Armitage, Armitage, Fly Away Home
by Joan Aiken
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When Mrs. Armitage finds a wishing stone at the beach on her honeymoon and wishes for children who will never be bored, she has little idea of the magical adventures she is setting in motion in this charming collection of ten short stories. Whether contending with unicorns unexpectedly turning up on a Tuesday (as opposed to the more customary Monday), being turned out of their home by the Board of Incantation, or struggling to rid themselves of a mythological apple that brings nothing but trouble (what a surprise...), Mark and Harriet Armitage are as far from bored as it is possible to get...
Perhaps best known for her series of alternative-historical adventures for children, which began with the brilliant The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, show more Joan Aiken was also a prolific short-story writer, publishing well over twenty collections in the course of her career. Armitage, Armitage, Fly Away Home, originally published in 1965, was the fourth of these collections, and is unique, in that the stories all center around the same cast of characters: the Armitage family. Aiken is at the top of her game here, and her sly wit and engaging characters make for entertaining reading. The black and white illustrations by Betty Fraser are an added pleasure!
Addendum: Joan Aiken fans will be pleased to know that this collection of short stories has been reprinted, together with some unpublished material about the Armitage family, as The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories! show less
Perhaps best known for her series of alternative-historical adventures for children, which began with the brilliant The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, show more Joan Aiken was also a prolific short-story writer, publishing well over twenty collections in the course of her career. Armitage, Armitage, Fly Away Home, originally published in 1965, was the fourth of these collections, and is unique, in that the stories all center around the same cast of characters: the Armitage family. Aiken is at the top of her game here, and her sly wit and engaging characters make for entertaining reading. The black and white illustrations by Betty Fraser are an added pleasure!
Addendum: Joan Aiken fans will be pleased to know that this collection of short stories has been reprinted, together with some unpublished material about the Armitage family, as The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories! show less
This is a series of short stories about the Armitage family. Mrs, Armitage wished on a magic stone for strange and interesting things to happen in her life- mostly on Mondays. The stories cover ghosts, Furies, unicorns and other supernatural events that mostly happen on Monday.
There is no modern violence in these stories, they are creative, whimsical and sweet.
There is no modern violence in these stories, they are creative, whimsical and sweet.
A collection of short stories, including: Prelude / Yes, But Today Is Tuesday / The Frozen Cuckoo / Sweet Singeing in the Choir / Harriet's Hairloom / The Ghostly Governess / The Land of Trees and Heroes / The Stolen Quince Tree / A Batch of Magic Wands / The Apple of Trouble / The Serial Garden.
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Joan Delano Aiken was born in Rye, Sussex, England, on September 4, 1924, the daughter of the Pulitzer Prize winner, writer Conrad Aiken. She was raised in a rural area and home schooled by her mother until the age 12. She then attended Wychwood School, a boarding school in Oxford. Her work first appeared in 1941 when the British Broadcasting show more Corporation, where she worked as a librarian, broadcast some of her short stories on their Children's Hour program. Aiken also worked at St. Thomas's Hospital, and in 1943 she moved to the reference department of the London office of the United Nations, where she collected information about resistance movements. She worked for the UN until 1949, all the while continuing to write stories. In 1953 a collection of short fiction called All You've Ever Wanted and Other Stories was published. While writing The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, begun in 1952, her husband became ill and died of lung cancer in 1955. After working for five years as a copy editor at Argosy Magazine, and at the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Firm, she returned and finished the book in 1963. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award and was made into a successful film in 1988. In 1969 The Whispering Mountain won the Guardian Children's Book Award, and in 1972, Night Fall won America's Edgar Allen Poe Award for juvenile mystery. Aiken is best known for her adult "fantasy" stories. She has received awards for children's fiction and for mystery fiction, and has also written ''sequels'' to Jane Austen books. She collaborated with her daughter to write many episodes of her Arabel and Mortimer the raven series for the BBC. In all, Aiken wrote 92 novels - including 27 for adults - as well as plays, poems and short stories, although she was best known as a writer of children's stories. Joan Aiken died in January of 2004 at the age of 79. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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