Moments of rightness

[timorene]

I am at home with a cold and was reading The Diddakoi today, because I found it at the Oxfam bookshop next to British Museum and I came across the most lovely moment in it - in which Joe, her horse dies and she asks where he has gone, and the Admiral says, 'We don't know, nobody knows, but I think we'll find out some day' - or something along those

Comments

[maryvictoria]

Oh my goodness, The Diddakoi - that brings back memories! I was so in love with that book as a child that I became Kizzy - set up a little camp with an old blue kettle hung over a pretend campfire our "garden" (2m of dirt round the back of the house,) dressed up in special clothes and required grownups to call me by my "right" name - ha! Good stuff.

[timorene]

hehehehe, sounds like you were really channelling Kizzy! Have you read any other Rumer Godden books? She's one of my favourite authors - her book Thursday's Children is fantastic, and so is The Doll's House.

[maryvictoria]

I never read anything else of Rumer Godden's as a child - I was a Joan Aiken and later a Rosemary Sutcliff fan, though. Amazing children's books that deserve to live forever...

Speaking of living forever, I like very much what you say about not knowing - I feel the same way!

[timorene]

I loved Rosemary Sutcliff - my teacher in year 7 gave me her book 'Song for a Dark Queen' about Boudicca - and sent me straight into a love of ancient history. I never got around to reading Joan Aiken - despite her being so prolific - but perhaps one day I'll go back and finally pick up The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. I'd recommend Diana Wynne Jones as a children's author whose books are just as good - or even better - when I read them as an adult.