Recent children's books
John Horder
Ifor one certainly won't read Roald Dahl's latest masterpiece, Dirty Beasts, (Puffin, £2.50) over and over again. Yet it has its charms. Roald Dahl is like some indefatigable actor-manager who cannot resist going over the top any number of times for the sheer pleasure of the sensa- tions involved.
From 'The Toad and the Snail':
Toad said, his face all wreathed in smiles, `With every jump, it's fifty miles!'
Quite literally, we jumped all over,
From Scotland to The Cliffs of Dover!
and so on and so forth.
Now the trouble here is Roald Dahl has written many vastly more enjoyable books. They include James and the Giant Peach, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and six more and more recently Revolting Rhymes. In fact his retellings of 'Little Red Riding Hood' and The Three Little Pigs' (from Revolting Rhymes) make this pre- sent offering look positively paltry. But this will have no effect at all on the rings of the booksellers' cash tills. A new book by Roald Dahl is as irresistible as a bar of chocolate or a packet of Smarties. And as ephemeral. The title story of Judy Corbalis's first book, The Wrestling Princess and other stories (Deutsch, £5.95), is a tour de force in its own right. But I could have done without the excruciatingly awful doggerel of `Arsinoee and the Grebble' and 'The Grebble and the Flood', which makes Roald Dahl's seem masterly, which it is, as a matter of fact.
Princess Ermyntrude, who is six feet tall, drives forklift trucks and wrestles with 16 soldiers, beating them all, is a real treat. But the princesses in `Georgiana and the Dragon' and 'The Enchanted Toad' have too many feminist attributes in common with her to be entirely convincing as characters in their own right. I have no wish to return to the old stereotype of some lovelorn princess wilting up a gum tree for a male chauvinist prince in bower boots. But I could have done with a good deal more variety in this assembly-line of machine and career-orientated princesses.
With all this said, Corbalis's debut is as promising as Arthur Ransome's many years ago with Swallows and Amazons, albeit for different reasons. Helen Craig s illustrations also give great pleasure.
Nor will Miranda Seymour's The Vam- pire of Verdonia (Deutsch, £5.95) be read endlessly by most children. But even with its many clichés, which include three lethal aunts, it has its charms. Sarah Jane starts off by being the most tremendous goody-goody. She is sum- moned by drippy chamberlain Rudolf, to receive a medal for good behaviour from King Peter of Verdonia. Accompanied by her talking cat Rumbold, she encounters at the palace Princess Louisa, who cunninglY initiates her into the delights of criminal activity.
After her encounter with Count Dracu- la, at the end, Sarah Jane predictably returns to a vestige of her former goody- goody self. A pleasurable romp which will while away the time on a rainy after- noon. As with The Wrestling Princess, the production is attractive. The December Rose (Viking, £6.95, Puf- fin, £1.95) is the one book under review which will be read time and again. Ix° Garfield is another irrepressible actor- manager at heart, but less of a ham and more of a poet than Roald Dahl. The December Rose runs true to form, brimming over with much 19th-century fog and gloom: Barnacle, its waif-like hero --- his legs are like twigs — is at his happiest cleaning chimneys. He was called Barnacle, `on account of his amazing powers 01 holding on. He could attach himself to the inside of a flue by finger- and toe-holds at which even a fly might have blinked. It was a real gift, and the only one he had.' While up a flue he first hears of the boat 'The December Rose', and shortly afterwards slips out of the hands of Whistling Edge Inspector Creaker — 'a dark and terrible figure, shaped like a coffin, with enormous Square-toed boots'. The chase that follows is worthy of its counterpart at the begin- ning of The Water Babies: it could hardly have been bettered.
After being sucked into a terrifying web of deceit, espionage and murder, Barnacle, at the end 'had reached the top. He was right up in the sky.' The December Rose is not quite on a par with The Apprentices, Garfield's masterpiece to date. But its Many strengths owe much to his masterly gifts as a story-teller drawing on oral as well as literary traditions. As the Colonel says to Barnacle, 'Stories, my child, are like candles in the mind. They comfort and show us wonders.' Garfield's candles will never be extinguished.
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