Midwinterblood : Marcus Sedgwick

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The darkly poetic prose that beats at the heart of Midwinterblood is something that took me quite by surprise. I’ve known of Marcus Sedgwick and I’ve known of his work for a fair while now but never quite got down to it. That’s a shame, because this book, this curiously weird and haunting and viciously moving book, is quite something.

It opens with Eric Seven, a reporter visiting Blessed Island. What unfurls there is a series of stories, echoes almost, which reverberate over thousands of years. That’s almost too simplistic a description for the circular, curvaceous, back-tracking narrative at the heart of Midwinterblood. Perhaps a better way to describe it is to describe it as a Moebius strip of a book, constantly shifting and with a different orientation each time you look at it. But even that’s wrong, a poor way to describe these strange stories that stand separately and fit sequentially and then make you flick back and forward and leap from page to page as you discover the connections that make you pause, make you shiver and make your heart break just a little bit more.

So that’s a thing right there isn’t it? A book that cuts different wherever you cut into it. A book of such profound structure and art and grace that it makes you slow down in case you miss something. A book that makes you look twice at what you’re holding. A book that doesn’t really feel like a book at all. A book that sort of feels like it’s holding everything that you’ve ever needed to know about things.

It’s a strange, unsettling, and brilliant experience, this.

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Children’s Literature Studies : (eds) M. O. Grenby & Kimberley Reynolds

Children’s Literature Studies: A Research Handbook by M.O. Grenby

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the book I’d have wanted before I did my MA in Children’s Literature. That’s not to cast aspersions on my MA (which was, to be brief, one of the best accidents that ever happened to me), but rather to illustrate the differences that occur when researching children’s literature as opposed to, say, interrogating Romeo and Juliet.

Split into six parts, with several chapters in each, this book covers a substantial amount of ground. It discusses children’s literature research skills, looks at how to best utilise and find resources in libraries and archives, how to work with and manipulate visual texts, how to carry out historical research before delivering a penultimate introduction of key theoretical concepts and summing up with a brief but potent section on the changing form and format of children’s literature which is, as Reynolds states, “potentially the area where the greatest change in what constitute’s children’s literature will in the next decade” (206).

That quote is a particularly useful one to frame discussion of this book due to its awareness of the malleability of the nature of children’s literature. It’s spectacularly necessary for researchers who are beginning to work in an area, whatever that area may be, to understand the context of their creative practice. We stand on the shoulders of giants in whatever we do, and you need to know and to be able to comprehend and to rationalise where your point of view fits into this world. That’s something this book does very well; it introduces and frames a fluid, changing world, one that changes substantially depending on whichever reader may read the source text, and it also validates the necessity for us to engage in that dialogue.

There’s an inevitability in the world of research to see reference to the books of Judith Bell for research guidance. Whilst something like Doing Your Research Project: A Guide for First-Time Researchers in Education, Health and Social Science certainly helps to prepare you for the experience of research and dissertation / thesis writing and does so with classiness and verve, the generalistic nature of it cannot hope to address the subject specific nuances of children’s literature. As this book states: how do you transcribe a quote from a picture book? How do you reference a cut out teddy-bear? How do you rationalise the adult vs child reader and how do you understand the role you play in both instances?

It may not have all the answers here, but it helps you in figuring out how to frame the question. And that’s one of the greatest skills you need when you start to question and look at children’s literature, you need to be able to understand what and why you’re doing what you’re doing. Children’s Literature Studies : A Research Handbook is an excellent start in that process.

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The use of Framing and Composition in Ellen and Penguin : Clara Vulliamy

I’ve spoken before about how much I love Clara Vulliamy’s skill with picture books. She’s got an awareness and respect – and love – for the medium that translates into some very good and very smart books. It was with some excitement when I discovered Ellen and Penguin and the New Baby nestling on the bottom shelves of my library.

Ellen and Penguin and the New Baby is a very sensitive and  charming book that is practically a lesson in frames and composition. So I thought I’d share some of that with you by looking at how Ellen is treated throughout the book.

Fig 1: Opening Double Page Spread

The opening double page spread is our introduction to Ellen and the book. The text is as follows: L) “Ellen had a new baby brother” R) “Penguin wasn’t sure if he liked new baby brother much”. And this is where it started to hit me, that thing about composition and framing. Look at that picture of Ellen on the right hand side. Look at the way she’s almost imperceptibly closer to the right hand side of the page. And look at how she’s bursting out of the page. What do we gain from this? We learn that it’s not Penguin who isn’t sure – it’s Ellen. We learn that she is an exuberant character because even the frame of the image, the frame that is contentedly unbroken around her baby brother, cannot contain her. And we learn that there is a world of difference between her and her baby brother. He looks out towards the reader, forcing an eyeline connection, whilst  Ellen glances warily across at him.

This is what I mean when I talk about picture books inculcating a visual literacy. If you read the text and solely the text which displaces the emotions onto Penguin, you’d think it was a story about Penguin. But it’s not. It’s a story about Ellen and her not quite knowing how to act around this thing that has come into her life, her unease and wariness and nervousness around this tiny baby brother. And all of that’s on this spread, right here.

Fig 2: Swings

I fell in love with the following spread (Fig 2) because it reinforces that ‘bigness’ of this apparently small and simple narrative. The text reads: L)Everywhere Ellen and Penguin went,” R) “the baby came too”. The thing to love about this spread is Ellen, yet again, and the use of frames and white space. In the first image Ellen is swinging out of the frame. She’s broken the boundary of the page. She’s caught, mid swing, with the intimation that she’s got more to go. She’s only just begun. Her face is that mixture of nerves and excitement that come when you swing.

And then in the second image – she’s pulled back. She’s back at the start of her swing, momentum gone, her feet being tucked back inside the frame. She’s being controlled again by the image, made to conform to the rules that come with having a new baby brother. And talking of that baby brother – he’s here. Suddenly the image isn’t just Ellen – it’s him as well. She’s having to share an almost equal split with him.

There’s another moment in the book that struck me and it’s in Fig 3. On the previous page, Ellen’s old mobile has just been given to the baby: “The baby was given Ellen’s old mobile / with the woolly sheep hanging down” (I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned it, but when I use a slash in a section where I’m quoting something, it is to indicate a line break. So now you know).

Fig 3: Toys

What’s happening in Fig 3 is the biggest incursion into the white space yet. The text reads: ” “Penguin’s cross,” said Ellen. / “He likes that mobile.” “. See here how the book can barely contain Ellen. She’s so very cross ; she’s spilling out out of the  boundaries of the frame and storming towards the page turn. Everything about this is wanting you to turn the page. The way her toys fall towards it, the way her body is mid-stomp towards it, but the way Ellen’s turned back, wanting to be noticed, wanting to be valued like she was before adds a whole new level to the piece.

There’s also such a sense of trapped motion here in all these highlighted moments. Ellen is a child who seems to thrive on being able to DO and to BE and she – just – can’t. Not now. Not when she doesn’t know how to be.

These are all images and visual tensions which are resolved in the final pages. If you’re wary of spoilers look away now.

Fig 4: Ellen

In Figure 4, one of the final images,, Ellen is dancing “round and round” with Penguin. Compare this with Figure 1. Here Ellen is the frame, she’s bright and vivid and dominating it wholly. But she’s dominating it in a positive manner – she’s not escaping any visual lines (thereby constraints) and she’s not doing it by leaving anyone in the background of the image. She’s doing it by being Ellen – and by being her properly.

It’s lovely. I really like Vulliamy’s work, it gives me so much to look and to see and to ‘interrogate’ (though that’s really not quite the best word at this juncture, it is all I can come up with!). I’d really reccommend her as one of the authors you use if you’re wanting to introduce yourself to picture books and to the sheer potential and power of what they can achieve.

Ella’s Big Chance : Shirley Hughes

Ella’s Big Chance: A Jazz-Age Cinderella by Shirley Hughes

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There’s a richness to everything Shirley Hughes produces, and it’s this richness which comes to the forefront of Ella’s Big Chance. This, as the front cover, states is ‘a fairy tale retold’. It is a retelling of Cinderella, set in ‘the jazz-age’. And it is practically glowing with riches.

Cinderella is such an archetypal story that it needs very little precis. It is the story of a girl, her wicked stepmother and a night on the town that Cinderella will never forget.

In this story, we meet Ella, the daughter of Mr Cinders. The two of them run a dressmaking shop ‘in a quiet but elegant part of town’. There’s an air of faded gentility from the start as the sun eases through the windows to illustrate the shop – the colours, living, under the touch of Ella and her father.

Ella herself is something particularly glorious. Drawn as a sort of Gina Lollobrigida meets Sophia Loren hybrid both facially and physically, her hair close cropped into a wild bob, she’s an all too rare and incredibly beautiful creation. I loved her.

As ever in a Hughes book, there’s a deep awareness of time and the experience of the reader. She’s never selfish in her illustrations, there’s always some sort of – look at me – moment to every scene. The majority of the pages are constructed in a half and half scenario, a white block of text playing next to, or opposite a full colour image. What’s particularly interesting in these pages is that the majority of the text sections have a sort of ‘transitory’ image in pen and ink. These simple black and white moments carry a lot of the book until the ball, and they do so because of their elegance. They transition the reader from scene to scene, joining the story together in a sort of visual stitching. Hughes is very skilled at not letting you go once she has you.

When we reach the ball scene, which is something we’re always waiting for in a Cinderella story, it is not disappointing. Hughes goes for it and produces images that are just – richness. They are luscious and edible and dreamlike all at the same time. She balances the vivid intensity of the moment with human touches. When Ella arrives at the ball, walking down the stairs in her silver dress that is visually stunning, Hughes throws in moments all over the scene. A gentleman at the edge of the far page has eyes for nobody but Ella even though his partner is talking; a group of women stare in shock and distaste at this competitor, whilst another woman serene in her duties as host holds out her arm to greet Ella who pauses, so very briefly, at the stairs to close her eyes and savour the moment.

It’s worthwhile to note that in this book Hughes designed all of the dresses. So when you read it, remember this and note her use of colours and shapes. See how Ella in her black shift dress is the centre of the picture, always, linked by the black and white images that thread through this book and yet somehow, always in the shadows, her dress blurring into the darkness of the shop and the cellar. Watch the peacock nature of one of Ella’s step-sisters, posing in her vivid red dress, uncaring that she blocks up half of the image and steals focus from her sister. Look at the way Ella’s ball dress is conjured from the night and the stars and the silvery magic of her fair godmother.

Look a this book, and treasure it, and take your time over it. And then do it all over again. It’s a book that rewards slow, leisurely, indulgent reading.

(And it gives you the most perfect, perfect of conclusions).

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I wrote a thing

Hi. Here’s the first three chapters  of a thing I wrote.  *runs away and hides*

Two Sams at the Chalet School

Two Sams at the Chalet School by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Two Sams at the Chalet School is a book of peaks and troughs and near-unbearable coincidence. So the same old thing really.

Samantha Van Der Byl and Samaris Davies are two new girls at the Chalet School. Although they’re different ages, and in different forms, they’re drawn into being friends with each other FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON. It’s sort of glorious the way Brent-Dyer can’t resist going THERE’S A CONNECTION CAN YOU GUESS WHAT IT IS with them, and then when that connection is revealed it’s sort of glorious how a little part of me dies each time.

Two Sams is also full of some nicely telling ideological moments representative of the series as a whole. I’m always pleased to see the recurrence of Nina Rutherford who is a bit of a fascination of mine, and it’s fascinating to see that the issues Brent-Dyer previously had with writing her are still in situ. I don’t think she ever quite found the same level of comfort with Nina and her ‘extreme’ genius, as she did with somebody like Margia Stevens say, and so Nina remains an awkwardly drawn, and very stiff character.

It’s also interesting to compare and contrast the treatment of Nina in this book with the treatment given to Con Maynard. Con is one of those characters who is never quite allowed to live in the way she’s been written to be. I’ve written more about this here.

As a whole though, Two Sams suffers from a lack of focus. I’m never really sure who we’re meant to root for, whether it’s a good thing that THE MYSTERIOUS CONNECTION is what it is, and whether we’re really meant to care. There are moments when the old Brent-Dyer skills shine (say, with Phil in particular) but as a whole it’s a written by numbers affair. One for completionists and not to be read after Adrienne and the Chalet School otherwise you will collapse from coincidence-overload.

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I have read a death

I have read a death, and I am falling, failing, falling. I am living this life, this life already and never lived, and I am living it as my own. It hurts - 

- I have read a death. I am holding her, wishing I could hold her, and yet still so far away. She is touchless, locked from me. Lost inside me. Lost from me. Outside, inside, never quite there.

I have read a death. I have read it a thousand times before and yet each time it comes to me new. It comes without warning, and it comes with knives, sharp and ready to cut me open.

I have read a death, and I am lost. I am caught in the shadows, the rising darkness that pulls me to the edge and makes me see the nothingness beyond it.

I have read a death. I will never be unable to unread it. I will never be able to take it back. I will never be able to stop this from happening. I will never be able to just – be – with this person. I will never be able - 

I have read a death.

And I am blinded by it.