RIP Lynne Reid Banks
Apr. 5th, 2024 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenwoodsideI did a double take when I checked the news this morning on learning that the author Lynne Reid Banks died yesterday.
Lynne Reid Banks's children's book The Indian in the Cupboard was among the many that my dad read to me long before my age hit double digits. I can remember very little of it, and nothing at all of the problematic material about Native Americans. What I do recall is the attempt to bring back a WW1 army medic with the help of the magic cupboard, only for the cupboard door to open on nothing but his clothes and medical bag. The quoted passage in the linked blog entry reads as very sentimental to me now – the suck fairy has definitely paid it a visit – but it made a strong impression on little me.
That first double take was because I'd assumed she died long ago. She was born in 1929. That makes her nine years younger than Rosemary Sutcliff and Richard Adams, six years older than Susan Cooper, 14 years older than Michael Morpurgo, and 17 years older than bright young thing Philip Pullman.
And she had one of those crazy 20th century writer's biographies that I had no idea about till reading her obituary and an article from 2017 about running away to live on a kibbutz with sculptor Chaim Stephenson
. ........
Easter wasn't great. I caught some kind of odd virus that started off like food poisoning, then turned more into a migraine, then ended up as a cold. Saturday and Sunday consisted of lying down doing a bulk rewatch of Avatar: The Last Airbender (the proper animated version, not the live action thing that came out this year).
Actually, as viruses go, then once I'd got over the hypochondria ("What if I've caught BUBONIC PLAGUE and MEASELS and BIRD FLU? SHOULD I BE PUTTING MY THINGS IN ORDER??"), it was almost welcome. It was nice having a guilt-free excuse to be completely unproductive. Except that the news of a forthcoming solar eclipse in the USA combined with my choice of viewing material left me haunted by the nagging feeling that I should be drinking jasmine tea and planning to invade the Fire Nation.
I also read Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge, which was beautiful. I kept wanting to underline things or read them aloud to strangers.
Lynne Reid Banks's children's book The Indian in the Cupboard was among the many that my dad read to me long before my age hit double digits. I can remember very little of it, and nothing at all of the problematic material about Native Americans. What I do recall is the attempt to bring back a WW1 army medic with the help of the magic cupboard, only for the cupboard door to open on nothing but his clothes and medical bag. The quoted passage in the linked blog entry reads as very sentimental to me now – the suck fairy has definitely paid it a visit – but it made a strong impression on little me.
That first double take was because I'd assumed she died long ago. She was born in 1929. That makes her nine years younger than Rosemary Sutcliff and Richard Adams, six years older than Susan Cooper, 14 years older than Michael Morpurgo, and 17 years older than bright young thing Philip Pullman.
And she had one of those crazy 20th century writer's biographies that I had no idea about till reading her obituary and an article from 2017 about running away to live on a kibbutz with sculptor Chaim Stephenson
. ........
Easter wasn't great. I caught some kind of odd virus that started off like food poisoning, then turned more into a migraine, then ended up as a cold. Saturday and Sunday consisted of lying down doing a bulk rewatch of Avatar: The Last Airbender (the proper animated version, not the live action thing that came out this year).
Actually, as viruses go, then once I'd got over the hypochondria ("What if I've caught BUBONIC PLAGUE and MEASELS and BIRD FLU? SHOULD I BE PUTTING MY THINGS IN ORDER??"), it was almost welcome. It was nice having a guilt-free excuse to be completely unproductive. Except that the news of a forthcoming solar eclipse in the USA combined with my choice of viewing material left me haunted by the nagging feeling that I should be drinking jasmine tea and planning to invade the Fire Nation.
I also read Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge, which was beautiful. I kept wanting to underline things or read them aloud to strangers.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-05 07:10 pm (UTC)Ohh, this was completely buried in my memory, and reading your post brought it back!
Cuckoo Song sounds intriguing! Books that make you want to underline things are my kind of book!
I hope that the rest helped and you're feeling 100% OK by now! <3
no subject
Date: 2024-04-08 05:31 am (UTC)Yes -- and I'm not normally someone who's mad about prose. As long as it's neither clumsy nor purple, I'm happy. But Hardinge has a gift for capturing emotion or a moment in short sketches that I find really enjoyable:
'At the sight of him, world turned white and terrible. The terror was pure and blinding, like staring into a camera flash.'
...
'At first the snowflakes were tiny like ash flecks, dying as soon as they touched the ground and leaving freckles of damp.'
no subject
Date: 2024-04-08 02:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-08 05:32 am (UTC)