Witch Week and Joan Aiken!

It's Witch Week!  And this year we are reading Joan Aiken, one of the true greats of 20th century children's literature (not to mention some very fun other things).  One of my favorite go-to presents for children is Aiken's Arabel and Mortimer books, which are so funny and worth reading many times over.

 

But for this Witch Week I decided to revisit the alternate-history world of the Wolves Chronicles, which are set at the beginning of the 1800s under the reign of James III (often called Jamie Three).  In this world, not only are wolves the scourge of England in winter, but the industrial revolution is well under way, and the Hanoverians are forever plotting to overthrow King James and set the German Bonnie Prince George upon the throne. Aiken builds an amazing, adventurous, eccentric, and very dangerous world for her characters.

Aiken is incredibly imaginative and inventive, so you never know what will happen next, and the language is wonderful.  Dido is the best, always using wild slang and made-up words, but it's all great.

These are so good that I kept grabbing just one more, and read four over the weekend.  I'm seriously considering just re-reading them all in order.  I have at least half the Wolves Chronicles and have been meaning to get the matching Gorey cover versions of the others...

 The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, by Joan Aiken

Little Sylvia has always lived with her Aunt Jane in London, but now she is going to travel a long way north and live with her cousin Bonnie at the family estate of Willoughby Chase.  Bonnie is a lively, adventurous girl, while Sylvia is slightly frail and has been raised by Aunt Jane in an extremity of refinement. 

Sylvia's journey by train is a frightening ordeal all by itself, with a large, overly-friendly man in her compartment -- who well knows how to cope when the train is stopped, and a wolf actually breaks through the window.  It takes two days to get there, and hungry wolves are a constant danger.

Bonnie and Sylvia are immediate friends, but Bonnie's parents are leaving on a sea voyage for Mrs. Green's health, and a distant cousin, Miss Slighcarp, has arrived to run the house and teach the girls.  She proves to be a terrifying villain who dismisses the staff, takes over the household, and fixes up a false will leaving the estate to her.  She has made sure the Greens won't come back, and deposits the little girls in a nearby orphanage run by her equally-villainous friend, where they're starved and overworked along with all the other girls.  Sylvia isn't strong enough to cope and gets sick.

Luckily, Bonnie has a friend; the goose-boy Simon, who lives in a cave on the Willoughby estate and raises geese.  He's totally independent, living a child's dream life, and he helps the girls escape.  Dressed as shepherds' children, they all walk Simon's geese to London, which takes months, and the healthy life fixes Sylvia right up.  They find Aunt Jane dying -- of poverty and malnutrition -- and care for her while they figure out how to contact the family lawyer, defeat Miss Slighcarp, and even get the other orphanage girls into a safe and happy home.

This is just a fantastic story, and well-known as a classic.  It's a little bit sad, though, that so many people read this one and then may not realize that there's a whole series....

Black Hearts in Battersea

Simon, the goose-boy, is now moving to London to stay with his doctor and artist friend, Dr. Field, and go to art school himself.  Dr. Field is lodging with the Twite family near the river Thames, but when Simon arrives, he's not there...and no one will admit to ever having known him.  Still, Simon stays with the Twites, starts art school, and gets a job, while looking for clues about where Dr. Field can have gone.  Little Dido Twite, age 9 and the consummate London guttersnipe, steals the show.

Simon makes many friends and gets to know the Duke and Duchess of Battersea, who live in a pink granite castle not far away.  They're kind, eccentric, and lovely, but they're surrounded by Hanoverian plotters who mean to murder the Duke and set his  nephew Justin in his place, so as to have a nicely secure base to operate from.  Simon, Dido, and Justin wind up at sea, and the ship is wrecked....Simon fetches up on an island with just two people on it, and Dido is missing entirely.  What will be her fate?

Nightbirds on Nantucket 

While Simon was saving the Duke and Duchess of Battersea at the last minute, Dido was lost at sea and picked up by a whaling ship out of Nantucket.  By the time we pick up her story, she is around 11 years old and joins the crew of the Sarah Casket.  The captain is obsessed with finding a pink whale he spotted once, years ago, and hi daughter Dutiful Penitence is on board, but she's so afraid of the sea that she's locked herself into a closet and is living on the beach-plum jam stored there.  Dido coaxes her out and tries to teach her some gumption.  Eventually they're dropped off on Nantucket, to live with Pen's terrifying Aunt Tribulation, who makes them do all the work of the sheep farm, but the girls find an enormous gun hidden in the forest, and realize that even Nantucket is infested with Hanoverians!  In fact, Aunt Tribulation seems to be one...

The Cuckoo Tree

There is a story or two in-between, but I don't have those right now.

Dido has been terribly homesick for London and she's thrilled to be back on English soil, but it's a long trip by coach and an accident strands her and her friend Captain Hughes at a lonely estate, next door to Mrs. Lubbage, an honest-to-goodness witch.  Dido nurses her Cap and befriends Tobit, the heir to the estate, and Cris, who has grown up the prisoner of Mrs. Lubbage -- but the Cap has an urgent message to get to the new king in London before the coronation.  Dido's only help are the mysterious Wineberry Gentlemen who make regular trips to London, but the Manor is full of Hanoversians determined to stop the message from getting there.