I recall Rosemary, perched at her usual desk, reading out loud to my enraptured young son drafts of The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup, which was her first picture book. It was illustrated by Emma Chichester-Clark. In the UK , the eminent critic Naomi Lewis often reviewed Rosemary Sutcliff’s books. She praised The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup as ‘inspired’ and ‘distinguished’. An American critic thought it a ‘fast-paced fairy tale of loss and joyful reunion’ which was ‘beautifully illustrated’. Read More »
Tag: children’s books
Nuns, monks and friars in the historical fiction and children’s books of Rosemary Sutcliff
Stimulated by an article in The Guardian which recalled Rahere in The Witch’s Brat, I am trying to track down all the nuns, monks and friars in the historical novels and children’s books by Rosemary Sutcliff. Commenters at the Facebook page on Rosemary Sutcliff associated with this blog are helping … can you (if you have not already!)?
Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical fiction took author Geraldine McCaughrean time-travelling
The prestigious Carnegie Medal was once won by Rosemary Sutcliff, as well as multiple award-winning Geraldine McCaughrean (who has written more than 160 books, from picture books to adult novels). Interviewed at Red House, the web-based, self-styled ‘home of (buying) children’s books’, she spoke of the influence on her of Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical fiction.
Did you have any favourite children’s authors when you were a child and have they influenced your writing at all?
I loved Elyne Mitchell’s Brumby books because I loved all things horsey. One day I shall write a horse book and then all those pony and horse books I read as a child will come into their own.
I also loved Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical fiction – The Eagle of the Ninth, Brother Dusty Feet … – They taught me how a book could take you time travelling to a different age. That must be why I have written so many books set in the past. Adventure is so much easier to come by there.
Rosemary Sutcliff won the Carnegie Medal in 1959, not for either of the books mentioned by McCaughrean, but for The Lantern Bearers. She was runner-up in 1972 with Tristan and Iseult. The Medal is perhaps the UK’s most prestigious prize for writing for children, awarded every year in the UK to the writer of an outstanding book for children. The Library Association started to award the prize in 1936, in memory of the Scottish-born philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), a great supporter of reading and libraries. The medal is now awarded by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.
Rosemary Sutcliff also won the Boston-Globe Horn Book Award for Tristan and Iseult in 1972; was highly commended by the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1974; won The Other Award for Song for a Dark Queen in 1978; and won The Phoenix Children’s Book Award for The Mark of the Horse Lord in 1985, and The Shining Company in 2010
Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novel ‘Bonnie Dundee’ | American 1985 Review
In a brief review in The Dallas Morning News in 1985 (12 May) Cherie Clodfelter commented that the historical novel for children and young adults, Bonnie Dundee by Rosemary Sutcliff (published in USA by Dutton) was:
… historical fiction at its very best, a blend of fact and fiction. The writing style is immensely informative and engrossing, although the American teenager may lack the knowledge of British history to appreciate the complicated plot and the Scottish idiom. John Graham of Claverhouse (called Bonnie Dundee by his followers) was a Scottish Royalist who died fighting to keep the House of Stuart on the throne. Both the legendary leader whom King James entitled the Viscount Dundee and the period of history where battle was both elegant and horrible is carefully developed to maintain the pace of a suspenseful adventure story.
Dogs in the historical novels of Rosemary Sutcliff
Thinking of both historical fiction and dogs put Katherine Langrish, author of fantasy novels for young adults, in mind of Rosemary Sutcliff. Katherine believes that dogs in books are a “Good Thing”. She also believes that Rosemary Sutcliff “must easily win the title of Britain’s most loved writer of junior historical fiction”.
… Rosemary Sutcliff, whose books I devoured as a child … loved dogs, and there is a noble dog in many of her books: Whitethroat in Warrior Scarlet, Argos in Brother Dusty Feet. But for me the most iconic is Dog in Dawn Wind, the young war-hound that the boy Owain finds by moonlight on the ruins of the battlefield:
…it was something alive in the cold echoing emptiness of a dead world. It stood with one paw raised, looking at him, and Owain called, hoarsely, with stiff lips and aching throat: ‘Dog! Hai! Dog!’ … [It] came, slowly and uncertainly… once it stopped altogether; then it finished at the run and next instant was trembling against his legs. He was a young dog; the beautiful creamy hair of his breast-patch was stained and draggled, and his muzzle bloody in the moonlight… ‘Dog, aiee, dog, we are alone then. There’s no one else. We will go together, you and I.’
The brilliance of the writing is to show us, in the lonely and innocent terror of the dog and what he has been made to do, the full dreadfulness of war.
Source: Seven Miles of Steel Thistles
This is used with Katherine’s permission (thank you!). She wonders also in an email to me if “perhaps Rosemary wrote about dogs as a way of owning them …”. Actually, Rosemary always owned dogs.
(Original post in March, 2010 First Revision 14 Feb 2012. List below added 10 March 2014))
- Brother Dusty-Feet: Hugh runs away from home to protect Argos.
- The Eagle of the Ninth: Cub is Esca’s tame wolf cub.
- The Silver Branch: Curoi’s hound is called Cullen.
- Outcast: Canog is a mistreated mongrel owned by Beric, whose childhood dog was Gelert.
- The Lantern Bearers: Artos’s dog Cabal.
- Warrior Scarlet: Whitethroat; Fand the Beautiful.
- The Bridge-Builders: Math, a Hibernian wolfhound.
- Knight’s Fee: Joyeuse.
- Dawn Wind: Dog, a survivor of Owain’s Last Stand.
- Blood Feud: Brindle is a cattle dog.
- Bonnie Dundee: Caspa.
- The Shining Company: Gelert.
- Sword Song: Bjarni murders a man for kicking Astrid, and Hugin follows him home from Dublin.
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 