' stories, where the forest is a place of danger, absolutely made sense; the dangers perceived, the warnings given, reflected everyday life. Children needed to be warned - and in the long dark evenings, everyone needed dramatic stories which would keep them entertained and make them gasp in delicious fear as the candle light flickered and made huge shadows on the wall.

These stories still do that. But there's one at the beginning - a true one - which I found more fascinating than all the rest. It's a glimpse into the childhood of Jan Pienkowski, the artist. The pictures, with their solid blocks of bold colour and sometimes slightly ragged outlines, are collages made of torn paper, and Pienkowski explains that paper cut-outs are a form of Polish folk-art, which he learned as a small child during the war - first from a countrywoman who would come and make 'curtains' out of white paper cut-outs which she would then glue to the windows - and later from a soldier during the Warsaw Rising, who cut out paper animals to amuse the children as they sheltered in cellars from German bombs.

I don't know if Pienkowski has written a longer memoir, but if he hasn't, I wish he would!

Hour of the Bees, by Lindsey Eagar

This is the second of the books I've read recently which has a magical tree at its centre - the first was The Lie Tree, which I've written about below.

They do have some other things in common. The viewpoint character in both is a girl of about twelve - not quite a teenager. Both books deal with problematic relationships between parents and children. But they come from, and contain, very different worlds

. Whereas The Lie Tree is set in the claustrophobic world of Victorian society, Hour of the Bees takes place in the empty landscape of an American desert. In some ways it's a mythic story that is outside time - but Carol and her family are firmly rooted in 21st century America.

At the beginning of the book, Carol, her parents, her small brother Lu and her teenage half-sister Alta have arrived at the drought-ridden ranch of Serge, Carol's grandfather. Serge and her father, Raoul, have not spoken for twelve years, since the death of Serge's wife Rosa; but now he has dementia, and Raoul has arranged for him to be moved to a 'facility', a fancy place called Seville, which must be paid for by the sale of Serge's dearly loved ranch.

At first, it reads like a familiar story of a family at odds; Alta is splendidly moody, Carol wants to be at home with her school friends considering such vital problems as what sort of school bag they should all buy, Carol's mum is exhausted with the demands of work, children and doing the right thing by Serge.

But then it turns into something much more interesting. There are bees, which are mysteriously attracted to Carol, which no-one else can see - but in which Serge is keenly interested. Serge insists on calling Carol by her Spanish name, Carolina, and tells her how much she reminds him of Rosa. And he begins to tell her a story about a tree - a completely extraordinary tree. At first, Carol thinks the story is just that - a story. But then she begins to notice things. Ines, the dog, is older than any dog could possibly be. The heroine of the story is called Rosa. And though there is no longer a lake on the ranch - because, says Serge, the bees carried it away, drop by drop - there is the stump of a tree.

It seems impossible that the tragedy which is gradually revealed can possibly be sorted out within the compass of the book. But trust me - the ending will have you cheering from your armchair, while at the same time wiping away the tears.

I can't think of any other magical realist books for children, though I'm sure there must be some - but this sits firmly within the Spanish American area of that tradition. It's unusual, and really rather special.

Mal Peet: a tribute.

I was immensely shocked and saddened to hear earlier this week of the death of the writer, Mal Peet. Keeper, published in 2003 by Walker, was his first novel (though he had previously written many children's books for the educational market with his wife, Elspeth Graham).

Keeper won the Branford Boase Award for a debut children's book, and Mal followed it up with Tamar, a book about the Resistance during the Second World War, which scooped the Carnegie. He also wrote what must lay claim to being the definitive novel about growing up in the 50s and early 60s - Life - An Unexploded Diagram; two companion novels to Keeper; and most recently, The Murdstone Trilogy, which I haven't yet read.

But when I heard the news, the book I immediately wanted to turn to was Keeper. It's about a world-class South American goalkeeper, El Gato - The Cat. Now - I don't have a sporting bone in my body. I can't throw, I can't catch, and the only sport where I even understand the rules is tennis. But I do live with people who are quite the reverse - for whom sport is part of the bedrock of their lives - and Keeper is the book that absolutely taps into that vein: for El Gato, and for the people he comes from, football is not a peripheral thing, it's absolutely central.

The story is told as a long interview with a sports journalist, Paul Faustino. El Gato's team has just won the World Cup, and Paul is after an exclusive.

He gets one. But it's not the one he expected. As he sits and listens - in an interview that goes on long into the night - El Gato tells him an extraordinary tale of his childhood in a remote village in the South American jungle, where the only job any man does is logging, and all that awaits the girls is marriage to a logger. El Gato's mother wants him to be more than that - perhaps to be a scientist. El Gato himself (he's not yet been given this nickname) is skinny and useless at football, which is what all the boys his age spend all their spare time playing. But when he gives up even trying to play, time hangs heavy on his hands. He begins to venture into the jungle, just for something to do. And there he finds something extraordinary: a football pitch in a clearing - where someone is waiting for him.

And here I find the words difficult, Paul. I could say that he stepped out of the trees, but that is not quite right. He moved into the clearing, that is true, but he did not seem to be solid until he stopped moving. You know how sometimes you get bad TV reception, and there is a kind of shadow that follows the picture, so that things seem to happen twice? It was a bit like that: I watched him move and saw him standing still at the same time.

This is the Keeper. He sees potential in the boy, and he doesn't just train him - he transforms him. He develops muscle, he grows, and he becomes a superlative goalkeeper. All this is done in secret - how could the boy tell anyone he is being trained by a ghost? But eventually, when he has to leave school and go to work in the logging camp with his father, he finds himself playing in a football game in the camp - and his ability is obvious.

Well, that's the story, or most of it. But it's the way it's told - the writing - which is so extraordinary. The experience of reading it is intense. Paul Faustino is not just a plot device, he's a fully realised character, and we are there, in that office, sharing his incredulity as he listens to El Gato's story - just as we're there in the forest with the boy, listening to the Keeper's advice.

...'When a player shoots at your goal, he will do things which tell you where he wants the ball to go. He will lean slightly to the left or the right to put weight into the shot, and his own weight onto one foot or the other. He will drop one shoulder, and almost always his shot will be in a line with that shoulder. Most players cannot help glancing, for a fraction of a second, at where they intend to send the ball...

I repeat, I know nothing about football. If you do, then this book will probably be even better for you. But if not, it doesn't matter. The drama is in the relationships - between the boy and the Keeper, between El Gato and Faustino, between the boy and the members of his family. The book is about growing up, and learning to know who you are, and respecting the environment. It's about poverty and integrity and loyalty. It's brilliant. It's absolutely focused: there's not a word that's out of place.

When I'd read it the first time, I was so impressed by it that I wanted to get in touch with Mal and tell him so. I was able to do this because we were both authors with Walker - this was before the days of Facebook and Twitter, so it wasn't quite so easy then as it is now to get in touch with people you didn't know. Also, I'd read that he hadn't been to South America before he wrote the book, and I couldn't believe it - but when he replied, in a friendly, appreciative and self-deprecatory email, he assured me that it was true, though he had been since he wrote it. I only met him once, just briefly, after an event, but he was the same then - friendly, funny, full of smiles.

What an amazing writer, and what an extremely nice man. If you haven't read his books, you have a treat in store. But how very, very sad that there will be no more, and that Mal Peet died too soon.

The Winter Horses, by Philip Kerr: Walker Books

Philip Kerr is the creator of the Berlin detective, Bernie Gunther - one of those ironic characters who hides his heart of gold beneath a cloak of cynicism. He doesn’t like the Nazis, but he doesn’t see himself as hero material; he’ll do what he must to stay alive. As the Nazis grow more powerful, and when the war breaks out, he increasingly finds that he has to make compromises with which he’s often not comfortable – but he does his best to be a decent human being. I like the Bernie Gunther books, particularly the earlier ones – and if you are planning a visit to Prague, Prague Fatale, in which Bernie gets tangled up with Reinhardt Heydrich, is a great companion read.

The Winter Horses, a book for children/teens, operates in similar territory, where allegiances are not always obvious and survival is not a given. It is set in 1941 on a nature reserve in the Ukraine, where an old keeper, Max, is left in charge when his boss flees before the German advance. Before he leaves, the boss announces that Max must shoot all the animals, to stop the Germans using them for meat. Max does no such thing. Although he is Russian, he rather likes the Germans; his mentor, and the founder of the reserve, Baron Falz-Fein, was German, and Max speaks the language well.

So when, a couple of weeks later, the Germans arrive, Max is not particularly worried; and in fact the officer in charge, Captain Grenzmann, takes to him – they share a love of horses.

But not of all horses. The reserve is the home of a small group of Przewalski’s horses, almost the last surviving members of an ancient race dating back to prehistoric times. These are tough, wild horses which do not like to get too close to humans, and certainly don't allow themselves to be mounted. Max loves them, but the Captain regards them as an ugly, inferior species with no place in today’s world, and he wants them to be hunted to extinction. As he explains to Max, this should be the fate of any inferior species...

Which brings us on to Kalinka, a girl who Max finds hiding on the steppe. Kalinka is Jewish. She has seen her family, her friends and neighbours being shot by the Germans. She is completely alone, until she happens to meet up, first with two of the Przewalski’s horses, and then with Max, who helps her and hides her. She develops a strange bond with the horses: can they help each other to survive?

Although he hates almost everything Grenzmann stands for, Max, like Bernie Gunther, is prepared to go quite a long way to keep on his right side. One night he’s asked to dinner – and he knows that horsemeat will be on the menu. Kalinka cannot understand why Max if friendly with the Captain, but Max points out that there is good reason to keep onside with him; he can destroy them all. Grenzmann draws very good pictures of the horses he likes to ride, and he gives one to Max: ‘…every time the old man looked at it, he marvelled that an artist of such great sensitivity should be capable of such diabolical cruelty.’ No-one is entirely bad – though Granzmann comes pretty close, despite his friendliness towards Max.

The climax of the hunt has a mythic quality. It’s not an ending that would work in an adult novel, and I'm not sure that it entirely works here, but it’s certainly a joy to be able to finish a novel set in such a place at such a time on a high. There is something of the fairytale about this book. It’s set in a forest, it features a child who is helped by wild animals, there’s a cottage in the woods… in the prologue Kerr tells us: ‘… even if there are some parts of this story that are not exactly true, they could be, and that is more important.’ It’s harrowing in places, but somehow this sense that we are reading something that is part fable keeps the horror at a distance.

There’s something about the dialogue that doesn’t quite work for me. It’s often used as a means of getting across information, so that characters speak rather gravely and in considerable detail about what’s happening around them. And they all speak in a similar way. So here’s Max, an old peasant: ‘I can’t argue with that, Kalinka. But all the same, your plan is founded on the assumption that the horses will do what you say…’ And here’s Kalinka, a young girl, talking about the horses: ‘I seem to have developed a bond with them. I’m not exactly sure why…’ They speak in exactly the same way, and it’s a little stilted - although perhaps that hint of unreality also adds to the sense that this is a fable, that although the tale is a bleak one, it has a gloss of enchantment.

It's an absorbing book, and it takes us into a little-known corner of the Second World War and indicates the difficulty of surviving in a world which is physically and morally uncompromising. It seeks to do this in a way which offers hope that good will ultimately triumph - and it goes a long way towards achieving this difficult aim. Interesting!

The Snarling of Wolves, by Vivian French

Vivian French deftly uses elements of fairy-tale and myth to create the setting of The Snarling of Wolves; so, for instance, we find a (Less) Enchanted Forest, three Ancient Crones (who, like the Greek Fates, weave a magical web), more princes and princesses than you can shake a broomstick at, werewolves, zombies, a faithful troll - and an intelligence network of bats, whose leader, Marlon, wisecracks away like a character from Raymond Chandler.

The heroine, Gracie Gillypot, is a Trueheart, someone who brings out the good in people. The hero is Prince Marcus, who, unlike most of the other Royals in the Five Kingdoms, is brave, bright and adventurous. Gracie lives outside the Five Kingdoms (which are quite small, as Marcus realises when he looks down on them from the top of a tower), in the Less Enchanted Forest with the afore-mentioned Ancient Crones. The Crones are also responsible for keeping Foyce Undershaft safely away from the public. Foyce is half girl, half werewolf - and all bad. She hates Gracie, whom she blames for her captivity, and concocts a cunning plan to get her own back on the other girl and her beloved Marcus. Her hatred is the engine that sets the plot in motion.

The story moves at a swift pace and is liberally sprinkled with funny dialogue and great characters, as well as a generous scattering of fairy dust. I particularly liked the Ancient Crones (like calling to like, no doubt...) and the less ancient but still pretty elderly Queen Bluebell - but was also strangely drawn to the splendidly wicked Foyce and the conflicted but ultimately principled werewolves. All these are brought visually to life by Ross Collins' splendid illustrations. I wish I could show you some; you can get the idea from the cover with its magnificent werewolf, but you really need to see the full-page line drawings too. The artist clearly had a lot of fun, and he adds greatly to the reader's enjoyment of the book and understanding of the characters and their environment.

All these elements are very fine, but the absolute tour-de-force is the ending. All the characters, and all the different strands of the story, are brought together (by means of exceptionally skillful plotting) in a stunning set piece, where the good triumph, the wicked are overthrown, the fairly average change for the better, the misunderstood receive a sympathetic hearing, and the onlookers - and - readers can only cheer in admiration and delight. I can't tell you any more about it because it would spoil it - but no word of a lie, I haven't admired an ending as much since I read John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany.

This is the sixth in the Tales from the Five Kingdoms series, which began with The Robe of Skulls. You could read it as a standalone, but why would you? Better by far to read the whole series. And if anyone from Dreamworks or Disney is reading this (and why wouldn't they be?) - please note that this series would make an amazing animation. Oh, what you couldn't do with the path-with-a-mind-of-its-own, the troll who regularly loses his head, the silly princesses and the sinister Foyce!

I'd say the core audience would be 9-12 year olds. But as with so many children's books, you really don't have to be a child to enjoy it.