Happy (Belated) Birthday, Joan Aiken
Thursday, September 9, 2010
We got hold of Joan Aiken at a very early age, when Le R. Père came home from a business trip bringing us a copy of Nightbirds on Nantucket (which same copy we still own, incidentally, and which he probably would not have purchased had he any idea of the subsequent effect it would have on our deportment and habillement). Dido Twite is, hands-down, one of the greatest children's book characters of all time: an intrepid and resourceful urchin of disreputable appearance and razor-sharp intellect (ahem! not unlike A CERTAIN OTHER PERSON WE KNOW! i.e. OUR SELF), possessed of a cool head and a keen wit, sturdy throughout the direst of crises, and inveterate foiler of rampaging wolves, inebriate fathers, deranged queens, conspirators against governments, and evil persons posturing as relatives. Though Aiken wrote over a hundred novels for children and adults during her lifetime, it's her Wolves series that we love the very best: set in a slightly off-kilter nineteenth-century England, where someone is always plotting to overthrow the government via some plan as nefarious as it is ridiculous (giant cannon in Nantucket/kidnapping/exploding cathedral/disguised impostor/&c).
Aiken's villains never do things halfway, and Dido and her friends are obliged to endure any number of travails, which they invariably do with great cheer. (Poor Dido was supposed to drown at the end of Black Hearts in Battersea, but was rescued from this ignominious fate by the intervention of an agitated young fan, who insisted Aiken bring her back.) With a Dickensian zest for wackadoodle plot twists and delicious character names, Aiken was one of the most masterful stylists ever to turn a hand to children's books. Her stories are every bit as enjoyable as an adult as they were when we were small, and contemporary writers from Philip Pullman to Lemony Snicket owe an immense debt to her limitless imagination and inimitable style.
There is a very nice little film about Joan Aiken here; beloved indie Small Beer Press recently put out a (FABMAZING) collection of her Armitage family short stories; when you read the Wolves books you must be sure to purchase the Sandpiper editions (linked herein), which have the original Edward Gorey cover illustrations.
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I love Dido and Emma Watson, but Arabel's Raven is my favorite of favorites, along with the rest of that series.
I was once the person of an irascible, old, balding Maine Coon who reminded me of Mortimer - If we'd had a coal scuttle, Finn would have slept in it and he liked to lick soap. He ate my income tax form one year. I loved him anyway.
Oh! I loved Wolves of Willoughby Chase. In fact, I got it while in elementary school from that program where you'd order books out of a paper catalog, with your parents, and they'd arrive a few weeks later. When my mom opened the package, she decided Wolves was too scary for me to read (wolves attacking carriages and trains). So the next day, I checked it out of the elementary school library (it didn't scare me at all - and I loved the goose cart!). HEE! I told her years later and now we laugh about it. :)
The Kingdom Under the Sea, The Kingdom Under the Sea!! Move over, Jacob and Wilhelm.
You had me at Edward Gorey. No, wait, you had me at Small Beer Press. No, wait, you had me at habillement.
Aiken is one of my all-time favorite authors and I still read her, although not the scary one where the children were kidnapped to work in the mines. It makes me cry.
My favorite is Cold Shoulder Road, because of the tunnel and the huge pot of treasure, which I would like to search for one day because the kids couldn't begin to take it all.
I have recently discovered the Armitage Family, and love them.
Aiken wrote a terrific book called The Way To Write For Children.
I'm excited now to watch the nice little film.
I loved the garden you got on the back of the cereal boxes and then could wander through. Also the spare five minutes.
The way things fitted together from one book to another, even when they weren't really a series in the modern sense was great. As an American child it took me a while to realize that the period was made up. I never could remember the kings and queens of England.
Oh my goodness. I have only read a couple of Joan Aiken's books, but "The Girl from Paris" may have changed the course of my academic life... and I read it in college. My mom loved "Nightbirds on Nantucket" as a kid, a fact I did not remember until reading this post. A trip to the bookstore is at hand. Thank you, Le R., for another explosion of nostalgia.
Becky, those are the Armitage stories, which are collected in the Small Beer Press book--they're seriously fantastic.
Joan Aiken is godhead!
Put me down as a Dido fan from my youthful hours spent in the Victorian mansion with the moldy shag carpet that served as a local branch of our public library in my youth.
Oh lord, I loved Nightbirds on Nantucket because it was set in more or less my back yard--I mean, having a book set in places you knew...how cool was that? As an adult and a total history geek, I love her alternate history. Those Stuarts were always so much more attractive than the Hanoverians,
I love her books, but most especially her short stories. I think I bought the Armitage book 3 seconds after it was available. Thanks for the link to the website - I've now watched the film and downloaded wallpaper. Thank you!
I love, love, love Dido. Also, Is!
I'll have to check out the movie and her books, I hadn't discovered her as a child.
Great to have discovered a fellow editor on the blogs. I'll be back to read some some more over the following weeks.
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