Emily (1959)

I've run into technical difficulties, so am resorting to posting sans images. Which is a pity, as this book has very lovely paintings. The cover can be seen here.

Emily (aka Emily, The Traveling Guinea Pig)

Emma Smith, il. Katherine Wigglesworth

1959, an Astor book published by McDowell, Obolensky

Emily was a guinea pig who loved to travel.

When Emily decides to take an excursion to the sea, she worries that her brother Arthur, a gardener who tends to be somewhat hapless, will be lost without her. No worries, assures her brother. He'll be fine. So Emily sets out.

She carried an umbrella and a capacious canvas bag. They hampered her walking, but she did not know how she could go on a journey with less. She had to have an umbrella as shelter against the sun or the wind or the rain. And as for the bag, it was full to the brim of neccessary things. Her painting equipment and her diary ; food and a change of clothes ; kerosene lamp and tea kettle, a rug, hammock, a ball of string, a pair of scissors ; adhesive tape and iodine in case of an accident, and needs and thread in case she tore her dress ; also a box of matches. Emily liked to be ready for anything.

She meets various creatures, but her most important encounter is with the rather silent weasel, who helps her carry her useful but heavy bag, shares a meal, and is a rather sinister presence.

Meanwhile, back at the house, Arthur and his bachelor buddies are having a wonderfully lazy time eating and sleeping and not lifting a paw to do chores.

Will Emily reach the sea? Will the weasel prove predatory? Will Arthur clean the kitchen before Emily returns home? It's all very sweet, and accompanied by beautiful Kate Wigglesworth paintings.

About the Author

1923-

aka Elspeth Hallsmith

The online verdict seems to be that she had a brief, early flash of high respectability with her first two novels, then vanished off the face of the earth after starting a family. She re-emerged recently under the support of novelist Susan Hill.

About the Illustrator

____ - 1986

Katherine Semple married biologist Vincent Wigglesworth in 1928, and they had four children. She lived in Lavenham, a village in Suffolk, England. The village made the news this year after scenes from the upcoming Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows film were shot there. Lavenham's scenes will be used to bring to life Godric's Hollow, the place where Harry lost his parents and acquired his scar.

Other books - children's

Emily's Voyage (1966) il. Irene Haas (sequel)

Out Of Hand

No Way Of Telling

Other books - adult

Maidens' Trip

The Far Cry

The Opportunity Of A Lifetime

The Great Western Beach (memoir)

Links

A list of guinea pigs in fiction

The original publisher, Astor Honor

Lavenham website

Sir Vincent Wigglesworth obituary

Suffolk Free Press story on Harry Potter filming

Thursday's Child

Thursday's Child
Noel Streatfeild, il. Peggy Fortnum
1970, Random House

When young Margaret is sent to an orphanage in 1900 England, the cruel Matron instantly divines that here is a child whose spirit must be broken.

"One of those independent children," she agreed. "It will take some time before she is molded to our shape. Send her to me when she comes in from school tomorrow. She shall have ten strokes on each hand. That will teach her who is the ruler in this establishment."

Good luck, cruel Matron. Margaret is a sturdy, outspoken child whose remorseless imagination and strong sense of her own story - she was left on a doorstep as a baby, with fine baby clothes and a secret benefactor who sent gold to her caretakers every year for ten years - makes her impervious. She also has an ally in Lavinia Beresford, a fellow orphan who has gained employment in a big house as a scullery maid, and her two little brothers, Peter and Horatio, who are fellow inmates at St. Luke's.

Matron is a standard big, evil woman. Lavinia and her brothers are the standard upper-class children fallen upon hard times and Margaret is a standard chutzpah-laden upstart. Yet despite the cliches, it's a good, satisfying read. Perhaps because of kid-lit gems like this:

In the kitchen there was a cupboard called "The Housemaid's Cupboard." This was always bulging with snacks: game, cold chicken, cold meats, as well as fruit puddings and cakes. Any of the staff could help themselves from that cupboard whenever they felt hungry. Lavinia took a plate and piled on it a rich assortment of food. Then, fetching a knife and fork, she sat down at the table and ate the lot.

The book pays subtle honor to the classic orphan stories; there's more than a hint of Mary, of Anne, of Sarah Crewe. But Margaret is a 20th century heroine, albeit early; at the end, when she's offered the standard dream outcome for an orphan - a rich ready-made family - she reacts:

Her chin shot into the air. "Thank you very much but I don't want to be anyone's daughter. I was not found like an ordinary baby. I had three of everything all marked with crowns and each year lots of money was paid to keep me. I have friends, Hannah and the rector, and I've got a stamp so I am writing to ask them to come and see me act Little Lord Fauntleroy."

Other Information
This book has a sequel, Far To Go, and was made into a television miniseries by the BBC in 1973. This is available on TV.com

Websites
The White Gauntlet

Other Books
Ballet Shoes
Circus Shoes
Dancing Shoes
Family Shoes
Movie Shoes
New Shoes
Skating Shoes
Theater Shoes
Traveling Shoes
The Children On The Top Floor
The Family At Caldicott Place
The Magic Summer
Queen Victoria

The Girl Who Ran Away (1969) (aka Charley)

Charley
also published as The Girl Who Ran Away
Joan G. Robinson, il. Prudence Seward
1969, Coward-McCann

"I'll run away," said Charley, "that's what I'll do."

Charley, whose real and unused name is Rowan, is a prickly, rambunctious and imaginative girl who likes to draw and hear the story of Lizzie Scrotten.

The story of Lizzie Scrotten was a story of the bad old days, when poor people starved, and people without homes went tramping from workhouse to workhouse.

This beloved story is told and retold, patiently, by the family cook. Charley's favorite part is when Lizzie is alone at night, homeless, and walking along looking longingly into the lighted windows of the cozy homes she's passing. A middle child trapped between a clever older brother and a sickly little brother, Charley dreams of being alone and outcast, set apart.

When she's sent to stay with a favorite aunt, Charley's thrilled - until she reads a note not meant for her eyes, and realizes that aunt Louie hadn't wanted her to come. Betrayed, Charley gets off the train early and sneaks into town instead of going to Louie's house. Finding an old chicken house, Charley seizes on her chance to become Lizzie Scrotten. And for a season, the protected middle-class child becomes a free-spirited child of poverty - albeit a somewhat romantic, Boxcar Childrenesque poverty.

It was dawn when she woke properly. The sky was lightening and the air was full of the twitter of birds. She sprang up and scrambled through the hedge, which was hung with great glistening spiders' webs.

Sleeping in her chicken house and drinking from a garden hose in a nearby yard, Charley keeps a watchful eye on her aunt's house and plays different roles with different people she encounters - a gypsy with a local child, a mute with a shopkeeper, a cripple with a minister - for a variety of reasons both practical and playful. Her most meaningful encounter, though, is with a young man who is also running away, and the conversation they have about it. When a crisis comes, though, Charley discovers that she can't be Lizzie any longer.

A cheerful, interesting read that draws its power from the mundane-turned-fascinating details of Charley's hobo life, and her quick, deep store of tales to spin for the strangers in her aunt's village.

About the author
Most famous for her picture books about Teddy Robinson.

Other books
When Marnie Was There
The Adventures of Uncle Lubin
The Dark House of the Sea Witch
Dear Teddy Robinson
Teddy Robinson Himself
Mary-Mary Stories
Meg and Maxie
The Summer Surprise

Similar Stories
The Boxcar Children Gertrude Chandler Warner 1924
Roller Skates Ruth Sawyer 1936

Enemy Brothers
Constance Savery, il. by Henry C. Pitz
1943, Longmans, Green & Co.

When R.A.F. officer George Ingleford visits his sailor brother Ginger, he happens upon a group of Norweigans who had been picked up while escaping to England. And among the Norweigans is a German prisoner, a 12-year-old Hitler Youth who angrily says his name is Max Eckermann. George, known to his large family as Dym, recognizes with a shock the little brother who was kidnapped 12 years ago. But when Dym lays claim to the boy and takes him home to an English house stuffed with cousins and refugees, the fun begins. Max flatly refuses to believe he's the long-lost Anthony Ingleford, and wages a private war of resistance to convince the family to send him home. He sings a German nationalist anthem in church, breaks the blackout by shining a huge beacon from the roof of the house, and runs away again and again. Dym, stationed at a nearby air base, patiently returns again and again to find him and soothe the ruffled family feathers. Dym realizes that Max is driving everyone to distraction, but he promised his mother on her deathbed that he would find his brother. Also, he has the strong sense of saving Max from the Nazi mentality, a sense he tries to explain to his younger cousins.

He was being slowly poisoned in Germany. He was getting the poisonous teaching that is given to all Germans under Nazi rule... They are being taught that Germany is a master nation with the right to rule the world, trampling down the smaller nations, robbing them, torturing them, turning them into mindless, soulles slaves. They are taught that lies and spying, treachery and cruelty and broken promises don't matter if they are done for the good of Germany. They are taught that they must be mercilessly hard because pity and mercy are only shown by weak fools. That's all poison. It poisons the soul. I couldn't leave Tony to drink it in.

Max, despite his resistance to being Tony - and British - has an unwilling fondness for Dym. And when he finally gets a chance to go back to Germany and the woman he knows as his mother, Dym and his values make it unexpectedly hard for Max to leave.

A well-written and engrossing novel whose characters are slightly quaint but strong and likeable. Some of the imagery is dated and the earnest tone can sound old-fashioned, but it's believable from people in the midst of wondering if the Nazi invasion is really going to suceed - in one chilling moment, a runaway Max contacts a child he knew back home, a child whose parents are double agents now living in England, and the boy responds to the surprise of seeing his little German classmate by asking coolly when did the invasion start? Also impressive is the lack of the smug bullying tone that is unfortunately very common in British children's books from the first half of the 20th century. A very good old book that makes a compelling dilemma out of what should seem like an automatic choice.

Reissued
Bethlehem Books

Other Books
The Reb And The Redcoats
The Royal Caravan
Joric And The Dragon (1964)
Scarlet Plume (1953)
Blue Fields (1947)
All Because Of Sixpence (1961)
Change With Me (Gateway)
Danny And The Alabaster Box (1949)
Young Elizabeth Green
Breton Holiday
Emeralds For The King (aka Green Emeralds For The King) (1938)
In Apple Alley (1966)
Magic In My Shoes
The Sea Queen
Gilly's Tower (Junior Gateway)
The Strawberry Feast
Welcome, Santza
To The City Of Gold
Dark House On The Moss
Lavender's Tree
Redhead At School
Meg Plays Fair
There Was A Key
Peter Of Yellow Gates
The White Kitling
Tabby Kitten
Thistledown Tony
Yellow Gates
Up A Winding Stair
The Drifting Sands (1971)
The Sapphire Ring
The Silver Angel
The Golden Cap (Gateway Series)
Five Wonders For Wyn (1960)
The City of Flowers
The Sea Urchins
The Good Ship Red Lily (1944)

About the Author
1897-1999
Savery wrote over sixty children's books, and lived to be 101. After taking an English degree at Oxford and a brief stint as a teacher, Savery went home to help her widower father, a clergyman, run his parish. She and her four sisters remained single throughout their lives; three of her sisters also became writers.

Obituary

I think it's only fair to mention first that I love Noel Streatfeild's books. Their heroines combine the tough-as-nails mental attitude of boarding school inmates with the hard-working ethic of dancers, and each one was filled with that mesmerizing and uniquely British talent for making horrific food and brutal living conditions sound utterly desirable. For the ultimate in this, see The Little Princess.

Dancing Shoes (originally published as Wintle's Wonders)
Noel Streatfeild, il. Richard Floethe
1957, Collins (U.K.) - 1958, Random House (U.S.)
Edition shown - Dell Yearling, 1981

When Rachel and Hilary Lennox's mother dies, they are taken in by their uncle Tom and his wife, Cora, who runs a London stage school for children. The talented little ballerina Hilary instantly hits it off with Cora, but quiet Rachel seems to rub her aunt the wrong way from the very beginning. The struggle to fit in and adapt to their new circumstances is complicated by their tempermental and spoiled cousin Dulcie, who is the uncontested star of the school.

One of the 'shoe' books from Streatfeild and one of several books she wrote about children studying the performing arts in professional schools in London, Dancing Shoes stands out by virtue of its look at the low end of the scale. The School of Dancing and Mrs. Wintle's Little Wonders are not aiming at the prestigious theatre and ballet - they're strictly chorus lines, troupes of cute kids with talent. Early on, it's mentioned that the Wonders have appeared on TV and in film - two art forms Streatfeild clearly considers second-class in her other books. Rachel, feeling that her mother wanted Hilary to be a 'real' dancer, ie, a ballerina, is frustrated by this divide - she wants Hilary to become a student at The Royal Ballet School, not learn to do high kicks in a chorus line. Hilary, on the other hand, adores the Wonders' costumes and lifestyle and longs to be old enough to get a license to work.

"But suppose I don't want to be made something of?"

Rachel's unhappy question is an attack on her aunt's incessant attempt to make her over into an attractive Wonder, and even the sympathetic Pursey - co-owner of the school and cozy housemother to the entire place - scolds her for her resistance. It is a standard Streafeild answer to make her misfit child a star at some other art; you get the sense that if they hadn't discovered their niche so speedily, they'd have been obligated to force themselves awkwardly into the spot chosen by their guardian.

One oddity, placing the book in an earlier era and different place, is the recurring mention of Hilary's being adopted. Initially, she's not included in Tom and Cora's offer to take in Rachel, and it's mentioned several times that she's not a 'real' sister. The children are adamant that they are sisters, but the adults seem a bit hung up on the adoption thing.

About the Author
1895-1986
The White Gaunlet - website about Noel Streatfeild

About the illustrator
1901-1988
Born in Germany, came to the U.S. in 1928. His wife Louise Lee Floethe was a writer. He also illustrated Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes, Circus Shoes, Theatre Shoes, Family Shoes, Tennis Shoes, and The Stranger In Primrose Lane.
Website

In Print?
Available at Random House

Other books (shoe books)
Ballet Shoes
Tennis Shoes
Circus Shoes
Party Shoes
Movie Shoes
Skating Shoes
Dancing Shoes
New Shoes
Traveling Shoes

The Diddakoi (aka Gypsy Girl)
Rumer Godden
1972, The Viking Press

Kezia - Kizzy - Lovell is a half-gypsy orphan being raised by her grandmother in a horse-drawn wagon. But Gran is old and they've stopped travelling, camping permanently in an orchard owned by the reclusive Admiral Cunningham Twiss. When Gran dies and Kizzy's remaining relatives plan to sell her old horse, Joe, to the knacker, she appeals to the Admiral for help. With Joe taken care of, however, Kizzy is in need of a home. She reluctantly agrees to go live with Miss Brooke, but battles between them, and between Kizzy and her suspicious schoolmates, throw her future into question.

Kizzy did not have toys, except an old skipping rope that Gran had bought with some jumbler - travellers are forever buying and selling things. Kizzy did not need toys when she had Joe. She combed him with an old curry comb and brushed his mane and tail; she would sit beside him in the grass, giving him buttercups, of which he was fond; if she lay down beside him he would sometimes push her with his nose; the breath from his nostrils was warm and now and again he would gently lick her face. A horse's lick is clean to a traveller.

Rumer Godden had a unique writing style, one where sentences wend onward until you'd think it was impossible for them to sustain their own weight. But they do. Her simultaneously romantic and practical view of childhood is also unique; her children are both brutal and pragmatic, in a way I do not find completely believable or appealing, but which is a refreshing change from the "What's wrong with poor little Devon that he stuck a pencil through his classmate's head?" approach.

Current Re-Issue
The Diddakoi was re-issued in 2008 by Macmillan, which has also re-issued several other Godden books for children.
http://www.panmacmillan.com/titles/displayPage.asp?PageTitle=Individual%20Title&BookID=404453

Adaptations
The Diddakoi was made into a TV-movie called Kizzi for the BBC.

About The Author
Raised in India, Godden spent much of her life living outside England. The autobiographical Two Under The Indian Sun is about her childhood, while Kingfisher Catch Fire is a novel which draws heavily on her experiences as a young woman living in the Himalayas. She also wrote the novels In This House Of Brede, Black Narcissus, The Battle of the Villa Fiorita and The River. Black Narcissus and The River were both made into films, as were several other works.

Other Children's Books by Godden
Godden wrote several books about dolls and doll houses.
The Doll's House
Four Dolls
The Fairy Doll
The Story of Holly and Ivy
Miss Happiness and Miss Flower
Little Plum

Home is a Sailor
Operation Sippacik
The Mousewife
Impunity Jane
The Old Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle
Mr McFadden's Hallowe'en
Mouse House
The Rocking Horse Secret
The Kindle of Kittens
Candy Floss
The Dragon Og
St Jerome and the Lion
The Valiant Chatti-Maker
Fu-Dog
The Little Chair
Listen to the Nightingale
The Kitchen Madonna

Related Websites
Rumer Godden Literary Trust
IMDB page for Kizzy