Thursday's Children and Listen to the Nightingale, by Rumer Godden

I grew up reading the wonderful Rumer Godden – special favourites were Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, Little Plum and The Rocking Horse Secret, but until Virago re-released them earlier in the summer, neither my mum nor I had ever come across Thursday’s Children and Listen to the Nightingale, and when they arrived in the Waterstones children’s department where I work they immediately jumped out at me with their beautiful ballerina and ballerina pump patterned covers.

I’ve always loved stories about ballet, something which I think began with the wonderful classic, Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild, another one of those books that I read time and time again, along with just about anything else by her. Thursday’s Children and Listen to the Nightingale fall perfectly into this category of charming children’s stories that just ooze childhood idylls. Exactly why I find these stories so idyllic, I don’t know, especially considering that, really, they are anything but. In both Noel Streatfeild’s books and these by Rumer Godden, life is rarely anything but easy for our protagonists – often they are very poor, living on pennies, and they have to work very hard and make a lot of sacrifices to achieve their dreams. But maybe that is the very reason that I love them: because despite difficult beginnings they always have happy endings.

Thursday’s Children is the story of Doone. Youngest of six children, he was the accidental afterthought following a much-wanted girl child and thus is often ignored or forgotten or dismissed out of hand. Doone’s big sister Crystal is, by contrast, much doted upon and so, because they don’t know what else to do with him, Doone is taken along to watch while Crystal attends her dance class. But Doone is enraptured. By the dance and by the music. He watches and he learns and soon it becomes his dream to be a dancer too. First he just has to convince his mother and his father that he deserves the same chances as Crystal…

In Listen to the Nightingale we follow Lottie. She’s grown up dancing: her mother, before she died, was a dancer and her auntie is the wardrobe mistress at the renowned Holbein Theatre, where Lottie takes her lessons. But when the teaching academy part of Holbein’s must close, Lottie must continue her education at the elite Queen’s Chase, Her Majesty’s Junior Ballet School. Lottie loves the idea of Queen’s Chase, but it’ll mean giving away her beloved puppy, Prince. What will happen to Prince, and what will happen to Lottie as she enters this new world?

Although written about ten years apart, I read these two books one after the other, and it was interesting to note that there are minor crossovers between the two – principally Queen’s Chase and it’s coterie of staff (Doone also attends Queen’s Chase) – which was quite nice, although one character’s role, Ennis Glynn, didn’t quite match up between the two books. And although they were written nearly fifty and sixty years after Noel Streatfeild wrote Ballet Shoes, they certainly have a similar feel – timeless. I honestly couldn’t say what decade either Thursday’s Children or Listen to the Nightingale were intended to be set in, the only allusions to modernity being mention of a television set in Listen to the Nightingale, and the car that Doone’s family owns in Thursday’s Children. Because these children have much greater interests than watching telly and playing video games, and their families automatically travel by bus or underground to save money, that modern life rarely gets a glimpse outside the world of dance and the themes of understanding who you are and your place in the world, and fighting for what you believe in.

Perhaps I love these books because they are a sort of wish fulfillment for me, perhaps because they conjure a world in which everything seems simple (even when it’s not), perhaps because they are just lovely stories. Either way, it makes me want to own every single Noel Streatfeild book ever written and every single Rumer Godden book ever written. And, either way, I suspect I shall still be reading them even when I am 83.

The One Dollar Horse, by Lauren St John

The One Dollar Horse is like a classic and a modern fairytale all wrapped up in one. It has that feel-good essence you get from really good chick-lit or from a younger children’s book like The Secret Garden or Ballet Shoes, but without the overly smoochy tendencies of the first or the old fashioned societal set-up of the second. I’m a girly girl in that I like stories with horses or ballet or happy-ever-after endings, so this was bound to be a win-win book for me, and with it’s hot-pink pages it’s definitely being aimed at the girly market. But, that said, I truly believe this is a book to be enjoyed by even those who wouldn’t normally pick up a horse book, and that is because, really, the horse story is just a side-line to the classic character arc, the ups and downs of pursuing your dreams, no matter what those dreams happen to be.

Casey Blue does not have the most auspicious of backgrounds, but living in a tower block in East London with her just-out-of-jail father doesn’t mean she can’t dream any bigger than the rest of us. Horse mad, she volunteers at the local riding centre and figures if she’s lucky she’ll train to be a riding instructor there one day. But then everything changes when she and her father save a horse from certain destruction. Downbeaten and starving, will the horse even survive his first night in the stable? I don’t think I’d be giving too much away by saying yes, and that he turns out to be rather a gem. Casey has always dreamed of competing at the Badminton Horse Trials: will the One Dollar Horse be able to take her there?

Lauren St John’s story covers an unusually long time period for an older children/teen novel as Casey slowly trains herself and her horse, begins competing, struggles, pauses, picks herself up and starts again. At least two years have passed by the time we reach the conclusion, a time period that other reviewers have argued is unrealistic in terms of horse training. But, really, that doesn’t matter. This is not a book you start reading in the knowledge that its story-arc is going to be entirely reflective of real life, and this fairytale aspect is what lends itself to the feel of modern classics like Ballet Shoes, and that One Dollar Horse emulates perfectly. It’s a story not about what it takes to train a horse for Badminton, but about following your dreams, believing in yourself, overcoming struggles, and seeing things through to their conclusion. It is, in short, a dream come true. The adults among us know full well that this is not the sort of thing that happens every day - and the people around Casey are apt to remind her of this fact too - but sometimes it does, and we all secretly hope that we’ll be the ones who get to experience it.

Casey’s struggles are topical and, mostly, realistic - money, social typecasting - and the fairytale storytelling is further affirmed by the presence of a fairy godmother-type character who comes to the rescue in moments of direst need. Although officially classed as a teenage title by Waterstones, the content is such that it is perfectly suited for younger children as well, perhaps from the age of nine or ten if they are strong readers - comments from a mum in my shop suggest that some of the themes (eg. Casey’s father’s criminal activities and their implications) may need explaining to younger readers, but that otherwise her eight-year-old enjoyed it and is looking forward to the next installment, Race the Wind, out in April. To this end, there was a particular storyline that wasn’t tied up at the end of One Dollar Horse, which I hope will be picked up again in the sequel. Something tells me that Badminton is not the end of the road for Casey, and I’m looking forward to finding out what happens next.

I must say how nice it is that there are still new stories like this one being written, that the traditions of authors like Noel Streatfeild and Eva Ibbotson are still alive and kicking. And also how nice it is that a book of this ilk is being aimed at teenagers, a genre so often swamped with dark romance and the assumption that the only thing teenage girls want to read are soppy love stories. Don’t get me wrong, soppy love stories definitely have their place, but there is so much more to life. In many aspects this book is a love story, but it’s not all about the boy and who’s kissing who; rather, its focus is on finding the positives in life and fighting for your place on the ladder instead of letting others decide it for you. If you enjoy it, try some of Lauren St John's other books, or Maggie Stiefvater's excellent The Scorpio Races.

Journey to the River Sea, by Eva Ibbotson

Eva Ibbotson is a wonder, and her books never fail to transport me into her world. For a long time I have attempted to put my finger on exactly what it is that makes them so enchanting, and I think reading Journey to the River Sea has finally enabled me to do so.

Although mostly written within the last three decades, all of her books - or those  I’ve read so far - are set at the turn of the twentieth century, or during the second world war period. They are traditional, everything is always terribly proper, and there is always an element of having fallen on hard times. Think Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes, or White Boots - books I have adored since I was a child and could read over and over again. Yet, the characters within her books break out of the boundaries she sets for them, they win out against the odds, they show themselves to be strong, determined women (despite the constraints set upon them by the times), and - perhaps most importantly - they have a happy ending and all the pieces come together.

Journey to the River Sea is no exception to this rule. It is 1910 and Maia, an orphan, is being shipped off to her only surviving relative, a man named Mr Carter, who lives deep in the Amazon. She couldn’t be more excited and spends the journey imagining the lives of her cousins, the things they get up to and the exotic pets they might have. But when she finally arrives, the reality is disastrously different to her wild imagination: the Carters are stoically British and unadventurous. Mrs Carter refuses to eat locally produced food, is obsessed with sealing her house off from creepy crawlies, and won’t let the children play outside; Mr Carter is oblivious and uncaring of anything other than his glass eye collection; the twin girls are rude, ignorant and unfriendly. They only agreed to take Maia in because of the money she brings with her - something which is much needed thanks to Mr Carter’s complete lack of business sense. The only brightness in Maia’s new life is the governess, Miss Minton, who quietly pulls the wool down over the Carter’s eyes, giving Maia a little touch of freedom.

This is the perfect book for any young girl, especially one with a sense for adventure. Despite the restrictions the Carters place on her, Maia takes the bit of freedom Miss Minton provides, stretches it out, and makes it her own. As with any Ibbotson character, Maia is instilled with kindness and friendliness, always thinking of and trying to help others, whilst simultaneously creating an adventure of her own. Having made friends with two boys who are as different to each other as two peas in a pod, it falls to her to extricate them from their troubles, which she does with aplomb, while also, of course, solving her own. Adventure is inevitable.

Ibbotson’s own self is reflected in many of the books she writes, as the same themes crop up again and again - themes reminiscent of her own childhood as a Jewish refugee in war era Britain. As recently written in a Daily Telegraph article (Before JK Rowling, there was Eva Ibbotson), her son says, “Ma’s entire work was about her childhood – always on the run, never with a mother and father in the same house. It was more than that she wanted to write happy stories; she couldn’t do anything else.” I can't recommend her enough.