Tag: children’s literature

It’s International Children’s Book Day today, April 2nd | And Emmylou Harris’s birthday | Anyone notice?

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International Children's Books Day Poster 2012

To my shame I had not noticed, to be honest, until now that today is  International Children’s Book Day (ICBD). But since 1967, on or around Hans Christian Andersen’s birthday, 2nd April, ICBD is celebrated to “inspire a love of reading and to call attention to children’s books”. Or at least that is the intention. I cannot say I have until this morning felt my attention called. But celebrate children’s books and inspire a love of books we should! The Day is organised by the International Board on Books for Young People, but there is no mention of it at the IBBY UK website.

Looking back to what I posted two years ago, I am tempted to think nothing much has changed. And to remind you all once again that it is also the birthday of the great Emmylou Harris!

International Children’s Book Day today, is suitable to celebrate  as well as Hans Christian Andersen, whose birthday it is. This year  the international sponsor, Spain, chose the theme ‘Un libro te espera, búscalo!’ which means ‘A book is waiting for you, find it!’. It seems like most people in the UK did not find the day, let alone the waiting book, if the lack of public mention here is an indicator. (Also, for all who share my taste in music, it is the birthday of Emmylou Harris.)

Rosemary Sutcliff shows ‘total imaginative penetration of historical material’

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The root of the matter is no secret, yet it defies exact interpretation beyond saying that the vital spark of Rosemary Sutcliff’s books, from The Eagle of the Ninth onwards, is the total imaginative penetration of the historical material. The books seem to be written from the inside, so that the reader’s identification with the chief character carries him further into the felt life of the time than many other books which are made up of the skilful but detached articulation of the fruits of research. One feels that Rosemary Sutcliff is less concerned to write historical narrative than to reconstruct, in the child’s response to her creative imagination, a strong feeling for and involvement with the people of this mist-bound, huddling, winter-dark island at the periods when the invaders came, Romans, Saxons, Norsemen.

Source: Margaret Meek (1962) Rosemary Sutcliff. New York, N.Y.: Henry Z. Walck .

Nuns, monks and friars in the historical fiction and children’s books of Rosemary Sutcliff

Anthony Lawton2 Comments

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!)?

Monks, friars and nuns in Rosemary Sutcliff's books

Favourite not quite fictional monk | Imogen Russell Williams cites Rosemary Sutcliff’s Rahere in The Witch’s Brat

Anthony Lawton1 Comment

The Witch's Brat by Rosemary Sutcliff (Inside cover)In The Guardian today, Imogen Russell Williams writes about memorable holy men – both saintly and sinful – who ‘walk the hushed cloisters of children’s fiction’. Her favourite is from Rosemary Sutcliff‘s work. Rahere’s tomb is at the Church of Saint Bartholomew the Great, in Smithfield, London.

My favourite of all not-quite-fictional monks comes late to his calling – Rahere, Henry I’s one-time jongleur, who later became an Augustinian canon and founded St Bartholomew’s hospital. In The Witch’s Brat, Rosemary Sutcliff creates a seductive, imaginative portrait of a charismatic and difficult man, gifted in demanding the best from people even when it’s almost too painful to give. It’s Rahere who gives Lovel, the titular protagonist, hope that he may become a healer, rather than remaining an unwell burden on the priory that takes him in. He’s dark, slender, encountered first in motley and then in the sober canon’s habit … it dawns on me that perhaps my early monastic yearnings might have had something to do with a hopeless passion for a jester-turned-ascetic.

Other monks she cites include Brother Snail in Pate Walsh’s The Crowfield Curse; a monk in Thom Madley’s fantasy about  life in Glastonbury, Marco’s Pendulum; and the abbot in Terry Jones’s ‘gloriously surreal’ Nicobobinus.

Source: Force of habit: who are your favourite fictional monks?

Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical fiction took author Geraldine McCaughrean time-travelling

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Geraldine McCaughreanThe 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.

Source: Geraldine McCaughrean | My Red House.

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