posted by Neil
The Graveyard Book just won
a literary award, which never gets old, and this one came with a medal, and also with a cheque. I thought, Hm. I have to get myself something with the cheque and I have to do it immediately, otherwise it will simply vanish into the day to day bank account of life, and I will never look at anything and go "Ah, that is the thing I got with my
Graveyard Book Award."
So I bought this. It's "The Murder Re-Enacted":
It's an E. H. Shepard illustration (he's most famous for illustrating Winnie the Pooh) from Kenneth Grahame's book The Golden Age. Kenneth Grahame wrote The Wind In The Willows, the story of Mole and Rat and Badger and of course, Mr Toad, also illustrated by Shepard.
I once read an essay by A.A. Milne telling people that, of course they knew Kenneth Grahame's work, he wrote The Golden Age and Dream Days, everybody had read them, but he also did this amazing book called The Wind in the Willows that nobody had ever heard of. And then Milne wrote a play called Toad of Toad Hall, which was a big hit and made The Wind in The Willows famous and read, and, eventually, one of the good classics (being a book that people continue to read and remember with pleasure), while The Golden Age and Dream Days, Grahame's beautiful, gentle tales of Victorian childhood, are long forgotten.
If there is a moral, or a lesson to be learned from all this, I do not know what it is.
Right. Off to K.N.O.W. St Paul to record the intro bits to my NPR piece on Audio Books, and I will play the Martin Jarvis-read GOOD OMENS on the car CD player all the way there.
I've got an eclectic mix of poems for you this week. First is "Ariel's Song" from The Tempest:
Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Curtsied when you have, and kiss'd
The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.
Hark, hark!
Bow-wow.
The watch-dogs bark.
Bow-wow.
Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them-Ding-dong, bell
I picked this because the second stanza is quoted twice in Robert Westall's The Machine Gunners
(which I read and reviewed on Tuesday).
Next is A A Milne's
The King's Breakfast
The King asked
The Queen, and
The Queen asked
The Dairymaid:
"Could we have some butter for
The Royal slice of bread?"
The Queen asked the Dairymaid,
The Dairymaid
Said, "Certainly,
I'll go and tell the cow
Now
Before she goes to bed."
The Dairymaid
She curtsied,
And went and told the Alderney:
"Don't forget the butter for
The Royal slice of bread."
The Alderney said sleepily:
"You'd better tell
His Majesty
That many people nowadays
Like marmalade
Instead."
The Dairymaid
Said "Fancy!"
And went to
Her Majesty.
She curtsied to the Queen, and
She turned a little red:
"Excuse me,
Your Majesty,
For taking of
The liberty,
But marmalade is tasty, if
It's very
Thickly
Spread."
The Queen said
"Oh!"
And went to his Majesty:
"Talking of the butter for
The royal slice of bread,
Many people
Think that
Marmalade
Is nicer.
Would you like to try a little
Marmalade
Instead?"
The King said,
"Bother!"
And then he said,
"Oh, deary me!"
The King sobbed, "Oh, deary me!"
And went back to bed.
"Nobody,"
He whimpered,
"Could call me
A fussy man;
I only want
A little bit
Of butter for
My bread!"
The Queen said,
"There, there!"
And went to
The Dairymaid.
The Dairymaid
Said, "There, there!"
And went to the shed.
The cow said,
"There, there!
I didn't really
Mean it;
Here's milk for his porringer
And butter for his bread."
The queen took the butter
And brought it to
His Majesty.
The King said
"Butter, eh?"
And bounced out of bed.
"Nobody," he said,
As he kissed her
Tenderly,
"Nobody," he said,
As he slid down
The banisters,
"Nobody,
My darling,
Could call me
A fussy man -
BUT
I do like a little bit of butter to my bread!"
I offer this because it was A A Milne's birthday yesterday.
Finally, today is the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe, so I thought I would link to an earlier Poetry Friday offering for the full text of Poe's poem, The Raven.
To my embarrassment, I forgot to check my list of author birthdays and have missed two recently, but have caught the third today ! Here there are, in chronological order:
Robert C O'Brien, author of (amongst others) Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Review), which won the 1972 Newbery Medal and was a childhood favourite of mine, was born on January 11, 1918.
I found out just too late in the day, yesterday, that Robert Cormier, author of The Chocolate War in 1974, which apparently became one of the fifty most frequently banned books in America's public libraries and schools in the 1990s, was born on January 17, 1928. I must confess I've never read The Chocolate War, but having learnt that fact about its banning, I'm curious to read it, just to find out why...
Finally, 18 January 1882 saw the birth of A A Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh. I don't recall reading Winnie as a child, but somewhere I possess a copy of Winnie the Pooh: Complete Collection of Stories and Poems, which I read with great curiosity when I was in my 20s.
Hi Michele,
I love The King's Breakfast! I almost did it for Poetry Friday several months ago. Thanks for sharing it.
You're welcome ! I just thought it was one of the less obvious poems of Milne's to choose... (And I'd already used "The More It Snows" before...)