Beowulf

NANCY FARMER, THE LAND OF THE SILVER APPLES, SIMON & SCHUSTER 11+
D’AULAIRE’S BOOK OF NORSE MYTHS, NY TIMES 9+
NICKY RAVEN/JOHNHOWE, THE LEGEND OF BEOWULF, 9+

Beowulf remains a perennial part of our national identity, and with the release of a new film version of it we can expect ever greater numbers of blokes with bad hair, bulging biceps and voices like steak rubbed in gravel galumphing round boys’ imaginations. Such stuff verges ominously close to Nazi ideology; yet almost all the children’s literature that derives from Norse myth is wonderful, not least because it includes what the original Beowulf (and Wagner) so drastically lacks: a sense of humour to counterbalance the high deeds of heroes.

Nancy Farmer’s The Sea of Trolls was one of my top books of 2005, and exactly what film-makers ought to look out for, because like Tolkien, Katherine Langrish and Cressida Cowell, she leavens heaving Viking heroism with domesticity. Her first tale about young Jack and his irritating little sister, kidnapped by raiders and sent to almost certain death in Troll-land is fabulous. Berserker fights, magic, dragons, monsters, really good characters – well, we couldn’t wait for the sequel. Farmer, though she has won the Newbury Honor prize three times in her native America, is far too little-known here, and if your 10 year-old hasn’t discovered Sea of Trolls, this is one to buy, either to read aloud or alone.

The Land of the Silver Apples continues the further adventures of Jack. Little Lucy is just as spoilt and irritating as before, and when she gets kidnapped by the Lady of the Lake Jack, a bard-in-training, and the pox-scarred slave Pega have to go underground to rescue her. Yet there are complications. Lucy has always insisted that she is a princess. She doesn’t look at all like the rest of Jack’s family, so….what if she’s really from Elfland, after all? Where is Jack’s real sister? What if the devils that the lazy, corrupt monks claim to drive out are something quite different? What, really are those beautiful, immortal Elves?

Farmer has many gifts as a story-teller, but one of the simplest and best is her habit of teasing us. Everything a child wants to know about, from making rush-lights to composing Viking chants, is in these books, woven into a tale of marvels, including rescuing the berserker girl Thorgil from being buried alive in moss. There’s a nice fusion with Arthurian myth which becomes more evident at the end, and you can’t help wondering whether Jack’s master, the Bard, isn’t a version of Merlin. Although this sequel could have done with some judicious pruning, it’s almost as rewarding as Sea of Trolls. The third, The Islands of the Blessed, is due out in 2009.

D’Aulaire’s Book of Norse Myths is the jewel of the New York Review Children’s Collection, even without its excellent new preface by Michael Chabon. Dazzlingly illustrated in colourful lithographs, which possess what Chabon aptly describes as “loving and whimsical and brutal delicacy” and retold with clarity and charm by this husband and wife team, it will fill in those of 9+ on all they need to know about the Nine Worlds, Midgard, Valhalla and the rest. It’s an ideal gift, which will become a family heirloom.
Beowulf itself gets a gorgeous revamp from Templar. Illustrated by John Howe, a well-known fantasy artist who made significant contributions to the film version of Lord of the Rings, its flaming dragons and stern-visaged heroes look just as stunningly stupid and stubborn as they should. The tale is told through the eyes of Wiglaf, the young boy sent to find Beowulf, and works well, if not as well as an earlier version by Michael Foreman and Michael Forman. I’m afraid I itch to run a nit comb through all those Vikingly locks, but if you have a hero-in-training of your own, this, too, is preferable to the film coming to a screen near you today.  

The Times, November 3, 2007