Childsplay

Emma Tennant

From Spring to Spring Alison Uttley (Faber £3.50) Wild Ghost Chase D. J. Enright (Chatto & Windus £2.95) Jackanory: Jonny Briggs and the Ghost Joan Eadington (BBC Publications 75p) The Castle of the Winds Maureen Osborne (Heinemann £3.10) Wombling Free Elisabeth Beresford (Puffin 50p) Children of the Tower Julia Dobson (Heinemann £2.90) The Brothers Grimm newly translated by Brian Alderson (Goliancz £5) Must children from their earliest years Be regularly bored to tears By fantasies of middle age?

For, once committed to the page And contract signed by BBC And pictures horrible to see There's no stopping the succession Of some old wanker's mild obsession.

So, what have we here today?

Not ghosts and parlourmaids again? In Uttley's world the Ladies reign And snub-nosed girls who know their place May only propagate the race If place is kept, and Keeper gets it.

A perfect world for Enoch Powell!

And even Thatcher can be seen (beyond the kitchen garden wall) Disguised quite thinly as the Queen.

Yet – there's also the Obscene In Sam Pig's trousers.

Patched and bulging and organic They'd make the greenest scout go manic.

And Sam Pig is oddly cheery In circs. that make the reader weary.

And now for ghosts. How these writers (With secret longing for a sprite Of titled name and landed might; Seigneurial droit, manorial green) Avoid the label of has-been!

You have to pity the poor blighters For making ghosties up-to-date And D. J. Enright will relate Of spirits that are pure TV!

And talk (like you and me) Pure gibberish.

But – here's the rub – not he!

There's something donnish and unbending With jokes on syntax; Latin tags; 'cut your myth to fit your cloth'.

Tee hee!

All very condescending.

Here, vampires and ladies from the ocean Entwine, in Enright's happy mind With Modern Life and Liberal Notion.

A pity then, for as a poet he is fine And should stay with fair Undine.

As for the ghost in Jackanory (This is a well-recounted story) It's a footballer without a head!

And perhaps 'tis better to be dead Than out of touch with modern times.

At least the Yorkshire's family's robust.

And once they're out of crumb and crust Are annoyed to find their bread Nicked by a centre-forward with no head.

Something more sinister in Castle of The Winds Than all this new-style stuff.

Ms Osborne's into 'splitting minds And knows her Ballantrae, her Laing, her Plath, her Poe.

She sets it -1 as if this weren't enough – In haunted Wales, Victorian times – and lo!

Twin brother's dead, and in the distance, in the trees I thought I heard a Druid sneeze. Thank God they all get safely back to Kensington.

Kensington Behind Closed Doors! Since the big gazump and boom Round-pond dwellers must concede their precious room To the Arabs that they need.

All their secret fancies taken To that great substitute, The Common, Wimbledon. Who lives here? The Wombles: yes, they

CARE

About such things as litter and polluted air.

They try to make the grown-ups REALISE

They're wrecking land and skies.

To stress the point Mac Womble comes to share their soya joint.

All the way from far Loch Ness (He last was seen escorting Hess) Arriving in his clockwork car The Wombles are coming, and a' and a'.

So what is read by our dear middle class To kiddies tired of protest on the overpass?

It could be Children of The Tower (Which might improve the shining hour) It's educational, and seems to show The Tower as better than Heathrow. And, too, the Brothers Grimm

For we must keep our links with the old. The Brothers Grimm translated again by Brian Alderson The Bold.

It's really quite classy, and the pictures are REAL

Just like plastic veneer And the prose is straightforward, the tenses all mixed

So we feel it's a story we HEAR.

So far as I know, though — and it's hard here with ryhmes

No-one at all talks that way at The Times.