February to September
Half Magic, Edward Eager (1954)
Knight's Castle, Edward Eager (1956)
Magic by the Lake, Edward Eager (1957)
The Time Garden, Edward Eager (1958)

I'm determined to be caught up with my book reviews by the end of the year. Since I'm leaving for California in a week, if I want to write them with my notes and books at hand, I'd better do it soon.

Even before we had left Candide on an airplane, Ericka and I were already thinking about what books we'd like to read aloud to one another next. Christmas season was only recently past, and Harry Potter and Tolkien were both in the air with their cinematizations. It seemed natural to look to the genre of children's books ― not the fat but brief ones that adults read to toddlers and young children but the sort that older children read themselves. Years ago, an ex-girlfriend and I had once planned to read the Narnia books that way, though we never got around to it. Somewhere along the way I remembered that when we were kids, among our favorite books borrowed from the public library were some magic-related stories by Edward Eager.

So we looked them up and found that there are seven of them. Since then we've read four and we're about halfway through with the fifth. That's not a very quick pace. We go through spells; sometimes we read often, but other times we go at length without reading at all. My out-loud reading habits needed some adjustment after Decameron and Candide. Both of those had short chapters, nicely sized for bedtime reading. In Decameron, the stories were completely separable, so if the readee were to fall asleep mid-story, there'd be little lost in starting up with a new chapter next time.

The Eager books had long chapters which are too much to read aloud at one sitting, and they often lack a good stopping point. We've gradually moved away from bedtime readings, because it would irritate me when I had to reread several pages because Ericka was dozing off the first time and missed it. (I fell asleep on her just as often, but she doesn't seem to be as perturbed by it.) So we adapted, found non-sleepy times for reading, and accepted the slower pace.

My memory of the books from having read them 30-plus years ago is very very dim. Occasionally I'll remember a little bit when it happens, but never enough to anticipate anything. The bulk of the books I don't remember at all. I'm not even 100% certain which of the seven books we did read as kids. I remember just enough bits from the first three ― Half Magic, Knight's Castle, and Magic by the Lake that I'm sure I read those. I'm pretty sure that I didn't read The Time Garden, which is why it counts of the "books I've read" list instead of "(re)read)" like the others. The one we're in the midst of now, Magic or Not is completely unfamiliar so far, but my sister tells me she remembers reading it.

There have been several editions of the books. The cover shown here for Half Magic is the illustration I remember from when we were kids (but without the "50th anniversary" stamp). That's drawn by N.M. Bodecker, the original illustrator whose work is still on the inside of the book. Most of the ones we got from the library matched the others pictured here, with new cover illustrations by Quentin Blake (which I don't like as much). There's also at least one more edition with yet another cover illustrator, but my usual source for online pictures doesn't show those.

We're reading the seven in the order they were written and published, which is not the order in which the stories themselves take place. If they were as popular as the Narnia books, there might be a controversy about the ordering. Thank heavens no one has come along to insist that Eager's books must be read in chronological order, as was done to the poor Chronicles of Narnia. (That re-ordering, by the way, is wrong wrong wrong. A Horse and His Boy is number five, and Magician's Nephew is number six, and don't let any misguided publisher tell you otherwise.)

In Eager's books, the children in the second book (Knight's Castle) are in fact the children of two of the girls in the first book (Half Magic). With the third book (Magic by the Lake) the original crew is back, and indeed the story takes place almost immediately after Half Magic. In The Time Garden, it's the second generation again, with an interesting twist. [SPOILER ALERT: Skip the next paragraph if you don't want to know about the twist.] The fifth book (Magic or Not), which we haven't finished yet, introduces a new group, completely unrelated ― or if there is any relation, it hasn't been revealed yet.

As the title suggests, the protagonists in The Time Garden do some wandering through time, and in the course of doing so they briefly encounter the protagonists from Magic by the Lake. The meeting is recounted in both books, from their separate groups' respective points of view. The "older" generation has no idea who the strange kids they meet are, and the "younger" ones only dimly suspect. (One wonders at what point in their lives realization dawns on the "older" ones and they recognize their own children as the kids they once met so long ago. And if they realize it before their progeny's adventures occur, how do they resist the urge to tell them about it? But that doesn't enter into either story.) It's a very nifty touch, which gives me a tingly feeling somewhat like I got when the meta-story of Babylon 5 turned around on itself and intersected with the unresolved plot from several seasons prior.

I took scattered notes on each of the books, including page numbers, but they aren't much help to me now without the books to refer to. All of the Eager books have plenty of interesting words ― an expansive vocabulary being an essential ingredient to all of the best children's books, even including Harry Potter. Alas, I wrote down very few of them. When I read alone I usually have a bookmark handy on which to scribble page numbers, but when I'm reading aloud (which as often as not is away from home), I'm not in the habit.

The only vocabulary words I find in the scanty notes that survived are eld and moom. Eld is a noun which relates to elder in the same way that old relates to older ― ie, pretty much synonymous but more old-fashioned looking. My notes don't say, but I'm guessing that it appeared in Knight's Castle, which is replete with such old-fashioned words. I have no idea what moom is. It isn't in the dictionary I have near at hand (Merriam-Webster), and I'm not in the mood to dig any deeper. Maybe it was just a typo.

Another thing I remember even without my notes is that Eager frequently uses "plashing" as a synonym for "splashing". M-W does indeed recognize that, but I didn't.

In the one substantial note I took, I see I typed up a short passage from Magic by the Lake. The kids have accidentally wished themselves into a literary cliché in which they are on a deserted island besieged by a band of savage cannibals.

I'm sure I made note of that thinking that it couldn't be a coincidence how reminiscent this is of a short verse I like:

I read this many years ago in Willard R Espy's Almanac of Words at Play, where I was able to find it quickly today thanks to a surprisingly helpful index for a book which one wouldn't expect to be easily indexed. (I found it listed under "impossible rhymes".) The misspelling of cassowary and the irregular spelling of Timbuktu are both per Espy's book; the geographic error of putting an Australian bird ― for the Boggle-inclined, it's a ratite ― near an African town is the poet's.

Could the verse be less obscure than I had realized? Espy attributes it to Samuel Wilberforce (whose name is unfamiliar to me), but it is grouped with several verses under the introductory line, "Victorian writers did some ingenious rhyming." Sure enough, Google sends me to a Wikipedia article that shows Mr Wilberforce as a renowned Oxonian intellectual with multiple talents, though witty verse isn't prominently listed among them. Does Eager really expect most of his original audience to be familiar with this? Or perhaps he just tosses it in for the benefit of the few who are.

All the Eager books are littered with sundry literary references, such as the Twain reference quoted above. The characters in the story are voracious readers ever ready to make an allusion, and it is expected that the readers of the book are as well. Knight's Castle is a mixed-up recreation of the story of Ivanhoe ― which is perhaps why I didn't enjoy that one as much, since I've never read Ivanhoe.

Every book in the series includes at least one reference to E. Nesbit, an author whom Eager openly acknowledges as his inspiration. I've never read anything by Nesbit, but I think I might try her after we're done with Eager. I think I've heard her first name before, but if so I don't remember it now. Like her contemporaries Clive Staples Lewis and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien ― with whom she was acquainted, I think ― she prefers to be known by an initial.

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