The Dreaming Child
To read through a collection of contem- porary stories for older children in the over-eleven group is, in some ways, a hearten- ing exercise. If idiom changes, it is only to clothe time-honoured romantic themes in ways acceptable to a generation perhaps rather self- consciously wary and tough. Otherwise, the old magic comes again, without much regard for social and technological revolutions. The grow- ing child can still feed his appetite for dreams -proper correlators of the reality he must learn to manage-on lost inheritances retrieved, on treasure sought and found (usually in caves), on family pride and glory, on the routing of evil and the doing of good.
A Candle in her Room, by Ruth M. Arthur (Gollancz, 16s.), is very much for older children. It is a story of haunting in an old house; by no ordinary ghosts, however, but by a doll called Dido. Witchcraft comes into this, and caves, and the sea, and a fearful accident to a girl of one generation : the book covers the lives of three. Love and death, war and sorrow, are not blinked, and a deceptively casual restraint of style covers a real depth of thought and feeling. Miss Arthur's book ends with a child returning from post-war Europe, her parents dead after years in concentration camps, a displaced person placed at last. The Burn- ing Candle, by Mara Kay (Hart-Davis, 21s.), deals with the hard realities of post-war living, not in soft-hearted Britain but in Communist Yugo- slavia, where the young Zora, doing the equiva- lent of her A-levels for a place at a university, has also to face political troubles and the deter- mined efforts of the state to stamp out the religion which for her and her family is too precious to relinquish. A poignant story which, somehow, communicates, and hopefully, the un- crackable spirit of the South Slays.
The Witch's Daughter, by Nina Bawden (Gollancz, 16s.), is an adventure story for rather younger children, set in a Scottish outer island called Skua. Here two visiting children, Tim and his sister Janey, meet Perdita, 'the witch's daughter,' a wildling shunned by the village children, who lives in the house of mys- terious Mr Smith. Together they discover the criminal nature of Mr Smith and his companions. Caves, treasure, the sea-all are there. Unfrilled, clear writing keeps movement going, the charac- ters are clean-edged. The scene where blind Janey, come into her own, leads the two other children to safety from the dark cave where the robbers have left them to die, is fine and touching.
High romance, wicked magicians, a captive princess, a throne to be won back, a boy who passes through many tribulations to win it, these make up The King of the Castle, by Meriol Trevor (Macmillan, 16s.). Good stuff and of a kind which, dateless and placeless but told with conviction, must always find willing readers. Old houses, the effects of the past on the young, are the theme of Waylamrs Keep, by Angela Bull (Collins, 13s. 6d.), and The Stranger, by Stella Weaver (Collins, 9s. 6d.). In the first, three young. cousins set themselves to find out just how 'their great-uncle managed to buy Waylaild's Keen, a ruinous castle, and are unnerved by their 'find- ings. Excellent country atmosphere and lively, well-differentiated children. The Stranger, set in Ireland, is full of good Irish dialogue, nice children, and caves again, and treasure-but the last of an unusual kind. A very good story indeed and an original treatment of the reclaimed-inheritance theme.
Finally, Horse in the House, by William Corbin (Methuen, 21s.), is, by contrast to the above, caveless, treasureless, but bathed in that bracing bright innocence of American children's fiction which can be so appealing. No really dark corners here. It is the story of Melanie Webb and her Palomino horse, and of how the horse is stolen, and of what Melanie and her friend Ritchie go through to get it back. Action- packed, this one is, and gay, and unpriggishly
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