John Rowe Townsend (1922–2014)

Who says only posh kids can have adventures? This is a period piece from the early 1960s, when to be working class was fashionable, and to be Northern working class even better. These were the days of kitchen sink drama, Room at the Top, Saturday Night & Sunday Morning, Kes, A Kind of Loving, A Taste of Honey, the popularity of D H Lawrence, and of course the Beatles, John Peel even adopting a Scouse accent instead of his public-school one.
Set apparently in Manchester, where the kids are temporarily abandoned by the rather inadequate adults supposedly looking after them. They make a much better job of looking after themselves, being bright, resourceful and loyal, even defeating a gang of crooks into the bargain.
The typical blockish, scratchy illustrations of the time are in this case a letdown though, being quite ugly and making the characters look unnecessarily glumpish.… (more)

So dated.?á And Townsend misses much, misunderstands much.?á (He doesn't like Peter Pan, and thinks Winnie-the-Poo simple fluff, for example.)?á?á Part of the problem is that he's comparing only British books, only up to the early 1960s.?á So many wonderful books have been written since then, that most of the obscure titles he mentions that he'd like to see reprinted would actually pale in comparison.?á?á I'm not sure of his qualification to write this survey, but he is a parent, so I did keep reading and trying to glean tidbits.

One way we know it's dated: he bemoans the lack of literature for adolescents - I guess the YA designation was not yet created, and so the few titles that could be enjoyed by teens were not yet inspiring writers to fill the niche with more... and he does understand exactly what teens need that they can't get from Juv or Adult.?á

I want to look for some of the early original fairy tales.?á Yes, I've enjoyed Ruskin's The King of the Golden River more than once, but T. also recommends The Rose and the Ring, by W.M. Thackeray.?á Townsend doesn't appreciate Dickens' charming The Magic Fishbone, but I learned that it is one of four tales in A Holiday Romance, so I will be looking for that.?á

Walter de la Mere is 'not a hit with all children' but I do want to find The Three Royal Monkeys (nee' The Three Mulla-Mulgars), Broomsticks, and Collected Stories for Children.

T. is very British Empire, noble race, all that.?á He doesn't particularly approve of the moral qualms expressed in Roy Fuller's Savage Gold.?á I guess that means I want to try to find that adventure story.

Eilas Dillon's 'adventure stories in distinctive settings' look interesting.?á They look like much more than just adventure, too.?á Try The House on the Shore, The Island of Horses, and, especially, The Coriander, with its doctor kidnapped to serve the isolated community.

Also intriguing is Fair to Middling, by Arthur Calder Marshall, which includes allegory, satire, humor, set in The School for Incapacitated Children ... Is there a chance this has any connection with Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children?

Alan Garner gets a mention, of course - for two books I don't recognize: The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, and The Moon of Gomrath.?á Heavy fantasy, but fantastic writing style....

Jolly witchy fantasy can be found in Carbonel and The Kingdom of Carbonel, by Barbara Sleigh. Penny's Way, by Mary Harris, captures my attention because T. mentions that ?Ç£Mother is a little afraid of her clever eldest daughter Cordelia.?Ç¥ Now, wasn't William Mayne the author of the poetic & intense fantasy Hob and the Goblins? Apparently he was quite prolific, beginning a 'distinctive' series of school stories with the attractive A Swarm in May. (If I can't get that, I can consider reading the sequels, but really the first is the best, according to T.) He also wrote treasure hunt fantasies (T.'s odd way of trying to capture what he sees as key elements) in stand-alones A Grass Rope and The Thumbstick. I sure hope I can find them. Gillian Avery seems to create refreshingly original children in The Warden's Niece and in The Elephant War. Implication is that these books are either not liked, or adored, depending on the reader. Lion at Large, by Richard Parker, looks delightful, and sympathetic to a very young child.

Now, I suspect that, in reality, I never will be able to find hardly any of those titles.?á But I will save this review for reference, and try! ?á"… (more)

It took me a long time to get into this book. Barry's father is just so horrible, even before he starts hoarding, that I didn't think I could handle a book full of him. For example:

"You always used to be at work all day until we moved here," Mother pointed out.
"That was before the present crisis," said Father. "Now I have the shopping to do."
"It was you who insisted on doing it," Mother said. ... "I sometimes wonder what I'm for. Just cooking and cleaning, I suppose. I might as well be a servant."
"A servant would need wages," Father said -- unaware, I was sure, of any cruelty in the remark.
p.43

Except that he is aware. He spends the entire book making belittling comments about Barry's mother and older sister Nessie, mostly about their inferior, womanly minds. And, for the most part, they just took it. Nessie gets all riled up about it, but only in front of Barry. No one stands up to Father. It wasn't until Barry started to doubt his father that I started to get into Noah's Castle. Then Nessie started actively defying her father and it really started to get good.

Of course at the same time, problems much bigger than a horrifically controlling and sexist head of household are looming all around the Mortimers. As food goes beyond "scarce" right to "rare," people around them start to starve. Barry, Nessie and their mother have to deal with the guilt of knowing that they have plenty when so many other people are suffering and dying of want. Father, on the other hand, feels no guilt. Those people are ill-prepared and none of the Mortimers are allowed to share with them, not matter how hungry, elderly, young, or sick they are. This conflict is the core of the novel. As much as you want to help the needy around you, how do you give away all of your food, not knowing when you may get more, knowing that it means your sickly little sister may go hungry? It's an impossible question with no rights answer, and none is given in the book. But the rights and wrongs of everyone's actions are explored.

Of course, the wrongness of the sexism isn't explored to its fullest, but maybe that would be a bit too much to ask of a book originally published in 1975. Luckily, Nessie struggles against her father's beliefs and bullying and seems like she'll escape the Mortimer house unscathed.

Book source: Review copy provided by the publisher.… (more)