Tom vs. the Captain

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The one bit of particularly good news today was the arrival in the mail of a package from amazon.co.uk. One of you writerly types (and I'm very sorry I can't remember which) mentioned a while back that two long-out-of-print Russell Hoban books were now available in the UK; a quick browse later, I had ordered myself three copies of How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen and two copies of A Near Thing for Captain Najork (which I already owned one copy of).

These are among the best kids' books ever. They're magazine-sized (and, in this edition, softcover) picture books, written by Russell (Riddley Walker) Hoban (also the author of Bread and Jam for Frances, of course) and illustrated by Quentin Blake (probably best known for his illustrations for Roald Dahl books). The first book details what happens when young Tom's Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong calls in Captain Najork and his Hired Sportsmen to teach Tom a lesson. Thrills! Chills! Spills! Womble! Muck! Sneedball! Fooling around! (No, not in that sense. Silly.) The second book provides some further adventures of the main characters, and features the Headmistress of a nearby girls' boarding school; also, a two-seater jam-powered frog.

They're inspired silliness, and I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Nao and Stephen for introducing me to them lo these many years ago (and thereby causing me a great deal of frustration over the fruitless years of searching for copies to call my own). Also to, um, whichever one of you it was who pointed me at last to the culmination of my long quest.

6 Responses to “Tom vs. the Captain”

  1. Nao

    *Phew*–I’m glad to hear that they’re in print again. It’s just as well that we have our own copies. Otherwise, we might have had to arm wrestle you for them. 😉

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  2. Nao

    And have you noticed that all kinds of great kids’ books that have been out of print for donkey’s years have been coming out recently?

    We’ve been snatching up Eleanor Estes books as fast as possible, and are waiting with bated breath for August to come around. Amazon informs us that August will bring us “The Alley” and “The Tunnel of Huggsy Goode”, both of which are practically impossible to find, not having been in print since the mid-’50s.

    And I was delighted to discover that all the Sally Watson books have been reprinted.

    And the Green Knowe books, and the Mushroom Planet books, and Sylvia Louise Engdahl, and the Moomins, and the All-of-a-Kind Family, and, and….

    I guess I should stop babbling now.

    😉

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  3. Jed

    I’m sad to admit that I never actually read the Estes books. If I didn’t have a to-read stack as tall as a very tall thing, I would ask for suggestions on which to start with.

    I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never even heard of Sally Watson. Enlighten me?

    Mushroom Planet! Cool!

    I was in a bookstore a couple weeks ago and started wondering how there can be space on the shelves for all the kids’ books, because the older classics never go out of print or get put in an “old classics” section. The Narnia books and the Edward Eager books share shelf space with Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket. When I was a kid reading the old kids’ books, I had no idea they were old — I thought the Eager books had just come out, and that the boys wearing nightgowns were just some sort of British thing or something.

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  4. Nao

    Darn it! Bad HTML! Bad me for not checking. Let me fix that A tag, okay? All right, that’s better.

    I haven’t read much Sally Watson since I was a kid, but she wrote historical fiction in the 50’s and 60’s with strong girl characters (and interesting boys, too). The book I liked best was Jade, about a rebellious young woman who becomes a pirate. Two of the other books have to do with Scotland, and one with Charles II. It might be indicative of their scarcity if I mention that a search on Amazon lists 8 used copies of Jade for at least $140 each.

    As far as Estes goes, I can’t say which I like best. I think if I were going to start anywhere in particular, it might be with the Pye books (Ginger, then Pinky), if only because there’s only two of them. There are some improbable coincidences, but there’s a lot of hilarious stuff in them. But the Moffat books are wonderful too, and a little less improbable. The Witch Family is quite improbable, but rather fun; I had a copy growing up, so it’s the one I’m most familiar with. I was startled to discover that it’s related to The Alley (which I was able to find in my library school’s kids book collection) and The Tunnel of Huggsy Goode, which I’ve never seen, and which Stephen hasn’t read since it disappeared from his local library when he was a child.

    What I really enjoy about these books is that you really get a sense that Estes understood a child’s perspective on life. She could write about kid logic both respectfully and humorously, without coyly lecturing the reader about how wrong these silly children were. Besides, the stories are just plain fun, with occasional poignant moments.

    I know what you mean about bookstores. Though I must say that I rarely find anything I want on the kids’ book shelves that I don’t have already. I usually have to resort to special orders. Happily for me, since I don’t like shopping online, and am boycotting the huge chains, there are now *two* new independent bookstores in Chapel Hill, aside from the UNC store. Yay!

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  5. Jacob

    I can’t resist jumping in with a comment about Eleanor Estes. I also loved her books when I was a kid, but found the settings oddly familiar… when I was perhaps 11 or 12, I discovered that she lived around the corner from me. She came to my school once, and I talked to her (my recollection is that she was very nice in a kind of formal way). My brother actually wrote her a letter and she invited him to tea.

    I grew up in New Haven, and many of the books take place there, or in West Haven, I think. She has a book about the Sleeping Giant, which is a real set of hills outside of New Haven. It was very cool when I was a kid to have books that I liked be about my town. I was thrilled when I saw the books in the store; I haven’t re-read them in years, but I do feel a kind of proprietary feeling about her.

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  6. Jed

    I posted more about Slobodkin and Estes in a 2007 journal entry (just follow that link).

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