My top reads of 2020

I read 76 books in 2020. That’s a little more than I read in a normal year, but not much. I’m surprised actually – it’s been far from a normal year and I thought I’d have read more. I did watch the entire seven seasons of Buffy though, so that probably accounts for quite a bit of reading time… 

 

So, without further ado, my top reads of 2020: 

 

TOP NOVEL

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell 

A book that sweeps you up and tears out your heart. I’ll tell you how good this book is: I read this right at the start of the first lockdown and it managed to fill my head totally with something other than You-Know-What. 

 

TOP CHILDREN'S BOOK

 

Friend Me by Sheila M Averbuch 

 

I was bowled over by this middle-grade thriller. Tense, thrilling and with an attention to detail that would put a lot of adult thrillers to shame, plus an emotional core hits home. Clever, very clever. 

 

TOP NONFICTION

 

A Sting in the Tale by Dave Goulson 

 

At the start of the year my family decided that we were each going to recommend a book for all the others to read. I would never have picked up a non-fiction book about bees of my own volition, but Dave Goulson made the subject entirely fascinating. 

 

TOP REREAD

 

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman 

 

I got a Folio Society beautiful set of His Dark Materials from my family for my birthday. I used to love The Subtle Knife the most. In fact, I think the first time I read The Amber Spyglass I didn’t really understand what was going on, which seems odd now, as it’s absolutely clear and so magnificent. What books these are! 

 

TOP OLD BOOK

 

Wildfire at Midnight by Mary Stewart 

 

I spent several weeks at my mother-in-law’s when the first lockdown happened and started working my way through old books on her shelves. It’s been hard to pick a ‘top book’ from those I read, as I wouldn’t unequivocally recommend any. I don’t know why it comes as a surprise that books date. Of course, we all love books we’ve read years ago, but when we read old books for the first time nowadays… so much exposition, such slow build, not to speak of casual sexism, racism, treatment of children that ranges from bizarre to abusive… Of course they’re of their time, and that’s fascinating, but it’s hard to lose yourself in the story with all these alerts going off. The Mary Stewart book I’ve chosen is a mystery with a slightly supernatural air. It was diverting rather than gripping, but the Scottish countryside was gorgeously brought to life.  

 

 

 

 

Thursday's Child by Noel Streatfeild

Thursday’s Child was the first book I wore out. My original copy was a paperback with a photo from a TV series I never saw. I read it until the spine cracked and the pages came out in chunks and then I carried on reading it until it was a collection of small sections and individual pages that had to be handled with extreme caution. 

I suppose that the larger child here is Margaret who was dressed up as a boy to work on the canal boat, but if you picked up the book unknowing, you'd read the image as two boys. Seems an odd choice for the cover to me.

When my paperback Thursday's Child was finally impossible to read, my mother bought me a hardback copy, the very first hardback I had ever owned apart from a handful of Beatrix Potters. So now I had not only a book I adored for its story, but the first book I fell in love with as an object. Imagine the thrill of owning such a treasure! 

Look how much I loved this book - I covered the dust jacket with stickyback plastic when it started to disintegrate. And stop to appreciate the image of Margaret drawn by Peggy Fortnum who's responsible for the original Paddington Bear illustrations.

A number of books have held top spot for me over the years, but Thursday's Child probably held it for longest and has never been out of my personal top ten. What is it about this particular story? I think, for me, it’s the epitome of what I think of when I think ‘children’s books’. Feisty hero, no parents, thrown into situations where she has to fend for herself, protect others, form a team, while preserving her own identity with determination. Though most of my favourites have elements of fantasy or magic in them, historical novels like this tick the world-building boxes that suit me. And honestly, the things that Noel Streatfeild throws at Margaret Thursday barely give the reader pause for breath: an orphan with a mysterious background, a cruel orphanage, an escape to a canal boat, joining a travelling theatre, the discovery of long-lost aristocrats. And as the author speeds her characters through triumph and disaster, she takes the time to give even the minor players and the baddies real depth. 

I have loved almost every Noel Streatfeild book I’ve ever read – I can even forgive her for the much inferior sequel to this book because of course you have to write a book called Far to Go if you’ve written one called Thursday’s Child. I have a soft spot for Ballet Shoes and my copies of the Gemma stories show evidence of much rereading, but for me, if you could only read one of her books Thursday’s Child should be the one. 

This post is part of a collection of seven about children's books that I love. You can see the original post here, with links to all the books I've written about.

Miniature World Building

When we talk about world-building in fiction, it sounds like something huge. We think Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones with their great historical backstories, myriad characters and entire languages. Or we think of the intricacies of science fiction – creating believable alternate realities or different scientific laws. Then there are books like Watership Down, where Richard Adams spins a mythology and history around real rabbit behaviour. Where books that take the reader into other worlds work, they’re deep and involving, they never for a moment give you cause to stop and question their plausibility.

But world-building works on a small scale too.

One of my favourite childhood books was Five Dolls in a House by Helen Clare. I can’t tell you where it came from or who gave it to me. It seems like a book I always had.

My well-read copy of Five Dolls in a House by Helen Clare, illustrated by Cecil Leslie

You can tell right from the start that some serious world building is going on here. Many – perhaps most – books that take their world-building seriously will provide readers with a map. There’s no map in Five Dolls in a House. Instead, there’s a section of the house. Oh yes! It’s like a signpost to say, ‘Here’s the world you’re in right now. Focus on this.’ And how many times I flicked back through the pages to work out who was where at various points of the story, how often I simply examined the picture and wished I owned this house myself.

Section of dolls' house from Five Dolls in a House by Helen Clare, illustrated by Cecil Leslie

The premise of the story is that Elizabeth wonders what the dolls in her dolls’ house do when she’s finished playing with them and closed the front of the house. She peeks in the window but of course the dolls are just lying where she left them. Then all at once Elizabeth finds herself walking up to the front door of the house. This strange magic isn’t referred to at all; Elizabeth just accepts it without question and I, as a reader, went along with her. When Elizabeth meets the dolls she tries to explain who she is, and the dolls take her explanation that she owns the house and the fact that she already knows all their names to mean that she is their landlady.

Every detail of the dolls’ world is considered. They moan about how dreadful it is to live in a house where the whole of the front comes off sometimes. They have to pretend to have dinner because all the food in the house is made of plaster (Elizabeth remedies this with a chocolate biscuit and jellies). Some pet mice take up residence in the house and the dolls use them as horses to pull a little carriage (with disastrous results!).

It’s a joy! The characters are gorgeous – Vanessa, the eldest who is a terrible snob, Jane, the beauty, Amanda, clever and naughty, Jacqueline, the French paying guest, Lupin, who always goes about in her vest much to Vanessa’s disapproval, and the monkey who lives on the roof and is always making cheeky comments and causing mischief.

So much is packed into this short book. As with many chapter books for younger readers, each chapter is a complete story but the whole has a narrative that reaches a satisfying conclusion. Long after I was grown up, I did discover that there were sequels to the story, but I can’t bear to read them. For me Five Dolls in a House is a completely perfect miniature world and I don’t want to know any more.

This post is part of a collection of seven about children's books that I love. You can see the original post here, with links to all the books I've written about.

The seven books I'm not posting covers of

I keep being tagged in those social media posts where you're supposed to put up a number of books you love or books that have changed you or just books. With no comment or explanation, they usually say. I suppose this is so that it doesn't seem like a hard thing to do. Maybe so that it provokes other people to comment. I've done this before, I always want to shout about books I love, but the tags are coming so thick and fast in the current situation - what else have people got to do but look back at books, movies, music, paintings that they love - that I can't bring myself to join in. And besides, I find I want to comment. I have things to say about books. I want people to hear them.

So I was lying in bed, thinking about what I might choose if I was posting seven books that mean a lot to me/changed my life/I want to share. I thought I'd need to browse through my bookshelves but actually seven books appeared in my head straight away. Of course, as a children's book nerd, all seven are children's books. I do read other things. I love many, many books aimed at adults, but I don't feel nearly as passionate about them as I do about the children's books I love. Why would that be? Is it because the books I loved as a child stood out more because the pool of all the books I had read was smaller when I read them? Is it because I wasn't consciously looking for books that were like books I'd already enjoyed, so that finding these was a joyful happenstance?

I'd be interested to know if adults who don't read children's books have stand-out books from their childhoods that they would consider including in a list of favourites. As us children's writers know, many adults see children's books as less worthy than books aimed at adults. I think if anyone who had been a reader since childhood gave it some thought, they would easily put their finger on a few stand-out books from their childhood.

So here are the seven books that sprang into my mind.

What can I say about them? They seem distinctly 'girly' to me, but that could be to do with the era in which I was a child. There's a clear progression in when I took up each as 'my favourite book'. But somehow even when I championed a new one, all the others still remained 'my favourite'. The order is:

Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban

Five Dolls in a House by Helen Clare

Thursday's Child by Noel Streatfeild

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Henrietta's House by Elizabeth Gouge

Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer

Fifteen by Beverley Cleary

So I thought, instead of just showing you covers, I'd tell you why I love these books. I've already written about most of them on this blog. You can click on the titles above to see what I had to say.  The rest I'll write over the course of the next few weeks. There isn't after all anything much pressing to do at the moment.