I love the ones about the Bastables! :D And Five Children and It was a favourite growing up, re-read many times. It's only fairly recently that I learned she also did ghost stories for adults; we've got a collection on the shelf waiting to be read...
My mum used to pick up a lot of stuff at jumble sales; we had a few classics from her and Dad's childhoods, but she'd also grab me things like Robinson Crusoe (it was always the book she gravitated to when she was ill), Black Beauty and (triggering a complete, soul-swallowing obsession) White Fang - actually, I think she picked up What Katy Did in the same trip as the latter, and I remember loving it too, so you're definitely not alone there! If only we'd known...
Cooper does suddenly get political in the last book, in that several Stantons witness and intervene in a racist incident, and it becomes the opportunity for a dinner table conversation. At the end of the book it sticks in the memory because Merriman's talking about how it's all up to humans now the Old Ones are mostly going to the Grey Havens elsewhere, and I got a bit wibbly because it was all a bit too on the nose regarding the current international horrors.
But yeah, you have to wonder - how big a deal are these mythological figures when concrete evils like Hitler have bestrode the world stage? Are we supposed to think that Hitler (hey, he did have occult preoccupations) was just another manifestation of the Dark? If so, that would seem to cheapen and tastelessly co-opt WWII. Yet if the worst human evil has nothing to do with the war of Light and Dark, how seriously should we even take the latter? In the end, it's in danger of looking a bit abstract, especially since we never really hear what the concrete, day-to-day consequences for humanity would be if the Dark won.
(I have the same "But what about Hitler?" problem with the Vampire Chronicles - if you're someone like Marius who hunts the evildoer, how could you resist going after Hitler? Of course there are several answers: 1) If he had done, then AR would be writing alt-history diverging from our reality; 2) Same question of taste; 3) The vampires' general disapproval of interfering with human history. But it still nags at me sometimes.)
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My mum used to pick up a lot of stuff at jumble sales; we had a few classics from her and Dad's childhoods, but she'd also grab me things like Robinson Crusoe (it was always the book she gravitated to when she was ill), Black Beauty and (triggering a complete, soul-swallowing obsession) White Fang - actually, I think she picked up What Katy Did in the same trip as the latter, and I remember loving it too, so you're definitely not alone there! If only we'd known...
Cooper does suddenly get political in the last book, in that several Stantons witness and intervene in a racist incident, and it becomes the opportunity for a dinner table conversation. At the end of the book it sticks in the memory because Merriman's talking about how it's all up to humans now the Old Ones are mostly going
to the Grey Havenselsewhere, and I got a bit wibbly because it was all a bit too on the nose regarding the current international horrors.But yeah, you have to wonder - how big a deal are these mythological figures when concrete evils like Hitler have bestrode the world stage? Are we supposed to think that Hitler (hey, he did have occult preoccupations) was just another manifestation of the Dark? If so, that would seem to cheapen and tastelessly co-opt WWII. Yet if the worst human evil has nothing to do with the war of Light and Dark, how seriously should we even take the latter? In the end, it's in danger of looking a bit abstract, especially since we never really hear what the concrete, day-to-day consequences for humanity would be if the Dark won.
(I have the same "But what about Hitler?" problem with the Vampire Chronicles - if you're someone like Marius who hunts the evildoer, how could you resist going after Hitler? Of course there are several answers: 1) If he had done, then AR would be writing alt-history diverging from our reality; 2) Same question of taste; 3) The vampires' general disapproval of interfering with human history. But it still nags at me sometimes.)