Dick King-Smith's Countryside Treasury
Dick King-Smith's Countryside Treasury has something for everyone.Dick King-Smith wrote a number of children's books, many featuring animals but probably the best known is The Sheep-Pig which was adapted into the 1995 film 'Babe'. For this treasury Dick King-Smith selected poetry and prose 'a combination of contemporary and traditional classics to produce a joyful celebration of the countryside past and present'.
The illustrations in this book are byChristian Birmingham and what delightful illustrations they are. He captures the essence of the stories and poems superbly and if I could include every illustration in this article I would because it is so difficult to select my favourite ones.
Christian Birmingham graduated from Exeter College of Art in 1991 and has since illustrated numerous children's books and been shortlisted for Kurt Maschler and Kate Greenaway Awards for illustration. He has worked with, amongst others,Michael Morpurgo on books including The Wreck of the Zanzibar which won the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year and the 1996 Smarties Prize winner The Butterfly Lion.
The first of the four sections in this book is Childhood, we've all been children - and maybe we still are at heart. The section starts with an excerpt from The Peppermint Pig by Nina Bawden. Until I'd read this I'd never heard the term Peppermint Pig used as another name for the smallest pig of a litter, I'd only ever heard of them referred to as the runt of the litter but I think peppermint pig sounds so much better.
The explanation reads 'When asked by a small child “What's a peppermint pig?” the owner replied “Not worth much, only a token, like a peppercorn rent. Almost nothing.” More stories featuring children follow this delightful tale including a couple of paragraphs from Alison Uttley's The Country Child, a few pages from Tales of Arabel's Raven by Joan Aiken and a paragraph from Kilvert's Diary by Rev. Francis Kilvert. There are also a few poems, Being a Gypsy by Barbara Young is a child's wish to be a gypsy, she enthuses about the life she would lead but ends by saying
A Gypsy, A gypsy!
To ramble and to roam
For maybe – oh,
A week or so -
And then I'd hie me home!
I suppose when you are a child a week seems to last forever, I don't know about you but I find the older I get the faster the weeks seem to pass.
The second segment is Animals and we've all encountered animals maybe by having one as a pet, through encountering wildlife in the countryside or even just seeing them in fields as we travel past. Farm animals feature in extracts from Dick King Smith's The Sheep-Pig, the classic story Black Beauty by Anna Sewell and E B White's Charlotte's Web. British wildlife includingfoxes, badgers, hedgehogs, hares, rabbits, birds and butterflies all feature in various snippets and last but by no means least there are a couple of poems about my favourites - dogs.
The next group heading is Country Ways and it has more poems than the previous sections but still has a number of passages describing observations of country life. Within this section my favourite poem has to be 'Whether'. Generally poetry isn't my thing but I don't mind short snappy preferably humorous poems and this one fits my parameters perfectly. It is accompanied by a wonderful little illustration showing that rain can still be fun.
Whether the weather be fine
Or whether the weather be not
Whether the weather be cold
Or whether the weather be hot -
We'll weather the weather
Whatever the weather
Whether we like it or not!
Arcadia is the title of the last section. In my dictionary at home the definition of Arcadian is 'ideally rustic' and that does sum up the content perfectly. There's a lovely paragraph fromThe Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame describing Mole's first mesmerising encounter with a river. A section from Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee, a few paragraphs from Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearceand numerous poems about the seasons and life in the country.
This book gives you extracts from classic stories and, perhaps, introduces you to some new authors, has expressive poems and exquisite illustrations – what more could you want!
Contributed by Lorna.
(Published 8th Dec 2014)
