My holiday adventure (and a book review)
May. 6th, 2007 04:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllEek! It's a week since I scrawled the first version of this. I really should have typed and pasted it sooner.
Apart from some transportation problems - a late bus here, me missing a train there - there were no adventures a week ago on my trip to Hay-on-Wye. Instead I relaxed and did some heavy-duty shopping. The Hay on Wye damage was cough books for splutter pounds. I've been consoling myself by working out that the average cost of each book was around a fiver, which is cheaper than your average first hand paperback. I've also vowed not to buy any more books for a while, which seems a more realistic goal than not spending any money ever. In fact, I'm probably set for well beyond the time when the last Harry Potter is published, but I'll make an exception for that.
Pen, Polly and their Brothers: Doris Pocock, Blackie
is the first new purchase from Hay-on-Wye that I've delved into.
The title is misleading about the focus of the book, as the main character is one of those Brothers - Martin, the eldest child in the family - rather than his sisters. That title seems to betrying to appeal to girl readers, but it's a book for boys and girls about boys and girls. I'm not sure if I'm reading too much into the gender politics here, (and who am I to speak? Apart from the odd Billy Bunter, I don't read school stories for boys by male authors, and any adventure stories have to have boy and girl protagonists to get my interest - Malcolm Saville is one example). I don't think that the book is particularly 'girly' although there's talk of Feelings and Character.
It's a family summer holiday adventure tale, with the Howels being swept away from the prospect being caged up in unhealthy London with a stiff aunt who doesn't know how to cope with children all summer by Martin's adventurer godfather, whom they all summarily adopt. He takes them to his Cornish home by the sea - a real presence or force here, if not a character - to fill up a cottage he shares with his adopted son, an adventurer-in-training and soon a hero for the Howels.
Martin, Trevor, Penelope and Polly are thrilled, and adventures ensure as stormy weather meets strong characters. If you have read anything like this, be it a holiday story or a school by the sea story, it will come as no surprise that there is an early incident with the tide. This leads to one of many lessons learned.
The family unit of two brothers and two sisters is a familiar one - this reminded me a little of 'The Lend-a-Hand Holiday' by May Wynne, which I read last year, and which also features a similar family group being given an unexpected seaside holiday = to Devon, though - and befriending an outsider among other things. 'Pen, Polly and their Brothers' benefits from a more focused plot than the previous book, mainly looking at how swotty outsider Martin gets over himself and proves himself to restore relationships with his other siblings - the hot-headed twins Trevor and Penelope and wannabe little mother Polly. But in both books, the authors are pretty heavy-handed about which brother and sister we're meant to root for - to the point where I felt Pocock didn't do enough work in making Penelope sympathetic, her realisation that she's been a bully isn't put as strongly and comes about rather easily. But then, the focus is on Martin.
I will say that I didn't get the feeling that I was visiting 'Themepark Cornwall', which I did with 'Christabel's Cornish Adventure', another book I came across last year. I'm not the most critical reader of children's books, I read them for a quasi-nostalgic sort of escapism and for me they're light reading with a vengeance. But there was a latent paternalism in the treatment of the girls that I found unavoidable. Polly is the youngest and Penelope is in the middle with twin Trevor, but both must be protected, even rebellious Pen puts up a token fight based on lack of self-discipline to this assumption, and it is the boys who have the sailing adventures. To someone who's used to the able seamanship of Ransome's heroines and books where the male characters are the after-thought that the 'and their brothers' of this book's title suggests, that's a little off-putting, but it was an easy enough read, and IIRC, the character growth is a theme Pocock also looks at in 'Margery Finds Herself', which I own and read many, many years ago.
A brief biog for DP can be found here and dates dates P, P at B at 1925.
Apart from some transportation problems - a late bus here, me missing a train there - there were no adventures a week ago on my trip to Hay-on-Wye. Instead I relaxed and did some heavy-duty shopping. The Hay on Wye damage was cough books for splutter pounds. I've been consoling myself by working out that the average cost of each book was around a fiver, which is cheaper than your average first hand paperback. I've also vowed not to buy any more books for a while, which seems a more realistic goal than not spending any money ever. In fact, I'm probably set for well beyond the time when the last Harry Potter is published, but I'll make an exception for that.
Pen, Polly and their Brothers: Doris Pocock, Blackie
is the first new purchase from Hay-on-Wye that I've delved into.
The title is misleading about the focus of the book, as the main character is one of those Brothers - Martin, the eldest child in the family - rather than his sisters. That title seems to betrying to appeal to girl readers, but it's a book for boys and girls about boys and girls. I'm not sure if I'm reading too much into the gender politics here, (and who am I to speak? Apart from the odd Billy Bunter, I don't read school stories for boys by male authors, and any adventure stories have to have boy and girl protagonists to get my interest - Malcolm Saville is one example). I don't think that the book is particularly 'girly' although there's talk of Feelings and Character.
It's a family summer holiday adventure tale, with the Howels being swept away from the prospect being caged up in unhealthy London with a stiff aunt who doesn't know how to cope with children all summer by Martin's adventurer godfather, whom they all summarily adopt. He takes them to his Cornish home by the sea - a real presence or force here, if not a character - to fill up a cottage he shares with his adopted son, an adventurer-in-training and soon a hero for the Howels.
Martin, Trevor, Penelope and Polly are thrilled, and adventures ensure as stormy weather meets strong characters. If you have read anything like this, be it a holiday story or a school by the sea story, it will come as no surprise that there is an early incident with the tide. This leads to one of many lessons learned.
The family unit of two brothers and two sisters is a familiar one - this reminded me a little of 'The Lend-a-Hand Holiday' by May Wynne, which I read last year, and which also features a similar family group being given an unexpected seaside holiday = to Devon, though - and befriending an outsider among other things. 'Pen, Polly and their Brothers' benefits from a more focused plot than the previous book, mainly looking at how swotty outsider Martin gets over himself and proves himself to restore relationships with his other siblings - the hot-headed twins Trevor and Penelope and wannabe little mother Polly. But in both books, the authors are pretty heavy-handed about which brother and sister we're meant to root for - to the point where I felt Pocock didn't do enough work in making Penelope sympathetic, her realisation that she's been a bully isn't put as strongly and comes about rather easily. But then, the focus is on Martin.
I will say that I didn't get the feeling that I was visiting 'Themepark Cornwall', which I did with 'Christabel's Cornish Adventure', another book I came across last year. I'm not the most critical reader of children's books, I read them for a quasi-nostalgic sort of escapism and for me they're light reading with a vengeance. But there was a latent paternalism in the treatment of the girls that I found unavoidable. Polly is the youngest and Penelope is in the middle with twin Trevor, but both must be protected, even rebellious Pen puts up a token fight based on lack of self-discipline to this assumption, and it is the boys who have the sailing adventures. To someone who's used to the able seamanship of Ransome's heroines and books where the male characters are the after-thought that the 'and their brothers' of this book's title suggests, that's a little off-putting, but it was an easy enough read, and IIRC, the character growth is a theme Pocock also looks at in 'Margery Finds Herself', which I own and read many, many years ago.
A brief biog for DP can be found here and dates dates P, P at B at 1925.
