Sparrow Tree Square Blog

Author Spotlight: E. Nesbit

2012-02-27T18:20:00.000-05:00

When I look back at past issues of Sparrow Tree Square magazine, I notice that many of the short story selections are actually excerpts taken from longer works by E. Nesbit. I first featured Nesbit's work in the very second issue of the magazine, "Travel by Train," in which I included a story from Nesbit's novel The Railway Children. I used Nesbit's work again in June 2007's "By the Shore" and August 2008's "Adventures" with excerpts from The Wouldbegoods, and included excerpts from The Story of the Treasure Seekers in November 2008's "Rule Britannia", January 2009's "The Great Indoors", and June 2010's "The Children's Hour."

Part of the reason that I returned to Nesbit's work again and again is that Nesbit is one of my favorite authors. My sister shared The Story of the Treasure Seekers with me when I was ten or eleven years old, and I quickly read through the handful of other books by Nesbit she owned before adding some new titles to our collection. I loved how light and humorous Nesbit's writing is, particularly in The Story of the Treasure Seekers and its two sequels narrated by Oswald Bastable. Even though Nesbit wrote these books a century ago, her characters behaved and played much like my sister and I did. I identified with their imaginative exploits far more than I did with the doings of characters in many modern children's books -- to me, Nesbit knew what it was like to be a child, and expressed the way I thought and felt as a child with sometimes uncanny accuracy.

Of course, not all of the situations Nesbit wrote about were so realistic, even in her own time: many of Nesbit's works for children are fantasy stories featuring children in magical situations interacting with mythical creatures, such as Five Children and It and its two sequels. Nesbit's fantasy books were among the first I ever read in the genre, and have proved an inspiration for authors such as Edward Eager and J. K. Rowling. While I enjoyed these fantastical stories and have since become an enormous fan of fantasy literature, I confess that Nesbit's more down-to-earth books always fascinated me more than her tales of magic. Perhaps because one of my favorite elements of Nesbit's books are how real her characters seem, I preferred her more realistic plots.

Whether fantastical or realistic, all of Nesbit's books stand up remarkably well to the test of time. They are never didactic or moralistic, like many Victorian children's books can be, and are just as fun and exciting to read today as they were when first published. This timeless quality is what often drew me to include Nesbit's works in Sparrow Tree Square, since I wanted to show that young readers can still connect with older works of literature. Of all the authors whose work is in the public domain, I think that E. Nesbit is perhaps the best example of how good books for children never become outdated.

An Earnest Adaptation

2012-02-24T14:29:00.000-05:00

I absolutely adore film and television adaptations of classic works of literature. For quite a few years now, my mother and I have made a tradition of chasing away our post-Christmas blues with a massive marathon of our favorite adaptations, most of which are based on the works of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Recently, though, we've been expanding our miniature film festival to include some more variety. Last year, this brought the addition of an adaptation that has become one of the highlights of our winter viewing: the 2002 version of The Importance of Being Earnest, based on the play by Oscar Wilde.

I had already read Wilde's play and loved it before trying this adaptation, so my expectations going in were high. On the whole I was excited about the cast, which includes Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell, Rupert Everett as Algy, and Colin Firth as Jack, but I was a little concerned with the casting of American actress Reese Witherspoon as Cecily. I was also wary of any changes the filmmakers may have decided to make to the original script -- the play was already so perfect in my opinion that I didn't want to see anything altered.

Film is different from live performance, though, and offers some unique opportunities that aren't logistically possible to achieve on stage. The filmmakers took advantage of this by adding some new touches to the play that, on the whole, I found much in keeping with the spirit of the original. While you won't find Algy arriving at Jack's estate via hot air balloon in a stage performance of Earnest, it seemed like the sort of grand gesture that would appeal to Algy. I also enjoyed Cecily's fantasy sequences, where she imagines herself as a fair lady and Algy as a dashing knight -- they seemed a natural extension of the flights of fancy that lead Cecily to concoct a detailed romance with a man she's never met. The film even restores a subplot involving Algy's creditors that Wilde himself had cut from the play.

The filmmakers also made some interesting choices with the music score of the film. While both the play and the film are set in the late nineteenth century, the music from the film has a jazzy, 1930's sound. I think the soundtrack reflects the energy of the play admirably, in a way that a more traditional score could not have. I also adore the song that Algy and Jack sing to Cecily and Gwendolyn, which is based on a poem of Wilde's. Here's the performance in the film, followed by the full version played over the end credits:

Overall, I think that this version of The Importance of Being Earnest really gets Wilde's wit and humor. While there are just one or two changes that I myself would not have made (namely one sequence involving a tattoo), they don't detract from the quality of the film as a whole. I highly recommend that fans of Wilde give this film a try -- those who enjoy the film can also seek out the 1999 version of Wilde's play An Ideal Husband, featuring the same director and composer of this film and again starring Rupert Everett.

Forgotten Books by Famous Authors

2012-02-22T16:17:00.002-05:00

This post was kindly provided by my sister Maureen, whom you may remember from Halfway Down the Stairs or her book reviews and blog posts here at Sparrow Tree Square. The books she discusses here are all in the public domain, so the title links will take you to free editions from Project Gutenberg. If you prefer a print edition, click on the cover images.

It sometimes happens that authors become synonymous with the most famous of their books. Most people know that A. A. Milne wrote Winnie-the-Pooh, but much to Milne's dismay, his plays and humorous fiction for adults fell into obscurity following Pooh's success. Some readers might remember that Kenneth Grahame wrote The Relucant Dragon in addition to the The Wind in the Willows, but how many know that "The Relucant Dragon" is an excerpt from a longer book called Dream Days?

Books like Winnie-the-Pooh and The Wind in the Willows are deservedly famous, but that doesn't mean that their less well-known siblings aren't just as lovable. It's time to give these "forgotten classics" a turn in the spotlight.

Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll

This innovative novel jumps back and forth between reality, fairyland, and the "eerie" state in which humans and fairies can interact. There is plenty of paradox, wordplay, and nonsense verse that Alice aficionados will adore, including "The Mad Gardener's Song". However, this is also a more serious story that explores religious and philosophical ideas that were important to Carroll. Carroll himself preferred Sylvie and Bruno to the Alice books for this reason.

Racketty-Packetty House, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Racketty-Packetty House is a charming novella about two dollhouses, the shabby Racketty-Packetty House and the shiny, modern Tidy Castle. Even though their owner Cynthia neglects them, the dolls of Racketty-Packetty House manage to have fun, enticing their aristocratic neighbors to join them. Like A Little Princess, this is a riches-to-rags-to-riches tale that will especially appeal to doll lovers.

Dream Days, by Kenneth Grahame

Dream Days picks up where its predecessor, The Golden Age, left off. With their eldest brother Edward away at school, young Kenneth and his siblings are beginning to grow up themselves. Kenneth worries about keeping up with his younger sister Charlotte's imagination, while the youngest sibling Harold's latest past-time is not playing muffin-man, but writing "death-letters". Still, the humor, poetic style, and vivid imagination of the first volume remain in evidence, and one of my favorite stories from the two books, "Its Walls Were as of Jasper", appears in Dream Days.