Impossible Creatures

Impossible creatures by Katherine Rundell received great reviews in lists of children's books published last year so I purchased copies for two of my grandchildren for Christmas. This term my eleven year old grandson and I have been sharing the reading of this book when he visits after school. There is no argument about reading - he just grabs something to eat, picks up the book and informs me that it is time to read.

Christopher is a young boy who attracts animals wherever he goes. When he visits his grandfather in the country he is told that he can go exploring but not to walk up the hill. Of course he does and immediately realises that this is a different place. 

One day he rescues a baby griffin from drowning and his world changes. When Christopher meets Mal, a young girl with a coat that enables her to fly who is looking for her griffin, he learns that she is being hunted by a man who is trying to murder her. Christopher decides to protect her and she takes him to her magical world, the Archipelago, where he meets many mythical creatures including sphinxes and dragons, centaurs and ratatoska plus a few humans including Nighthand and Irian.   

Impossible creatures is a spell binding tale of friendship, courage, bravery and love.  The glamourie that controls the mystical world of the Archipelago is fading and it is up to Mal and her friends to discover why and undo the damage that has been done.

At the front of the book is a Bestiary with descriptions and illustrations of some of the mythical creatures in the story. Katherine Rundell has produced a wonderful world of fantasy that makes you want to keep reading to find out what happens next.

Super-Infinite: the transformations of John Donne

John Donne (1572-1631) led many lives in his fifty-nine years. In Super-Infinite, Katherine Rundell describes John Donne:

Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling. John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. He reimagined and reinvented himself, over and over: he was a poet, lover, essayist, lawyer, pirate recusant, preacher, satirist, politician, courtier, chaplain to the King, dean of the finest cathedral in London.[page 5]

In this biography of John Donne, the author sets out to examine all the facets of Donne's life from the limited surviving sources plus his poems, sermons and other writing. Quotations from Donne's work and the writings of others who knew him appear extensively throughout the work. In reading this book, the reader learns not just about the life of John Donne and of his writing but also some of the social history and politics of the time that form an important part of Donne's story.

When writing, John Donne also loved to create new words, many of which appear in the book. Katherine Rundell provides an example:

He loved to coin formations with the super-prefix: super-edifications, super-exaltation, super-dying, super-universal, super-miraculous. It was part of his bid to invent a language that would reach beyond language, because infinite wasn’t enough: both in heaven, but also here and now on earth, Donne wanted to know something larger than infinity. It was absurd, grandiloquent, courageous, hungry. [page 14]

At the end of the book there is a list of further reading, notes, picture credits and index. Pictures of engravings of portraits of John Donne and other people mentioned appear throughout the book.

Why you should read children's books

The full title of this short book about reading by Katherine Rundell is Why you should read children's books even though you are so old and wise.

Rundell argues that adults should read read or reread children's books as adults in order 'to enlarge their world'. She discusses the childhood joy of reading books and discovering new worlds, the joy of entering a world of imagination and encountering a love of words, even when they may not be fully understood. She discusses the emergence of books written specifically for children dating back to the fifteenth century, the genre of fairy tales told in many versions, plus how political themes can be found in many early twentieth century children's books.

The author concludes:

Children's books are not a a hiding place, they are a seeking place. Plunge yourself soul-forward into a children's book: see if you can find in them an unexpected alchemy; if they will not un-dig in you something half hidden and half forgotten. Read a children's book to remember what it was to long for impossible and perhaps-not- impossible things. Go to children's fiction to see the world with double eyes: your own, and those of your childhood self. (page 62)

See also Storytime by Jane Sullivan