The Wolves of Greycoat Hall by Lucinda Gifford

Having travelled to Scotland I found this book just a delight. The kilts, the tartan, the "weird" language, and the castles. Boris Greycoat and his dad Randall and mum Leonora hear that wolves are to be reintroduced into Scotland so they decide to take a holiday to the land of their ancestors. 

Source: Lucinda Gifford on Twitter

"Since 1680, there have been no wolves in Scotland. But now The Scottish Royal Conservation Society wishes to welcome us back. Wolves will be reintroduced, starting with the Highland and Islands. Perhaps one day soon, we wolves ca go about our daily lives in Scottish cities without shrieks of terror from the local population."

So begins the story which feels like an old fashioned melodrama with dastardly baddies and clever heroes (Boris) and an outcome (in the castle) that feels just right! The family board their train in Morovia (Czech Republic) to the coast, then catch an overnight ferry to England and finally they board the train for Scotland - specifically to Inverness. They have a booking at the Highland Hotel. 

Don't read this book if you are feeling slightly hungry because it is filled with delicious food. It is important for wolves to eat consistently throughout the day. "As all respectable wolves know, the best way to get on in society is to not get very, very hungry. A hungry wolf is not a dignified wolf ... As a precaution, a wolf must not appear in society when hungry - as this hunger may result in Undignified Situations and Embarrassing Incidents." Luckily Inverness has cake shops, a fishmonger, restaurants and of course the hotel dining room. 

"The cafe sold nine different kinds of cake: coffee, vanilla, jam, strawberry, chocolate, lemon, caramel, fruitcake and carrot." You do need to know wolves do not eat carrots and so when they leave the cafe they leave plenty of (carrot) cake for the other customers.

The descriptive writing gives a sense of character and place and although some of the vocabulary is challenging, the support of the illustrations makes it suitable for children developing their reading skills.Full of historic castles and mystery, this book is perfect for a 7+ readership and fans of Chris Riddell’s ‘Ottoline’ series. Books and Publishing

If you need more plot details listen to this podcast by Middle Grade Maverns.

Junk Castle by Robin Klein illustrated by Rolf Heimann

 

Mandy, Irene, Con and Splinter live in a block of flats in Meldrum Crescent. There is nowhere around the building for this group of friends to play except for a small 'park'.

"The park opposite wasn't really grand enough to be called a park. It was just a sandwich shaped wedge of lawn squeezed between the Kozinooze Slumberwear factor and a site where a new service station was being built. It had a railing fence around it and a sign which said, 'The Beatrice Binker Reserve'. It was too small for a game of football or a game of anything."

Irene is told to prepare a talk for her class. It can be on any topic. Irene is terrified of public speaking so she is relieved when the braces on her teeth are bent out of shape by a piece of hard rye bread. No speech for Irene. This means Mandy will need to do it and that's just fine with Mandy because she loves addressing an audience. The kids decide the topic should be medieval castles and so they head  over to the library. (You can imagine I appreciate this).

"Their local library was wonderful ... And there weren't any bossy signs ordering you to shush. You were allowed to talk if you did it quietly and away from the section where the students were working. Mandy looked up castles in the subject index and they went to the shelf number."

After all their research and Mandy's successful class talk, the kids decide to build a castle in the tiny park. The men, constructing the new service station, offer to help with the brick construction and concrete but Mr Drake, from over the road, is furious. He writes letters to the council, he makes up a petition, and he even calls the police. Workers from the factory see all the action and they phone a local television station. The castle is fabulous but will the kids win the battle and is there something they don't know about Mr Drake? What does he mean when he tells Mandy:

"I don't want the Beatrice Binker Reserve disgraced on television. It's a memorial park."

Junk Castle was published in 1983 and was short listed by the CBCA in 1984 which by coincidence was my first year of teaching. I have often thought about the little patch of ground where this group of children built their castle. l really like their creative use of the materials they find discarded in their neighborhood, the way the kids co-operate with each other and their wonderful imaginative play. It is now 37 years since I first read this book and I am very happy to report it has stood the test of time. The only tiny dated reference is the mention of cassette tapes which can be loaned from the library.

I thought again about Junk Castle when I shared another old book - Keep Out by Noela Young. I also like to link Junk Castle with another Robin Klein story from her fabulous short story collection Ratbags and Rascals - How Clara Bepps put Strettle Street properly on the Map.

Very sadly Junk Castle is not a title on the NSW Premier's Reading challenge but I am sure this book will still be available in many primary school libraries across Australia. My former library has one copy and the library where I help as a reading volunteer has a set of ten copies! I was happy to see it is still part of the South Australian Premier's Reading challenge. 

Junk Castle is a perfect book to read aloud to a class of students in Grade 3 or 4. You could also use this book as a way to discuss the role of local government and the ways citizens can legally express their point of view through strategies such as letters to the media and petitions. This is one of those precious books which I wish someone would republish. 

Junk Castle is a paean to the triumph of the imagination over stultifying gentility, to the revitalising of dead urban scenes, to the rejuvenation of the spirit. Is that a pile of old rubbish on the Beatrice Binker Reserve (a tiny triangle of cropped grass in a jungle of concrete), or a glitteringly exciting castle? This is a favourite theme of Klein's, a sort of personal war on tidy suburbia - perhaps because `I used to live in a ghastly middle-class suburb that I absolutely loathed. Now I live miles from anywhere out in the bush, in a tolerant, dotty area.' Books for Keeps

Maurice Saxby decribes Robin Klein as "the coolest Australian writer of the 1980s."  [The Proof of the Puddin' Australian Children's literature 1970-1990 by Maurice Saxby page 228]

Take a step back into the eighties to see what upper primary kids did without Play Stations, mobile phones and other electronic gadgetry. Irene has a speech to make at school so it's off to the local library, no world wide web. In the block of flats they have to creep up and down the stairs to deliver messages to each other, no texting. To alleviate their boredom they scavenge around the neighbourhood for building materials and build their own castle in the reserve. The Little Library of Rescued Books

The children of the King by Sonya Hartnett

When you pick up a book by Sonya Hartnett you know you are in the safe hands of a master story teller.  Sonya Hartnett seems to get right inside her characters and landscapes.

Most of the action takes place in the final chapters of this book but I did enjoy the slow build up. I agree with Maurice Saxby when he says "the characterization, free of present-day-gimmicks, has all the solid qualities of an English novel at its best. The same can be said of the style, in that every page has a telling phrase, a startling image that carries weighty implications."

The setting for this book in London in World War Two with the blitz about to begin.  Cecily Lockwood aged twelve, her brother Jeremy aged fourteen and their mother Heloise leave London for the safety of the North country moving to the estate Heron Hall  the home of Uncle Peregrine brother to their father who stays behind in London to assist (in some undisclosed way) with the war effort.

Travelling on the train with the family are a large number of children who are being evacuated out of London and sent to live with strangers in the country.  Here is a description of the station :
"The village station was usually a lonely place, having been built too ambitiously for the town it served; normally five or six souls wandered the oversized platform, and the distances between them could be so vast that they might each have been waiting for different trains on different days. .... but perhaps the grandiose station had been built, so long ago, for this singular day."

Cecily watches the bewildered children as they are herded off the train and into the local town hall and then she sees the children being led one or two at a time away from the town hall by different women and a few men. "Cecily's heart stretched its tether" and she asks her mother if they can take a child, an evacuee, to Heron Hall.  Jeremy joins in with rational arguments supporting this idea and so they go into the town hall and Cecily 'selects a child' a little girl called May Bright aged ten.

The three children settle into life at Heron Hall and one day the girls wander off to explore the ruins of a castle which is on the estate.  While they are there they meet two boys and a sharp reader will immediately see that things are not quite as they seem.  At the same time Uncle Peregrine has agreed to tell the children the story of this castle. It is the story of King Richard and power and two small boys who are locked in a tower - perhaps you recognise this story from history.

This is a story primarily about Cecily, who is a fairly precocious little girl but ultimately it is Jeremy undergoes a transformation.  As a fourteen year old boy he is desperate to be useful to the war effort but of course too young. He is a very intelligent boy and he feels trapped by life at his uncle's estate.  He wants to fight, he wants to be with his father in London and above all he wants to be part of the action so he can understand this war.

Here is an example to show how Sonya Harnett really gets into the psychology of her characters.  Heloise becomes so furious with Jeremy one evening she threatens to send him away to boarding school.  Cecily finds her brother and tries to comfort him :

"In common with most siblings, Jeremy and Cecily Lockwood had a thousand grievances against one another.  But, again in common, for one to realise the other was hurt roused a lion-like concern and sympathy ... Despair had overtaken him so thoroughly that he couldn't make the traditional denial of anything being wrong.  He wiped his face but the tears kept dropping as they will when a heart has received a deep wound."

Here is an excellent review from the Sydney Morning Herald, one in the Age and here is an interview with Sonya Hartnett about this book - I recommend reading this.  This is a book for Upper Primary students and their parents and after reading this one you should look for Midnight Zoo and The Silver Donkey.