Mr. Franklin has fallen off his ladder and has a cast. His neighbor Mrs. Allum and her granddaughter Bet come to help him with domestic duties. Mr. Franklin asks Bet to go and sit on a log near the river and read aloud from a book about Earthworms by Charles Darwin. This unusual request by Mr. Franklin and even more unusual and miraculous events come to pass. Young Bet becomes friends with a mole!
The mole tells his lengthy adventurous story to Bet. She tries to understand his mammal life, and he tries to understand her humanity.
The mole asks pleadingly for Bet to help him, in the process she will learn the full meaning of the word friend.
A talking mole is quite original. Most animal stories seem to be mice, rats, bears, dogs, cats; but a mole? I liked it.
Bet is an unpretentious young girl. She is neither referred to as a beauty nor anything else, the focus is on her character of personality. I was so happy to read a book where character meant more than outward appearance.
There are a few drawings in the book, I consider them snippets that add to the story. There is great attention to fine details.
I really liked this book and enjoyed reading it!
Published by
Greenwillow Books, a division of Harper Collins in 2004
For Ages 8 and Up
200 Pages
Link @ B&N:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/little-gentleman-philippa-pearce/1103014717Link @ Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Little-Gentleman-Philippa-Pearce/dp/0060731605/ref=sr_1_1_title_2_har?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340111267&sr=1-1&keywords=the+little+gentlemanBoth books must be bought through other sellers.
Now Reading: Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady
Just Finished: George Washington, Spymaster: How the Americans Outspied the British and Won the Revolutionary War, Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, Shug
I was really looking forward to finishing up Madame Chiang Kai-Shek this weekend, but I left it at work, because I'm smooth like that. Ah well. Here are some great, classic works of children's literature that I really should have read when I was 12.
The Boggart by Susan Cooper
The Volnik family has inherited an old, Scottish castle. They can't keep it, but they go off to Scotland to see it and get it ready for sale. They decide to have some of the furniture shipped back to Canada, but that's not all that comes--the castle's Boggart, a practical joke playing spirit, has gotten trapped in one of the boxes and has landed in a modern, large city.
The Boggart is full of good-natured mischief and he does like
some things about modern living--pizza for one, and electricity. Where the youngest Volnik, Jessup, enjoys this behavior, the older one, Emily, gets blamed for it-- the Boggart's well meaning actions often land her in trouble. Eventually, she is accused of causing psychic disturbances and it looks like she will have to be hospitalized. The Boggart feels terrible, but everything he tries to help just makes things worse. All he really wants it to go home, but how?
I would have loved this book when I was 12. I liked the portrayals of small village life in Scotland and how the Boggart tried to fit into his new surroundings. I liked the kids, too. Part of the problem is that it's a high-tech solution, but, given that this book came out in the early 90s, the technology is so horribly out of date that it seems a bit laughable now. The Boggart's mischief also would have been a lot more humorous at the age of 12 then I found it at the age of 26.
Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
Tom is shipped off to spend the summer at his aunt and uncle's flat when his brother comes down with measles. Not only does he have to live there, but, he's confined to the flat because he's been exposed to the disease. One night Tom hears the clock downstairs strike 13 and finds a garden that only exists in this lost hour. During his time in the garden, Tom befriends a small girl, Hatty, who is often ignored by her older (male) cousins. Tom knows that Hatty doesn't exist in his time plane and has to find a way to stay with his aunt and uncle.
I think the thing that got me the most was the timing in this book. There are a a few scenes of Tom and Hatty meeting and then you see Tom no longer missing his brother and being distraught at the thought of leaving his aunt and uncle's (and therefore the garden). I thought that these scenes were just representative of a long and building friendship, but then you find out that Tom's only been there for a little over a week (and he didn't get to the garden the first few nights). It just didn't make sense. I also found the ending twist painfully obvious, but I think that Pearce was a pioneer in this respect. This is, however, one of Silvey's 100 best books for children. When I was 12, the wonder and magic of the garden would have captivated me a lot more and I would not have noticed the weird timing and I don't think I would have figured out the ending so soon.
Five Children and It by E. Nesbit
Five children are staying at a country house and are enthralled by all the freedom it has to offer. While playing in a nearby gravel pit, they find a Psammead (a sand fairy) who will grant them their wishes, but everything they wish for goes horribly wrong.
This was disappointing, because it became painfully obvious that my childhood favorite, Half Magic, completely ripped off the plot from this book (but totally did it better). Edgar gives full credit and props to Ms. Nesbit, but still, completely heartbreaking.
Philippa Pearce's novel, Tom's Midnight Garden
won the prestigious Carnegie Medal in 1958 and has been dramatised a number of times (more on that shortly).
When Tom Long's younger brother, Peter, gets measles (back in the days before all children were automatically immunised against this illness), Tom is sent to stay with his aunt and uncle in their small flat which has no garden. Since Tom may be infectious, he's not allowed to go out and, lacking exercise and eating more than usual (thanks to the rich diet his aunt is supplying), Tom is not sleeping at night. The only thing that interests Tom is the strange grandfather clock in the hall of the big house which has been divided into flats. The clock seems to have its own ideas about time, especially after midnight when it's in the habit of striking thirteen! Finding himself compelled to investigate, Tom slips out of the back door, whilst his aunt and uncle sleep, and finds himself in an astonishing garden that's in full bloom, instead of in the expected back yard containing dustbins and a car under a tarpaulin.
Tom explores the garden, rather nervously at first and discovers that four children live in the house with this magnificent garden: three are boys and one is a girl. Unfortunately for Tom, who would have liked to play with James, only the boys' cousin, Hatty, seems able to see him - and she believes he's a ghost. In fact, Tom does behave rather like a ghost - he's able to walk through walls and doors, and he leaves no footprints. But the pair make friend and have plays some wonderful, absorbing games, climbing trees and hiding in special places. Only Abel, the gardener, seems to pay any attention to Hatty's strange, solitary games, and if he can see anything at all he says nothing about it, merely hanging on to his Bible.
However, something strange happens to Time, even in this fantastic garden, because although Tom goes to play with Hatty every night during his stay with his aunt and uncle, she seems to be growing up fast. And as Hatty grows up, Tom seems to her to be growing fainter. They manage to share one last adventure before Tom has to go back to his parents and brother, and the start of the new school year. This adventure involves a pair of skating boots, a secret hiding place, and the two children wearing the same pair of skates at the same time.
This is a terrific story and I can quite see why it's become a classic of children's literature. It's been dramatised on a number of occasions: the BBC produced a full-cast dramatisation audiobook, as well as filming it as a mini-series more than once. There's also a full-length movie. I shall have a look for the movie or one of the mini-series in a few months time (once the images from the book are out of my head and I can do the visual dramatisation justice).
I reported on Christmas Eve, that Philippa Pearce had passed away. At the time, I had only read and reviewed one of her books - the very charming, A Dog So Small, which I read and loved as a child (despite being a cat lover!). I'm waiting for Pearce's classic novel Tom's Midnight Garden to be available, but in the meantime, I borrowed Minnow on the Say on the recommendation of David Langford (in his award winning Ansible ezine).
Minnow on the Say isn't fantasy - it's the tale of a treasure hunt, set in 1930s England when David Moss, the middle child of a bus driver and a housewife, finds a lovely, if badly neglected canoe bumping up again his father's landing stage the River Say is swollen by rain. He desperately wants to keep the canoe, but his father urges him to find the owner, who turns out to be Adam Codling. Adam's the last of the now-impoverished Codling family who have occupied the banks of the Say for centuries. The only way that the Codling estate can be saved (and Adam avoid being sent to relatives in Birmingham), is if he and his new friend, David, can find the family treasure that a Codling ancestor hid during the late 16th century, just before the Spanish Armada set sail. The boys have only a single clue, a four-line poem, and their canoe, which David has named the Minnow. They spend the summer holiday on the treasure hunt, covering a lot of the local countryside. The book also covers a lot of territory: poverty, mourning, greed, the nature of marriage and of friendship, class relations, village life, and more.
However, you shouldn't read this book expecting misty nostalgia. Pearce's love of village and river life shines through the prose - she grew up on the River Cam in the village of Great Shelford near Cambridge - but so does her experience of the London Blitz and the trauma of World War II. You might never read a more painful account of the ravages of mourning as those scenes in which Adam’s grandfather, whose only son was killed during the Great War, fails to remember that his son is long dead and the boy who shares his home is actually his grandson. Adam's mother died shortly after giving birth to Adam, her own grief for her husband was as strong as her father-in-law's, so Adam has been brought up by his Aunt Dinah. She is a strong character but resigned to the fate that seems about to befall the last of the Codlings, since the treasure has never been found.
This is a lovely book that manages to maintain the suspense through 26 leisurely chapters - I highly recommend Minnow on the Say.
It was a charming book. After getting my daughter to read Tom's Midnight Garden (a childhood favorite), she asked for more books by the same author. We both liked this one a lot- you are right about the slow pace, but we both thought it was lovely and a good read.
It really is a lovely story - I'm very glad I read it...