Children's Things

On a whim I read Ted Hughes's How The Whale Became And Other Stories today and was very glad I did. A wonderfully anthropomorphic God, who wears a sun hat and calls endlessly for iced drinks on the particularly hot day on which he creates Tortoise, is just one of many splendid highlights.

And I was equally happy reading Leon Garfield's Apprentices a couple of weeks ago. In this case though any children attempting to read the stories would need to be considerably older than the seven or so recommended for Hughes's Whale tales. I remember Longmans publishing Apprentices in shorter versions - the original twelve stories, corresponding to the months of the year and various associated festivals, reduced to groups of four, was it? I got the impression they were hoping schools would pick these up as standard texts for literature classes, but I don't know how successful this was.

In fact, I'm not sure Garfield is read much at all now. Which is a pity since stylistically he's so interesting and 'usable' in the classroom. Certainly his Shakespeare Stories should be the prescribed text everywhere for schools who want to give kids a set of tales from Shakespeare. Astonishingly I've heard of the Lambs' hoary old versions still getting into classrooms, which is a crime when you consider the obvious superiority and accessibility of Garfield's work.