In the last year or two I’ve embarked on re-reading books by T.H. White that I read years ago as well as H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, who turns to the guidance of T.H. White as she raises a goshawk. Long a King Arthur fan, I first read The Once and Future King (a series of linked novels based on Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory: The Sword in the Stone, The Queen of Air and Darkness, The Ill-Made Knight, and The Candle in the Wind, along with a sequel, The Book of Merlin) before I became an adolescent and read them aloud to my little brothers. The first in that series, The Sword in the Stone, was the basis of the eponymous Disney animated film.
Mistress Masham’s Repose is a new-to-me book, and I read it as I have always enjoyed White’s sense of humor and his profound philosophical and political insights. He doesn’t drift from his usual form in this children’s book. It is wryly funny but with serious undertones and certainly should give youngsters food for thought. The illustrations by Fritz Eichenberg are marvelous.
Maria Masham, a ten-year-old orphan, lives on her downtrodden family estate, cared for by a hired nanny and the local curate, who are determined to deprive her of a decent childhood and to strip her and her inheritance of every possible cent. Maria discovers a secret on a deserted island on her estate—descendants of Gulliver’s Lilliputians. She at first thinks she has the right to make them her toys, and gradually realizes she must treat them as equals, though they are only inches tall. She must protect them from the evil in her life—which is an even bigger threat to these little folks: her nanny and the curate will sell them as circus attractions to become rich. There is no death, minimal violence, and lots of cute, funny happenings here. Great for younger teen and pre-teen readers.
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Mistress Masham’s Repose (NYBR Children’s Collection, March 7, 2012) is available through:
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