Here are three of my favourite New Zealand picture books that give children a manageable dose of horror. Gavin Bishop’s Horror of Hickory Bay has grown on me over the years. The story of a bland family on a Canterbury beach and an amorphous beast seemed a bit coarse to me 25 years ago, but now I love the earthy monster (which has a new force in quakey times). Diane Hebley said it best:
I find this book fascinating for its masterly use of colour and design, its grim humour, its coherence of idea, text and image, and for its acceptance of the dreamworld reality.
The Were-Nana by Melinda Szymanik is a creepy delight about a visiting relative who might just be a monster. The suspense is nicely built up and the double surprise ending (true to horror traditions) is brilliant. Odd cover choice but fine shadowy illustrations by Sarah Nelisiwe Anderson.
Te Kapo the Taniwha by Queen Rikihana-Hyland is out of print but was always popular in class. It’s the story of a half-man, half-monster who was given the job of shaping the South Island. Zac Waipara’s pictures are stunning as usual.
My first comic book love as a child was the Donald Duck series by Carl Barks, perhaps the greatest comic storyteller. Barks fleshed out Disney’s slapstick film characters and created 500 engrossing adventures for children, making him “the most widely read but least known author in the world”. The hunt for square eggs in Lost in the Andes (1949) was my favourite Donald story; and anything with the Italian sorceress, Magica de Spell . When I was 10 years old, I moved on to superhero comics – I loved the bizarre character Mr Mxyzptlk who could only be beaten if Superman tricked him into saying his name backwards. But the best heroes were the Fantastic Four (1961) with their ‘grown-up’ plots and flawed characters.
Why are comics so popular? Because the style combines dramatic art, fast pace and engaging characters. Teachers can use comics in class as models of design and economical storytelling. Comic books are also ideal for reluctant readers, usually boys (see comics in education). The comic form also embraces stunning graphic novels for older readers, such as Persepolisand Logicomix, about Bertrand Russell.
Three neglected science fiction books by New Zealand writers: The Red Dust by Bee Baldwin (1965) is one of the first NZ post-apocalyptic novels. A deadly red dust released by Antarctic drilling wipes out much of the world. A group of immunes must survive roaming gangs and a mastermind who wants to rule New Zealand. It’s a chilling, well-structured story, with great use of NZ settings (this adult novel was inexplicably in my primary school library where I read it at age 10 and understood about 10%).
The Unquiet by Carolyn McCurdie is a strikingly original intermediate novel and a suspenseful read. It has an apocalyptic opening when the planet Pluto and parts of the Earth’s surface vanish. A small town girl has a gift for sensing unrest in the fabric of the universe and becomes the focus in a battle as the novel turns into a fantasy.
Where All Things End by David Hill describes a spectacular journey into a Black Hole. A mission to study the hole goes wrong and the crew race towards the Singularity- a point where all things become no-things. A ripping yarn underpinned by a convincing depiction of space travel and universal theories.
One evening, a Sufi stopped by the roadside to read a book. He lit a bright lamp then walked some distance away and lit a small candle. He sat by the candle and read. People passing by asked, “Why don’t you read by the lamp?” The Sufi replied, “The bright light attracts all the moths. Here I can read my book in peace.” (Adapted from A Perfumed Scorpion by Idries Shah)
Big, bright blockbuster books attract many readers, but I’m attracted by books that the masses have almost forgotten. Here are a few of of my favourite hidden gems:
Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis retells the myth of Cupid and Psyche – this love story is Lewis’ least known work but one which he described as “far and away the best of my books.”
Catastrophe, the strange stories of Dino Buzzati (1949) – a brilliant collection of surreal stories.
Daydreamer by Ian McEwan – imaginative, interlinked stories about a boy who daydreams to cope with the trials of growing up.
The Importance of Living, by Lin Yutang – thoughts on everything by Chinese writer and inventor (1938)
Drift by William Mayne – controversial survival story about a North American Indian girl and a white boy.
We should not write them off as superstitious primitives.
It’s a myth (turned cliche) that science and faith have always been at odds. The superb book, God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Scienceby James Hannam, shows how the medieval church supported the genesis of science. Early universities were church-sponsored and ‘natural’ philosophy (as science was called – the word scientist wasn’t used yet) was a core subject. European thinkers drew on ancient Greek and Islamic texts to develop scientific principles that we still use today. Hannam brings a warm appreciation to these unsung scholars (eg. Gerbert); debunks the myth of the ignorant ‘Dark Ages’ (eg. people knew the Earth was round) and that the church burned scientists; and details inventions such as clocks and spectacles.
There is only one time that is important: Now. – Tolstoy
Tolstoy’s Twenty-Three Tales (1903) inspired me in my youth and today I still love the wisdom of his folk tales. The classics are How Much Land Does a Man Need (very little, naturally); and The Three Questions (Eg, What should I do with my time?). One of the unsung tales is A Grain as Big as a Hen’s Egg, an environmental metaphor that has gained in power. This is the only colour photo of Tolstoy (here aged 80), from 1908. Download a free ebook of Twenty-Three Tales by Tolstoy
He who saves one life, it is as if he saved an entire world.– Babylonian Talmud
The Righteous by Martin Gilbert is a record of the very best and the very worst of human behaviour. These are remarkable stories of ‘Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust’ who risked their lives to save Jews during the 1940s. We all know of Schindler’s List, but that is one page of 500 similar acts of courage – helping Jews carried the death penalty in occupied countries. Historian Gilbert spent many years researching these well documented accounts – many from the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ archive (link to stories and interviews) which lists 19,000 non-Jews who stood up to the Nazis, local authorities and their neighbours.
I was surprised to learn of the extent of anti-Semitism in wartime Europe, eg. in Lithuania, Ukraine and Eastern Poland the SS were actively assisted by local populations in murdering tens of thousands of Jews (in addition to the concentration camps deaths). The heroes in the book are clergy, farmers, businessmen, families, royalty, city officials, and soldiers. Their motivations ranged from God, hatred of German occupation and racism, morality, love and above all, a sense of decency. It’s estimated that to save one Jewish life required at least 10 people working in a fragile chain of courage.
Once introduced into public life, evil easily perpetuates itself, whereas good is always difficult, rare and fragile. And yet, possible. – Tzvetan Todorov
A Bee in a Cathedral by Joel Levy is a fascinating book of science analogies and astonishing numbers. Suitable for all ages, only the physics section is a bit complex. A few of my favourites factoids:
Every day 1 million meteoroids strike the Earth.
Travelling in a rocket at 250,000km/h, it would take you 18,000 years to reach the nearest star, Proxima Centauri.
Most of the living cells in your body are less than a month old.
About 50 million neutrinos are passing through you now.
Every molecule in a glass of water is changing partners billions of times a second.
How hard does your heart work? Empty a bathtub in 15 minutes using only a teacup —do this without stopping for the rest of your life.
If an atom were blown up to the size of a cathedral, the nucleus would be no larger than a bee buzzing about in the centre.
The Little Prince (1943) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is a superb fable about a pilot who crashes in the desert and meets a wise child. It’s one of the world’s most translated books (in 250 languages) and the top selling French book. It also has perhaps the most intriguing sentence in all children’s literature:
What is essential is invisible to the eyes. (L’essential est invisble pour les yeux.)
What is ‘essential’? Is it Truth, Love, God, or Uncertainty? These are the sort of questions the story evokes over and over. The opening chapter about following your dreams is brilliant. Saint-Exupéry was a pilot who also wrote great adventure books (eg. Wind, Sand and Stars ). His delicate watercolour illustrations are near perfect too.
The Awful Warning carried to the point where Awe topples over into helpless laughter.– Harvey Darton
Struwwelpeter (Pretty Stories and Funny Pictures) by Dr Heinrich Hoffman (1845) is a classic of gleefully gruesome cautionary rhymes about naughty children. Hoffman was a psychiatrist who founded an influential Frankfurt asylum and pioneered counselling as an alternative treatment to cold baths (his life was novelized in Clare Dudman’s 98 Reasons for Being). The characters in Struwwelpeter were inspired by his child patients – he’d tell them stories and draw pictures to calm them down. Hoffman was looking for a book for his three year old son and could only find ‘stupid collections of pictures, and moralising stories’, so he created Struwwelpeter. It was one of the first picture books designed purely to please children – before then children’s books were mainly religious or moral lessons with titles such as An Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy Lives and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children. Read more about ‘shock-headed’ Peter here.
‘The book has long oscillated between being accepted as harmless hilarity and being condemned as excessively horrifying’- Humphrey Carpenter
At last! The original Moomin book has been released in an elegant hardcover English edition for the first time. Moomins and the Great Flood (1945) is a junior novel that reveals the Moomin’s origins. Moominmamma and her son leave the world of humans (where they lived behind stoves) and become refugees, seeking their lost beloved, Moominpappa, who has been swept away by a flood. We meet the characters who will populate the later novels: Sniff, the Hemulen, the Antlion and the surreal Hattifatteners, who “did not care about anything except travelling from one strange place to another.” This poignant story was Jansson’s response to the Second World War that had interrupted her painting career. The book has her beautiful atmospheric watercolours.
Reading this book in the light of the suffering of the Finnish people in 1939 as they were caught up in the turmoil of their Winter War casts a different glow over what is essentially a classic adventure story.– Esther Freud
Why Does The World Exist? by Jim Holt is a fascinating book that asks the question, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ Holt looks at all sides of the question, interviewing scientists, philosophers, atheists and believers (Richard Swinburne, John Irving, Roger Penrose, Adolf Grunbaum…). There are three types of theorist:
The “optimists” hold that there has to be a reason for the world’s existence and that we may well discover it. The “pessimists” believe that there might be a reason for the world’s existence but that we’ll never know for sure… Finally, the “rejectionists” persist in believing that there can’t be a reason for the world’s existence, and hence that the very question is meaningless.
Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason says that ‘For every thing there must be a reason for that thing’s existence‘, which is the basis of our scientific worldview. Holt does a good job of summarizing some knotty philosophy, physics and maths (understanding it is another matter!). Although he offers no firm answers, the book left me feeling “optimistic”; and it’s oddly comforting that after picking the brains of the world’s greatest thinkers, Holt concludes,
No one can confidently claim intellectual superiority in the face of the mystery of existence.
Photo: Solar eruption, Dec 31, 2012 – courtesy of NASA Images
The Hobbitand The Lord of the Rings are the work of an obscure Oxford professor whose specialisation was the West Midland dialect of Middle English, and who lived an ordinary suburban life bringing up his children and tending his garden. – Humphrey Carpenter
My holiday reading is Humphrey Carpenter’s wonderful book, J.R.R. Tolkien – A Biography. The account of his early life is quite moving, and the evolution of his stories is fascinating (as Tolkien said, “Stories tend to get out of hand”). Some quirky influences on his writing include:
The attack on the toddler Tolkien by a terrifying tarantula in South Africa (1895),
Tolkien’s language teacher who trained his dog (to lick its lips) with a Gothic command, “smakka bagms”,
His ‘fellowship’ of young writers at college which is broken by the Great War.
The vital inspiration of the Kalevala, (Land of Heroes), the mythology of Finland.
A trip to a ‘nasty little suburban resort’ where he wrote a poem about a slimy cave creature named ‘Glip’ (1922).
His friendship with C.S.Lewis, on whom he based Treebeard’s ‘hrooming’ voice.
The Hobbits are just rustic English people. – Tolkien
The Science Delusion by rebel scientist Rupert Sheldrake challenges the current scientific dogma that life is mechanical and purposeless. His chapters ask: “Are the laws of nature fixed? Is nature purposeless? Are minds confined to brains?” The title is a bit misleading but perhaps it’s a dig at Richard Dawkins (of ‘God Delusion’ fame), who describes living things as ‘machines’. The US edition title is Science Set Free, and it’s Sheldrake’s aim to break free from rigid materialistic science. Anyone who has ever had a pet, kept bees or grown a tree, knows that plants and animals are living organisms with a sense of purpose, not just an assembly of chemicals:
All living organisms show goal-directed behaviour. Developing plants and animals are attracted towards developmental ends…Even the most ardent defenders of the mechanistic theory smuggle purposive organising principles into living organisms in the form of selfish genes and genetic programs.– Rupert Sheldrake
Even the smallest entities seem to have a form of consciousness. He describes remarkable single-celled swamp creatures, called Stentor (photo), which have a memory despite having no nerve endings (synapses). Sheldrake writes most lucidly about science and philosophy, and he’s not afraid to theorise about fringe science events (which he explains with his rather cryptic theory of ‘morphic fields’). Read a review.
This is not the end of the book is a fascinating conversation between two great bibliophiles, the author Umberto Eco and film-maker, Jean-Claude Carriere. They discuss the history of the physical book and our digital future. It’s a rambling, wide-ranging conversation (as the best are) and the enthusiasm of these book lovers swept me along. And there’s an especially fine chapter on book censorship.
The Internet has returned us to the alphabet … From now on, everyone has to read… Alterations to the book-as-object have modified neither its function nor its grammar for more than 500 years. The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved.’ – Umberto Eco
There is great exuberance in the Moomins, and a delightful battyness. – Jeanette Winterson
The Moomin comic strips by Tove Jansson, which ran in many newspapers from the 50s to the 70s, have been reprinted in five magnificent hardback volumes. The comics are a lovely balance of batty humour and optimistic philosophy. The free-spirited Moomins live in the moment and their stories are more relevant than ever, commenting on consumerism, the environment and work ethics.
For example, in The Conscientious Moomins, an officer of the League of Duty admonishes Moominpappa for being a drop-out from society; but when Moominpappa joins the establishment, all the pleasure goes out of life.
“To you life is not even a struggle. You earn no money!”
“We need very little”
“As soon as you earn some you will need it!”
The best short story I’ve ever read is Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard To Find, the opening story of an impressive collection. Her stories are dark, her characters grotesque, but there’s always a thin redemptive thread – in the title story it’s found in the unlikely shape of a psychopath called The Misfit. Brad Gooch’s detailed biography, Flannery, reveals how O’Connor honed her stories to near perfection despite the pain of a disease (lupus) which killed her at the age of only 39. Her writing is infused with a tough spirituality (she was Catholic) but she never sacrifices the story for a message. The book Mystery and Manners is a wonderful collection of her essays and lectures – some favourite quotes:
If you want to write well and live well at the same time, you’d better arrange to inherit money.
When I sit down to write, a monstrous reader looms up who sits down beside me and continually mutters, ‘I don’t get it, I don’t see it, I don’t want it.
Fiction is about everything human and we are made of dust, and if you scorn getting dusty, then you shouldn’t write fiction.
There’s a certain grain of stupidity that the fiction writer can hardly do without and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting to the point at once.
As grace and nature have been separated, so imagination and reason have been separated, and this always means an end to art. The artist uses his reason to discover an answering reason in everything he sees.
The writer has to judge himself with a stranger’s eye and a stranger’s severity.
The Catholic novelist doesn’t have to be a saint; he doesn’t even have to be a Catholic; he does, unfortunately, have to be a novelist.
Anyone can write but editing must be learned. One of the masters of the finely wrought story was P.G. Wodehouse; a relentless editor, he polished his manuscripts to comic perfection. Douglas Adams (in The Salmon of Doubt) described Wodehouse’s unique system:
‘When he was writing a book he used to pin pages in undulating waves around the wall. Pages he thought were working well would be pinned high, and those that still needed work would be lower down the wall.’
The aim was to get the whole story up to the ceiling level. What ever your system, a little ‘ruthless efficiency’ is required. Here are 3 books that have helped me:
Self Editing For Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King: Teaches the mechanics of style: dialogue, point of view, ‘show not tell’, character, beats etc. Best of all it gives examples, checklists and a self-test at the end of each topic.
The writer must be as God in his universe — present everywhere and visible nowhere. -Flaubert
The Art of Writing by John Gardner: A more stringent book but motivating. Gardner talks about maintaining the ‘dream’ of the story – but when the writing draws attention to itself (in a bad way) then the dream is broken for the reader.
Go over and over it…refusing to let anything stay if it looks awkward, phony, or forced.– John Gardner
On Becoming a Writerby Dorothea Brande (1934) is based on the idea that that the writer is both artist and self-critic. Brande believes we should begin with the unconscious mind ‘bringing at demand all the treasures of memory’, while the conscious mind ‘must control, combine and discriminate’.
But in the end don’t be too hard on yourself. The writer Jacob Needleman thanked his editor for going his book ‘with a flaming sword in one hand and a sweet-sounding bell in the other.’
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1940) is best loved for his exquisite fable The Little Prince, but he also wrote one of the great adventure books, titled Wind, Sand and Stars (1940). It’s not only exciting but is a poetic, philosophical memoir. Saint-Exupéry’s flights in the 1920s and 30s took him across the Pyrenees, the Andes, and the Sahara in a tiny plane that would sometimes conk-out “with a great rattle like the crash of crockery.” There are remarkable descriptions of flying among waterspouts through a typhoon, and his survival story after a crash in the desert (which no doubt inspired The Little Prince). Here’s a thoughtful review, and here’s my favourite quote from the book:
In the sky a thousand stars are magnetized, and I lie glued by the swing of the planet to the sand. A different weight brings me back to myself. I feel the weight of my body drawing me towards so many things. My dreams are more real than these dunes, than that moon, than these presences…Behind all seen things lies something vaster; everything is but a path, a portal or a window opening on something other than itself.
Iona and Peter Opie were the Brothers’ Grimm of the 1900s. Their greatest contribution to cultural history was the fabulous book The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren. It’s an epic collection of children’s rhymes, sayings, riddles, superstitions, jeers, tricks and customs – garnered from interviews with over 5000 UK children in the 1950s – passed on through generations, and naturally not intended for adult ears. Today’s children are perhaps not the ‘savage tribe’ they once were but it’s heartening that many of these verses persist in the playground today. Here are some morsels from the Opie’s collection:
Pinch-me, Punch-me, and Steponmytoes,
Went down to the river to swim,
Two of the three were drowned,
Who do you think was saved?
Old Mr Kelly,
Had a pimple on his belly;
His wife cut it off,
It tasted like jelly.
When the war is over Hitler will be dead,
He hopes to go to heaven with a crown upon his head.
But the Lord said, No! You’ll have to go below,
There’s only room for Churchill, so cheery, cheery oh.
Same to you with knobs on,
Cabbages with clogs on,
Elephants with slippers on,
And you with dirty knickers on.
God made the bees
The bees make the honey;
We do the work,
The teacher gets the money.
Scab and matter custard,
Green snot pies,
Dead dog’s giblets
Dead cat’s eyes.
Hard boiled snails, Spread it thick
Wash it down with a cup of cold sick.
Can you keep a secret?
I don’t suppose you can.
You mustn’t laugh or giggle
While I tickle your hand.
I’m reading Our Molecular Nature by David Goodsell and I am inspired by the intricacy of our cells. Inside each cell are tiny machine-like molecules: digesting, healing, sensing, supporting and moving us. Most of this work is done by protein molecules in your cells. There are 60,000 different proteins in the body, such as enzymes that carry out reactions and hormones that send messages. We can make proteins when we need them (eg. we build antibodies when we’re attacked by bacteria).
We must be able to build each one exactly when and where it is needed, using only the materials available in the diet.
How can this building be so accurate? Because each and every cell has a ‘library’ inside it called DNA which contains the precise instructions to build molecules. This ingenious plan is used every second of your life. DNA has 6 billion bits of information; the equivalent of a library of books.
Ultimately, a single cell, when paired with an appropriate mate, can build an entirely new human being, molecule by molecule.
Using this blueprint, proteins are constructed in chains from smaller molecules called amino acids. Like letters of the alphabet, there are only 20 amino acids arranged to create thousands of novel proteins. Some proteins last a long time, others are built as needed then disassembled after a few minutes. This allows the body to respond rapidly to any changes or needs. The illustration (right) shows ubiquitin, a protein found throughout your body. Ubiquitin’s job is to attach to discarded proteins, thus tagging them for destruction. The most abundant protein in the body is collagen, in our tissues. During pregnancy, collagen in the uterus increases by 800%, but is rapidly destroyed in the days after birth.
It’s Peace Day and I’ve been re-reading Strength To Love by Martin Luther King Jr. This book was life-changing for me in my early twenties (given to me by Peter Coughlan, the big-hearted man who ran the Christchurch City Mission). The sermons in the book are as radical as when King wrote them (several while in prison) during the Civil Rights struggle. King’s intensely practical spirituality is ‘tough and tender’: tough on injustice, tender on people. He encourages us to be non-conformists, he promotes non-violent resistance, and confronts militarism, materialism, and inequality: words which remain relevant 50 years on. While King’s poetic style was aimed at the listening ear, but it still packs a punch on the page, and you can almost hear the “Amens” after every sentence. A few quotes:
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.
Expenditures for defence have risen to mountainous proportions … the nations have believed that greater armaments will cast out fear, but they have produced greater fear.
Through non-violent resistance we shall be able to oppose the unjust system and at the same time love the perpetrators of the system … Returning hate for hate multiplies hate … Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.
Capitalism must undergo continual change if our great national wealth is to be more equitably distributed.
All life is interrelated… I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.
Listen to one of King’s most prophetic sermons, 1967, in Ebenezer Baptist Church. (This recording later got a Grammy for Best Spoken Word).
“The time has come for America to hear the truth…”
I was in that flush of youth that never doubts self-survival, that idiot belief in luck and a uniquely charmed life, without which illusion few wars would be possible.
It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition. And, it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. – Rod Serling (The Twilight Zone)
Catastrophe, the strange stories of Dino Buzzati (1949) is a brilliant collection of surreal stories. Each deals with a disaster and many have an allegorical mood. People are trapped on a train rushing towards an unknown cataclysm; a reporter searches for a elusive landslide; a rich family refuses to believe there’s a flood outside their house.
Buzzati wrote Catastrophe after WW2 and it reflects the fears of the time. My favourite is a kind of parable about dictatorship in which a bat-like creature terrorizes a household. A more satirical story has an epidemic of ‘state influenza’ which attacks only those opposed to the government. The scariest tale is about a hospital with seven floors that lead a patient either upwards or downwards, towards life or death.
These bizarre, suspenseful stories reminded me of the best of The Twilight Zone which also walked the fine line between real and imaginary (eg. the episode Nick of Time) .
Fantasy should be as close as possible to journalism.– Dino Buzzati
It’s really, really heartbreaking. But for some reason you want to read it again and again. It’s an extraordinary love story. It really is exquisitely written.– Michael Morpurgo
Every Sunday morning as a child I’d listen to Oscar Wilde’s Happy Prince (1888) on the radio and cry into my pillow (so my brother in the next room wouldn’t hear). I suspect the story shaped my attitude to justice and God. I didn’t understand half of it then but the message about compassion got through. Today, I see it’s also a love story between two needy characters (a guilty Prince and a self-absorbed bird) and I like Wilde’s digs at authority figures and subtle commentary on happiness. Here’s the wistful old radio version read by Robert Morley. Still makes me cry.
Some of my favourite lines:
The living always think that gold can make them happy.
Death is the brother of sleep, is he not?
Bring me the two most precious things in the city.
‘There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, “Do trousers matter?”’
‘The mood will pass, sir.’
P.G. Wodehouse (WOOD-house) created a world without earthquakes, wars or dictators (except Roderick Spode whose ‘eye that could open an oyster at sixty paces’), where nothing mattered except tidy trousers and nothing broke except engagements. He was a brilliant writer who cooked up similes like a master chef:
His legs wobbled like asparagus stalks.
She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression.
Her face was shining like the seat of a bus-driver’s trousers.
Her voice trailed away in a sigh that was like the wind blowing through the cracks in a broken heart.
Wodehouse published 90 books, writing until his death at 93 years. When asked about his technique he said ‘I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit’. My favourite is Right Ho, Jeeves, about Bertie Wooster and his valet, Jeeves, who is ‘so dashed competent in every respect’. The chapter where Gussie Fink-Nottle presents the prizes at a private school is a brilliant piece of humour.
The theme that animates Wodehouse’s work … is the quest for sweetness and light in the daily transactions of humanity.– Robert McCrum (Wodehouse: A Life)
Old Tibet was once the essence of the mystical and remote in Western eyes: with tales of the timeless Shangri-La and mysterious yeti; the awesome Himalayas; the detachment of Buddhism and its serene Dalai Lama. This essence has influenced many comic stories, such as the wartime hero, Green Lama (1945), who got his fighting strength by reciting a normally peaceful Buddhist mantra. Tintin (1958) experienced the power of Tibet when he was led there by a vision to find a lost friend – even the Dalia Lama praised Tintin in Tibet.
Old Tibet was no physical paradise of course, but the culture that inspired these comics has now almost disappeared. When the Chinese invaded in 1950, they fulfilled a 1,200 year old Tibetan prophecy that the ‘Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the face of the earth.’ The Chinese persecuted mainly Buddhists, razing 6,000 monasteries and bleeding Tibet of its traditions and language. In 1959, the Tibetans rose up against them and thousands died.
There’s since been a long struggle against the occupation by Tibetans – some want complete independence, others (like the Dalai Lama) would settle for religious freedom and some autonomy. The Chinese call it the ‘Tibet Autonomous Region’ but it still resembles a restrictive dictatorship.
Book review: Across Many Mountains by Yangzom Brauen is the remarkable true story of three generations of women from one Tibetan family, who encompass cultural extremes from old Buddhist Tibet to Hollywood glitz. The first part of the book is a gripping account of an escape, via the Himalayas, from the brutal Chinese invasion of 1950 ( which fulfilled a 1,200 year old Buddhist prophecy: ‘The Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the face of the earth‘.) Part two is fascinating because of the culture clash when the Tibetans experience Western ‘civilisation’. When the family finally return to Tibet in the 1980s they find ‘a country that has been robbed of its soul’. The Chinese have suppressed the language and culture (and still do). But the book is even-handed and also has a warts-and-all picture of Old Tibet where Buddhism was influenced by folk religion. The 90 year old grandmother-nun, Kunsang, is the heart of this inspiring book.
Research shows that far being being a means to escape the social world, reading stories can actually improve your social skills by helping you better understand other human beings. – Keith Oatley
Likewise, Tolkien believed that fantasy “offers not an escape away from reality, but an escape to a heightened reality”. When we read fiction we enter an imagined world (perhaps far from reality) and it’s the characters that we attach to. It’s this emotional connection with characters that provides a kind of ‘training’ for real life interactions with human beings. This is especially helpful for children who begin to develop empathy for others from around four years old. Reading fiction enables them to walk in another’s shoes. A fine example is Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor which shows the young reader something of what it was like to be a black child growing up in Mississippi in the 1930s. It’s an incredibly moving story of hardship and hope.
While reading, we can leave our own consciousness, and pass over into the consciousness of another person, another age, another culture – Maryanne Wolf
Comics were banned in occupied France but Edmond-François Calvo secretly produced a powerful satirical comic that became a French icon after the Germans scuttled in 1944. It’s the story of the bloody European war but told with Disney-style animal characters: the French as rabbits; British bulldogs; and German wolves (Goebbels a weasel, Himmler a skunk). La Bete Est Morte!was a forerunner of the graphic novel, Maus, with its Nazi cats and Jewish mice. Here’s an extract: My dear little children, never forget this: these Wolves who perpetrated these horrors were ordinary Wolves … They were not in the heat of battle excited by the smell of powder. They were not tormented by hunger. They did not have to defend themselves, nor to take vengeance for a victim of their own. They had simply received the order to kill.
My first comic book love as a child was the Donald Duck series by Carl Barks, perhaps the greatest comic storyteller. Barks fleshed out Disney’s slapstick film characters and created 500 engrossing adventures for children, making him “the most widely read but least known author in the world”. The hunt for square eggs in 
It’s a myth (turned cliche) that science and faith have always been at odds. The superb book, God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science by James Hannam, shows how the medieval church supported the genesis of science. Early universities were church-sponsored and ‘natural’ philosophy (as science was called – the word scientist wasn’t used yet) was a core subject. European thinkers drew on ancient Greek and Islamic texts to develop scientific principles that we still use today. Hannam brings a warm appreciation to these unsung scholars (eg. Gerbert); debunks the myth of the ignorant ‘Dark Ages’ (eg. people knew the Earth was round) and that the church burned scientists; and details inventions such as clocks and spectacles.
Tolstoy’s Twenty-Three Tales (1903) inspired me in my youth and today I still love the wisdom of his folk tales. The classics are How Much Land Does a Man Need (very little, naturally); and The Three Questions (Eg, What should I do with my time?). One of the unsung tales is A Grain as Big as a Hen’s Egg, an environmental metaphor that has gained in power. This is the only colour photo of Tolstoy (here aged 80), from 1908. 
A Bee in a Cathedral by Joel Levy is a fascinating book of science analogies and astonishing numbers. Suitable for all ages, only the physics section is a bit complex. A few of my favourites factoids:
What is ‘essential’? Is it Truth, Love, God, or Uncertainty? These are the sort of questions the story evokes over and over. The opening chapter about 
Struwwelpeter (Pretty Stories and Funny Pictures) by Dr Heinrich Hoffman (1845) is a classic of gleefully gruesome cautionary rhymes about naughty children. Hoffman was a psychiatrist who founded an influential Frankfurt asylum and pioneered counselling as an alternative treatment to cold baths (his life was novelized in Clare Dudman’s 98 Reasons for Being). The characters in Struwwelpeter were inspired by his child patients – he’d tell them stories and draw pictures to calm them down. Hoffman was looking for a book for his three year old son and could only find ‘stupid collections of pictures, and moralising stories’, so he created Struwwelpeter. It was one of the first picture books designed purely to please children – before then children’s books were mainly religious or moral lessons with titles such as An Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy Lives and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children. 
At last! The original Moomin book has been released in an elegant hardcover English edition for the first time. Moomins and the Great Flood (1945) is a junior novel that reveals the Moomin’s origins. Moominmamma and her son leave the world of humans (where they lived behind stoves) and become refugees, seeking their lost beloved, Moominpappa, who has been swept away by a flood. We meet the characters who will populate the later novels: Sniff, the Hemulen, the Antlion and the surreal Hattifatteners, who “did not care about anything except travelling from one strange place to another.” This poignant story was Jansson’s response to the Second World War that had interrupted her painting career. The book has her beautiful atmospheric watercolours.
