dry, well-meaning relatives, and Hatty her cruel aunt and dismissive cousins; two lonely children, wandering together in a charmed land of memory.


The Chronicles of Narnia (especially The Magician’s Nephew, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian)


C.S. Lewis, HarperCollins Children’s Books


The portal fantasy is perhaps the most utopian concept of all – and no child, once gripped by the Chronicles, ever quite loses the hope of finding an otherworld in the back of a wardrobe, and becoming royalty there. While Narnia itself is often under attack – winter-gripped by the White Witch, forcibly updated by Miraz and the Telmarines – the land itself


is rich


beyond compare. With chocolate-dense earth so fertile that half-crowns and toffees can grow in it, living trees and waters, and stately Talking Beasts, this, undoubtedly, is a utopia worth fighting for (and one that offers both refuge and status to powerless and belittled children.)


Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories


Joyce Lankester Brisley, Macmillan Children’s Classics, 978-1-4472- 7306-6, £9.99


Intently focused on everyday adventure, the tales of Millicent Margaret Amanda, who lives with her large family in ‘the nice white cottage with the thatched roof’, seldom rove further afield than the map of her village. Fishing for tadpoles, an overnight visit with Little- friend-Susan, running races at the fete or hosting parties with raspberry-drop refreshments – these nostalgic stories still vividly conjure a child’s


close-


to-the-ground, quotidian richness of experience.


Knitbone Pepper, Ghost Dog


Claire Barker, illustrated by Ross Collins, Usborne, 978-1-4095-8037-9, £9.99 hbk


A rare more recent title, about a girl bereaved of her dog, and his ghostly return to their marvellous but imperilled home. Starcross Hall is a crumbling, crazed pile, ‘snuggled into the surrounding countryside… fast asleep and dreaming of times past’. Full of antique hats, eccentric parents and the lovelorn ghosts of pets too loyal to leave,


Starcross Books for Keeps No.223 March 2017 11


Imogen Russell Williams is a journalist and editorial consultant specialising in children’s literature and YA.


10 the river.


is a glorious, shambolic playground for Winnie Pepper and her spectral pup, who’ll fight tooth and nail to prevent the Council seizing it.


Ottoline and the Yellow Cat, Ottoline and the Purple Fox


Chris Riddell, Macmillan Children’s Books


Brought to life via Riddell’s sparse, intelligent text and sophisticated line-drawings,


Ottoline Brown’s


environment – a smart apartment in the Pepperpot Building and its surrounding streets – is contained but constantly stimulating. She lives free from parental scrutiny, but with her every need met via McBean’s Cleaning Service and The Home- Cooked Meal Co – leaving her free to solve puzzles and socialise widely, whether with bears who live in the laundry or the charismatic Purple Fox. Ottoline’s is a world of delectable dinner-parties, lamppost poetry, fancy dress and the vagaries of the imagination


Minnow on the Say


Philippa Pearce, Oxford, 978-0192792419, £6.99 Another Pearce classic,


this


compelling adventure of two boys, a canoe, and a quest for a hidden treasure is not cocooned from the cruelties of history, especially the bitterness of losing a child to war. But it’s full to the brim of sunlight on water and a summer spent exploring, both on foot and afloat – an effortless evocation of life on


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