Retro Childhood Review: The Dark is Rising
There was an endless variety of faces — gay, sombre, old, young, paper-white, jet-black, and every shade and gradation of pink and brown between — vaguely recognizable, or totally strange… [Will] thought: these are my people. This is my family, in the same way as my real family. The Old Ones. Every one is linked, for the greatest purpose in the world. I was going to start my review of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence with the first in the series, Over Sea, Under Stone, because it holds a certain place of nostalgia based on its similarity to other much loved childhood fiction like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, both being about a group of absurdly normal siblings doing something important. But as I considered what I wanted to read to finish out 2017, a year full of darkness for so many people, the only book that seemed appropriate was The Dark is Rising. Because what’s more relevant than a book about how one person can fight back the darkness by finding strength in the love and support of family, friends, and a world that is fighting with him? Especially when it’s full of winter holiday cheer.
Retro Childhood Review: Peter and the Wolf
Each character of this tale is represented by a corresponding instrument in the orchestra: the bird by a flute, the duck by an oboe, the cat by a clarinet playing staccato in a low register, the grandfather by a bassoon, the wolf by three horns, Peter by the string quartet, the shooting of the hunters by the kettle drums and bass drum. As I was driving home the other day, my local classical radio station played a recording of the Colorado Symphony’s orchestration of the symphony that made me fall in love with classical music when I was just a tiny little child. Whether I first heard this at my hippie community college preschool program or at home, I have no idea. I do know that my mother, a kindergarten teacher, was a firm believer in music education and we had oodles of children’s books that came with narrated tapes. But the one that has stuck with me after all these years is Sergei Prokofiev’s 1936 symphony, Peter and the Wolf (which you can listen to here).
Retro Childhood Review: A Serendipity Book
So on some Autumn morning Look into the frosty pool. You’ll see in your reflection That you’re a Flutterby too! This is a bit of an odd review, but as I was looking through my bookshelves I happened upon one of the most precious books in my collection, Flutterby, written by Stephen Cosgrove and illustrated by Robin James. It is so worn that I have no idea what color it started out, the pages are torn and marked with scribbles, and the title page is adorned with what must be one of my earliest signatures (and also the name of my best friend in kindergarten). Flutterby is such a delightful story that you can’t help but be charmed by the miniature Pegasus that desperately wants to figure out who she is. I turn to it whenever a child comes to visit, because the message is simple, but powerful, and accompanied by colorful illustrations. But Flutterby is only one such story in the long line of Serendipity Books, a series that began in 1974 when Stephen Cosgrove wanted something beautiful and affordable to read to his 3-year-old daughter.
Retro Childhood Review: The Egypt Game
But, actually, that was the way with all of the Egypt Game. Nobody ever planned it ahead, at least, not very far. Ideas began and grew and afterwards it was hard to remember just how. That was one of the mysterious and fascinating things about it. Not every single book that I read as a child was a science fiction or fantasy novel, just MOST of them. I have a feeling that the cover of Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s Newbery Honor book The Egypt Game must have tricked me into believing it was a fantasy. Surely, with a name like that, it must be a portal fantasy full of mummies, pharaohs, and gods (a childhood fancy that is problematic unto itself). My impression wasn’t entirely incorrect. But it would be more accurate to say that the portal in The Egypt Game is the vivid imaginations of the characters themselves, a magic just as powerful as anything in Narnia.
Retro Childhood Review: The Book of Three
“You fool!” he shouted. “You addlepated . . . What have you done? Now both of us are trapped! And you talk about sense! You haven’t . . .” Eilonwy smiled at him and waited until he ran out of breath. “Now,” she said, “if you’ve quite finished, let me explain something very simple to you. If there’s a tunnel, it has to go someplace. And wherever it goes, there’s a very good chance it will be better than where we are now.” In 1985, Disney released the film that would nearly signal its death knell, a movie which basically led to the creation of Don Bluth Productions (thank goodness), a movie which only made half as much as it cost and was altogether a disaster, but it was also a movie that sparked my imagination enough to find the source. That movie was The Black Cauldron. Tricked you. The Black Cauldron is book two of Lloyd Alexander’s epic children’s fantasy series, The Chronicles of Prydain. The Book of Three is the start of that journey.
Retro Childhood Review: Fog Magic
“It’s the things you were born to that give you satisfaction in this world, Greta. Leastwise, that’s what I think. And maybe the fog’s one of them. Not happiness, mind! Satisfaction isn’t always happiness by a long sight; then again, it isn’t sorrow either. But the rocks and the spruces and the fogs or your own land are things that nourish you. You can always have them, no matter what else you find or what else you lose.” Portal fantasy is a popular genre for middle children’s fiction, as evidenced by the fact that 3 out of my 4 Retro Childhood Reviews are about children finding their way to new worlds. In The Neverending Story, Bastian is escaping a grief-filled reality; in Firebrat, Molly is learning to appreciate her Grandmother; the reasons for traveling through portals are as varied as the stories themselves. But portal fantasy, at its core, allows a child reader to travel to new worlds along with the protagonists. Fog Magic, by Julia L. Sauer, a Newberry Honor Book, is an absolutely charming addition to the genre. Though this is not a book that captures my heart to the level of some of the others on my shelves, it is nonetheless one that I turn to from time to time, to escape to the simplicity of an earlier age.
