And I knew joy in the second half of The Jasmine Farm! If the first half was a little over-stuffed and over-complicated, with any number of extraneous characters, the second half is a delight. Because yes, of course, Mumsie follows Lady M to this farm. And I shan’t spoil the other people who turn up, but there is a lightness and openness to the second half of the novel that gives it space to breathe. It means Elizabeth von Arnim can use her customary witty sentences, and the brilliant way that she can give characters depth even while everything is frothy. Look at the different illustrations of the tree in the story. Although it is the same tree, it is coloured in different ways. Can you draw the same thing lots of times and decorate each one with different colours? How does this alter how the picture looks? Which one do you prefer?

Lettice Cooper is best remembered for The New House, once a Virago Modern Classic and now a Persephone book. She had an astonishingly long publishing career, spanning 1925 to 1994 – so while The Double Heart came 26 years after The New House, it was far from a swansong in her bibliography. But she is not a early-century writer still turning out the same books after they have ceased to be fashionable: this feels very 1960s, and even a bit startlingly modern at times. How about that window cord,” she said in a low, Sunday voice, straight forward into her collar. “Did you tell someone about it?”I’m delighted that the 1962 Club is here – join Karen and me in reading and reviewing books from 1962. Any language, format, genre – we’d love to build up a picture of 1962 between us. We’ve been doing these club years for such a long time now, and it’s always a highlight of my reading/blogging year. Your idea is what it [marriage] used to be. When our parents were young they could believe in things lasting. How can we, when it’s obvious that we shall probably all be blown up in a year or two?” And her writing can be beautiful, without being self-conscious. Sentences like this tread the tightrope of poeticism and journalism so well: “Judges are men who in the cool of the evening undo work that better men do in the heat of the day.” ([sic] to ‘men’, please!) Oliver Jeffers er manden bag Træet, og han er også forfatter til storsuccessen Barn af bøger. I Træet møder vi en anden side af den talentfulde forfatter og kunstner, for her er historien båret af den humor børns umiddelbare logik ofte fører med sig. Bogen anbefales til børn i 4-6-årsalderen, men jeg tør godt udvide anbefalingen til også at inkludere voksne, som drages af de morsomheder, der ligger gemt i børnelogikken. Hvor sjovt er det for eksempel ikke, at Fredes opfindsomhed og stædighed får ham til at kaste en brandbil med drejestige og tjenstvillige brandmænd op i træet, fremfor at benytte sig af deres ressourcer og hjælpsomhed. Den lille drengs snedigheder er så fjollede og absurde, men alligevel vækker de genklang for læseren, som udmærket ved, at den eneste måde at få ting ned fra et træ er at kaste nye ting op.

Look at Floyd’s facial expressions and body language at different points in the story. How is he feeling? Could you try to recreate his posture and explain what emotion is being portrayed? Appeal: The silly and outrageous nature of this book form the basis of it's appeal. It is a fun and easy book to enjoy over and over and has endless possibilities for continued story telling. Because it is written in a mix of cursive and print it may be a bit harder for younger kids to read it for themselves but it would make a really fun read aloud. Lady Midhurst is disbelieving – until she quizzes Terry, who is unrepentant. Terry is a flighty ‘free love’ sort of woman, seemingly conjured from the worst anxieties of late-Victorian male columnists. She doesn’t really see the problem, and it’s hard to know exactly what the reader is meant to make of her. Is she meant to be refreshingly amoral? If so, she comes across instead as extremely selfish and rather stupid. I don’t think she’s the most successful character in The Jasmine Farm. Oliver Jeffers' work takes many forms. His distinctive paintings have been exhibited in galleries worldwide, and HarperCollins UK and Penguin USA publish his award-winning picture books, now translated into over 30 languages. I think the only to take that situation is to go on living as if it wasn’t going to happen. Just as a solider must behave as if he wasn’t going to be killed.”But as I moved slowly out of the environment of my family, I found naturally enough people and homes who accepted cats as we accepted dogs. Cats were not vulgar as, in some mysterious way, I had been led to believe. I began to note that cats were able to bestow a subtle accolade upon their apparent owners which made these owners rapturous with delight. Message/Themes 2/5 - if you are looking for a message to pass onto little ones, this book won’t provide that. Maybe determination by the young boy to retrieve his kite? Still, his behavior is not meant to be praised. Of course, as ever, we are thinking six months ahead for the next club year – drum roll – see you in April for the 1937 Club! It was one thing not to be wanted in the place you were born in. That might not be enough to make you get out – it might only make you more stubbornly determined to dig in. But if there was a place that did want you – wanted you so badly it didn’t even ask whether you had tuberculosis or a criminal record, let alone whether you were popular in the place you came from or whether you liked yourself or whether you had the guts to stand on your own two feet – then what sort of a bloody fool would you have to be not to go there? Surely there, if anywhere, you could start again with nothing chalked up against you, even in your own mind. What makes William’s Wife such a success is Trevelyan’s ingenious pacing. The reader isn’t spared anything. Day by day, month by month, we follow Jane’s decline. There is little that is dramatic or surprising – instead, she sets up her premise and follows it steadily to its natural climax. The blurb calls it ‘the most normal horror story ever written’, and while blurbs that call their book the ‘most’ anything are to be distrusted, it’s not an inaccurate description. It isn’t scary, in the usual sense of scary. But it is haunting. It is a horror story in the sense that it is horribly believable – perhaps the sort of miserable world behind any number of closed doors. Interestingly, it really reminded me of an ostensibly very different Recovered Books novel – Gentleman Overboard by Herbert Clyde Lewis. Both take an awful situation and play it out slowly, painstakingly to its end.

We've had this one for awhile, but tonight I read it with the wee maggots again and realized I had never recommended it to others. Perhaps every generation thinks that the previous generation had more stability – and every generation thinks that theirs is more liberal in marriage. But only a handful would have had that genuine fear that they could be ‘blown up in a year or two’. I suppose that might be the sort of thing that would make someone abandon their family on a whim? Look at the use of shadows in the illustrations. Can you draw some objects and their shadows? Could you draw the same scene at different times of the day? How would the shadows change?Floyd throws up an orang-utan ‘who surely had somewhere else to be?’. Write the story that explains where he was and how Floyd caught him.