Tag: children’s authors

Book of the Week, Forgotten books, mystery

Book of the Week: The Odd Flamingo

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Yeah, I know, it’s only been three weeks, but I’m back with another British Library Crime Classic pick. I can’t help myself but in my defence, this only came out in the summer, so it’s a relatively recent release and it’s also in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so I’m going with it.

Cover of The Odd Flamingo

When Will gets a phone call from the wife of an old school friend to come and help her, he finds himself drawn into a rather seedy potential scandal. A young woman called Rose has come to call on Celia and says she is pregnant, and the father is Celia’s husband Humphrey. Celia wants Will firstly to deal with the visit, but then because he’s a lawyer to try and handle the situation for them. The Odd Flamingo of the title is a seedy club where Will and Humphrey both used to visit when they were younger, but where Humphrey it seems is still a habitue. Will’s staid life is soon caught up in potential murder and blackmail as he tries to work out what is going on.

Nina Bawden is probably most famous for her World War Two set children’s novel, Carrie’s War. This is from the very start of her career – her second published novel which originally was published in 1954, twenty or so years before Carrie’s War. But you can see the shadows of her later work in it, even though the audiences are so different. It’s got plenty of twists and turns and it keeps you turning the pages. The portrayal of the London underworld is really atmospheric and there isn’t really a sympathetic character among any of them, which I liked about it but may frustrate others. I really enjoyed it – I raced through it to see how it all turned out and which particular awful person was going to be responsible for it all.

As I said at the top, this is in Kindle Unlimited so it’s not on Kobo at the moment but of course it’s also in paperback and the British Library shop is still doing three for two again at the moment – so you could buy this and Death in High Heels and get A N Other BLCC for free!

Happy Reading!

tribute

Judith Kerr

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Another sad week, but another life well lived – maybe even better lived than Doris Day‘s.  Her life story – her flight from Nazi Germany as a child, coming to writing for children when she was at home as a full-time mum, still producing new books right up into her 90s, when she could also be spotted out and about in Barnes – is one that will inspire you as much as her books did when you were a child.

There have been so many lovely stories and the obits all pay testament to a wonderful woman with an amazing gift.  There’s not much I can really add.  Except that I wanted to mark her passing somehow.  I was out for lunch with a friend last week and we went into a bookshop on our walk.  She’s got a new baby so we were looking at the children’s books.  I ended up buying Mog the Forgetful Cat for her, because every child should have a copy of Mog. I should add that I think her little girl (six months old) already had a copy of The Tiger Who Came To Tea.  Which is exactly as it should be and a total testament to the power of Kerr’s books.

Lots of people on Twitter yesterday were quoting from – or posting pictures from – Goodbye Mog, which is probably the saddest picture book I’ve ever read.  I ended up teary eyed in the office and on the train.  Kerr had such a way with words and pictures.  I hope she knew how much her books meant to everyone. All the stories of her at her publisher’s summer parties – in a lovely frock, with a drink in hand – being mobbed by authors who’d read and loved her books as a child make me think that she might have had an inkling.  And I hope that I’m as fun and sprightly as she was at 95.

Here’s just a few of the articles that I read about her yesterday:  The BBC’s obituary, the Independent’s obituary The Guardian had an obituary but also collected some reader recollections.  I’ve also got her Desert Island Discs on my listen list as well as this essay from the TLS Writing with borrowed words still to read.

As I write this The Tiger Who Came To Tea and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit are best sellers in their categories on Amazon.co.uk.  And Tiger is 99p on Kindle, Pink Rabbit £2.99.  If you haven’t read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit – her book for older children telling the story of her family’s escape from Nazi Germany – take this chance, you really should.