A Small Pinch of Weather and Other Stories
by Joan Aiken
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Anything is magically possible in these twelve short stories by gifted storyteller, Joan Aiken. Imagine ordering a sunny day from the local weather witch, asking an appletree to answer the telephone and making a beautiful garden out of old cereal boxes. What would you do if you inherited a real hair loom, or found three ugly old ladies and a dragon on your doorstep and would you need a bicycle if you had a unicorn to ride?Tags
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nessreader Both do pastiche fairy tales with a pinch of wryness and humour.
Member Reviews
A wonderful read; technically a series of short stories, but many of them revolve around the same family (the Armitages) and especially the two children (Harriet and Mark); there's enough connection here to make it feel like a light novel, with interludes.
Every story is either magical or very funny - many of them, both. There are lots of direct references to classical mythology, and several stories follow the familiar logic of fairy tales, which Aiken plays for real; she takes her fantasy seriously. Yet the stories are never cold or distant. Aiken's humor is dry and matter-of-fact, cutting through the mysticism as if to say, "Well, this is just how it is, I suppose." A little boy reads stories to inanimate objects, who are grateful for show more the company; a dragon curls up near a space heater like a cat; a princess rides to the ends of the earth to bring back a piece of the dark. The stories are full of odd, strange, even terrifying things that are treated as totally run-of-the-mill, and as a result, become extremely funny. If ever a book recreated the humor of a slow double-take in print, this is the one.
This is a real treasure of a book and it's a shame Aiken isn't as well known in the United States as her contemporary Roald Dahl, whose work hers sometimes resembles (especially the incongruities of James and the Giant Peach or The Witches); hers is a quieter and gentler set of tales, though, without any of the misanthropy or malice. show less
Every story is either magical or very funny - many of them, both. There are lots of direct references to classical mythology, and several stories follow the familiar logic of fairy tales, which Aiken plays for real; she takes her fantasy seriously. Yet the stories are never cold or distant. Aiken's humor is dry and matter-of-fact, cutting through the mysticism as if to say, "Well, this is just how it is, I suppose." A little boy reads stories to inanimate objects, who are grateful for show more the company; a dragon curls up near a space heater like a cat; a princess rides to the ends of the earth to bring back a piece of the dark. The stories are full of odd, strange, even terrifying things that are treated as totally run-of-the-mill, and as a result, become extremely funny. If ever a book recreated the humor of a slow double-take in print, this is the one.
This is a real treasure of a book and it's a shame Aiken isn't as well known in the United States as her contemporary Roald Dahl, whose work hers sometimes resembles (especially the incongruities of James and the Giant Peach or The Witches); hers is a quieter and gentler set of tales, though, without any of the misanthropy or malice. show less
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Author Information
215+ Works 19,779 Members
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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Contains
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- A Small Pinch of Weather and Other Stories
- Original publication date
- 1969
- Dedication
- For my Mother and Martin
- First words
- Petronilla's Guest House, where the Bishop stayed, was next door to a little shop with small unimpressive windows containing a mixed-up tangle of things which nobody ever looked at, because they always walked straight into th... (show all)e shop and told Miss Sophy Ross what they wanted, and she always had it, whether it was three ounces of three-ply for a jersey or half a mile of mare's-tail for Tuesday.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)So, if you have any, you know where to send them.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Children's Books, Kids, Fantasy
- DDC/MDS
- 823.914 — Literature & rhetoric English & Old English literatures English fiction 1900- 1901-1999 1945-1999
- LCC
- PZ7 — Language and Literature Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Juvenile belles lettres
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 160
- Popularity
- 203,643
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.52)
- Languages
- English, Polish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 5
