The Old Man in the Corner

This might not seem to have much to do with children's literature, except that I am always interested in finding mysteries digestible by the newish reader that don't necessarily feature amateur teen detectives (fine as those junior detectives are--I'll be posting soon about John Bellairs). I'm thinking here of books suitable for boys and girls, which a young mystery addict is ready to dip into the adult mystery canon--the tantalizing books in the adult section of the public library with either Sherlock Holmes in profile or a skull on the spine, to signal that murderous mayhem is inside. A fourth grader who starts with "The Speckled Band" or "The Hound of the Baskervilles" may find enough thrills to be motivated to work her or his way through some of the challenging vocabulary of some of the other stories, or even the novellas.

But after that, what other books from the adult section work for kids--holding their interest, accessible enough in terms of plot and dialogue, and appropriate in their presentation of adult themes? The modern day mystery is a PG-13 or R rated experprise. Will the safer G and PG mysteries of the first 50 years of the 20th century yield some gems that can be enjoyed by the middle grade reader?

By the time I was ten, I was borrowing my father's paperback editions of Agatha Christie. The two I still own are The Labors of Hecrules (1947) and The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960), now in print as Hercule Poirot's Christmas. This was around 1971, were living in Southeast Asia at the time, and my father would be on the balcony or the veranda, on a chaise lounge, in Bermuda shorts, with a drink going in an old fashioned glass, reading another mystery or possibly a spy novel by John Le Carre. Every now and then I get out the yellowed, battered paperbacks and enjoy them again. I also keep in the bedside table one or the other of the two volume complete Sherlock Holmes.

So I've downloaded from Librivox Baroness Orczy's The Old Man in the Corner, about the unnamed protangonist of the title, who relates the solutions to unsolved crimes to the young female journalist he meets in a teashop. These are probably too challenging for Budza (going on nine) but I bet they would be great for the 11 year old mystery enthusiast. I am just into the second story of the collection, but they rely heavily on all the turns of plot that have since become mystery tropes, but that Orczy, author of The Scarlet Pimpernel, originated. The Old Man in the Corner is widely considered to the first armchair detective, and while he has a very low index in the swashbuckle department, the puzzles themselves are intricate and devious.

There is a huge collection of old mysteries over at Project Gaslight--mysteries written between 1800 (!) and 1909. Probably the more stilted sytle, leisurely pacing, and Victorian vocabulary will take careful parental vetting to find stories that will grab and hold the young reader, but I think the effort will be well rewarded.

Mapping the Imagination

Budza listens to an audiobook in the morning before school, and we’re now listening to Peter Pan. I am usually drinking coffee, reading the paper, packing a lunch, and only half listening, but found myself listening to, and smiling at, this passage:

I don't know whether you have ever seen a map of a person's mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child's mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island, for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map if that were all, but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needle-work, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the island or they are another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still.

It got me thinking of phrenology and maps of the inside of heads, and wondering what maps of the imagination itself there were. And Google found me this book by Peter Turchi.

Getting lost in this book is so easy, enlightening, and downright fun, any reader exploring it should take Saul Bellow’s advice: ‘Perhaps, being lost, one should get loster.’”
— The Ruminator Review

I don’t need it, but I need it, if you know what I mean. And I have a coupon from Porter Square Books burning a hole in my wallet anyways.Getting "lost-er" sounds like just what I need...

P.S. I have just discovered that Radiogirl blogged about this book and three others a few weeks ago. You can read her post and learn about other cool "maps of the imagination" books here.

LibriVox

OK, no luck so far downloading files from the LibriVox site proper. Apparently there are ongoing technical difficulties with their archive site. But over at Project Gutenberg, I successfully downloaded iTUnes files of Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost and Kenneth Grahame's The Reluctant Dragon. There are all kinds of kid's lit treasures here: Jules Verne, L. Frank Baum, E. Nesbit, Lewis Carroll...you have to refine your search if you don't want your audiobooks read by computer or in, say, Esperanto, but the search is pretty straightforward. I might not pay highway robbery prices for a commercial audiobook for a long, long time. $75 for Harry Potter comes to mind.

What's really cool about LibriVox is that the books are read and uploaded by worldwide network of volunteers, and so far they've been voices I can imagine wanting to listen to and getting to know. It's not just a DNA bank of endangered books they're saving, but in sending the words out in a warm, living voice they are keeping not just books, but love of books, alive.

It's not his fault, but I could go a long, long time without needing to hear Jim Dale reading anything.

Books from the Attic, Part 1

I'm really enjoying rereading the Little House books to the Budza. My grown-up self is blown away by how well written they are: how powerful the simple language is, how skillfully drawn and three-dimensional the characters are, how closely nature and daily life are observed.

Now I'm hankering to go up into the attic and bring down boxes and boxes of old favorites, once we clear some space in Budza's bookcase by rotating some picture books to the attic (some of those can go to the East Somerville Community School, which lost most of its books in a recent fire).

I'm eager to read to Bud or just to myself some E. Nesbit--I only ever read The Enchanted Castle, myself, but there are many more. I want to revisit Zilpha Keatley Snyder's The Velvet Room, and just for a trip down memory lane some Enid Blyton boarding school stories. In 1973, the year I was in the seventh grade in the International School in Bangkok, I read Lloyd Alexander's Book of Three and The Black Cauldron in Puffin Armada paperback editions, and Enid Blyton's St. Clare boarding school series. I notice from looking for The Velvet Room online that there is an Author's Guild website called backinprint.com, which bears further exploration.

No single best site for E. Nesbit, surprisingly, but I found a wicked cool site with free audio files of books in the public domain, LibriVox, which has The Enchanted Castle for a free download. LibriVox itself seems worthy of a separate post, if I have success downloading and unzipping a free audiobook.