The Box of Delights

Last December we were reading The Midnight Folk, by John Masefield, at my house, and Harriet was reading Masefield's The Box of Delights at hers, so this December I wanted to read The Box of Delights. Both stories have the same hero, a boy named Kay Harker, but in The Box of Delights (published 1935) he is older than he was in The Midnight Folk (published 1927). The Box of Delights is available as a lovely red and green re-issued volume.

The story begins as Kay takes the train home from school for the Christmas holidays and is kind to a little old man who carries a Punch and Judy show upon his back. As in any fairy tale, his kindness reaps its reward--first in his being entrusted to carry a message--"the wolves are running"--and then in seeing the old man's show, which is not a typical puppet show, but one in which toy soldiers come to life, butterflies fly around the room, and then two dice turn into "a little red shark, snapping after a little white skate; he swam round and round the room after it, always just missing it, and at last, when he had almost caught it, the skate turned into a skylark and went up singing to the ceiling. Instantly the shark turned into a hawk and went after her." There are dangers in Kay's world, and none of them are softened just because he is still only 11 or 12 years old.

The little old man, whose name is Cole Hawlings, needs to escape from his pursuers, the "wolves", so he goes into a picture on the wall in Kay's house. He gives Kay the box of delights so the pursuers won't get it, and Kay uses it to have adventures. Kay is old enough to have considerable freedom around his neighborhood, especially once his guardian, Caroline Louisa, has been called away, but he is still young enough to trust his feelings without too much questioning:
"Kay could not have been long asleep when he woke up feeling certan that there was something very important to be done at King Arthur's Camp. He rolled over, thinking 'Well, it isn't likely that anything is to be done there at this time of night,' and was very soon asleep again. However, his dreams turned to King Arthur's Camp. He saw the place, half woke, then slept and saw it again At this, he woke up wide awake, convinced that he must go there at once."

As Harriet also observes, Kay takes the fantastic things that happen to him in stride. The games he plays at home aren't markedly different from the adventures he has with The Box of Delights, where he meets Herne the Hunter and one of Alexander the Great's biggest fans. When one of his adventures delays his arrival home, he is told "we're not going to wait any longer. We've been waiting simply hours as it is. You've had your chance of being a pirate and you haven't taken it, and now you'll be a merchantman, and you'll be captured and tortured, and then you'll have to walk the plank, and Peter and I are going to be the sharks that will eat you." Later, when the box of delights has taken him to Troy, he ends up on "a merchant ship which has been captured by pirates" and is marooned by the pirates.

Kay is rescued by Herne in a chariot drawn by dolphins: "Kay loved it more than anything that had ever happened to him. It was exquisite to feel the dolphins quivering to the leap, and to surge upwards into the bright light with flying fish sparkling on each side; then to surge down into the water, scattering the spray like bright fire, full of rainbows, then to leap on and on, wave after wave, mile after mile. In the thrill and delight of this leaping journey Kay fell asleep."

In the end, the people taken by the "wolves" are rescued, and just in time for the Christmas Eve service. Although the Bishop initially thinks they won't get there in time, Cole and Kay know that "we needn't give up hope yet," and sure enough, the Lady of the Oak tree arrives in a sleigh drawn by lions and Herne the Hunter arrives in one drawn by unicorns, and everyone gets to church in time to light it up and sing carols.

This is a cozy little fantasy/adventure story for dark December evenings. The shifts between dreaming and waking make it a good bedtime story too, as Harriet attests. What are your favorite December bedtime stories? Here at non-Necromancy headquarters, we've always been fond of The Grinch who Stole Christmas, a William Joyce picture book entitled Santa Calls, and David Sedaris' essay "Six to Eight Black Men."

Interview With the Non-Necromancer

Anna at Diary of An Eccentric was kind enough to interview me about books this week, in the process of passing along the "Interviewing Other Bloggers Meme" (she got her questions from Serena at Savvy Verse and Wit, and she formulated her own questions for me and also Christine at She Reads Books and Marie at Boston Bibliophile).

Anna: Out of all the books you've read, which one affected you the most, and why?
Jeanne: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. I read it when it first came out, in 1986, and it made quite an impression on me. I was 26 years old, at the height of my fertility, and an adamant supporter of the pro-choice movement ever since an experience with a high school friend whose "religious" parents would have quite literally kicked her out of the house for being pregnant, except that she had a miscarriage before all of her friends could give her the money we'd pooled to get her an abortion. I had never so clearly connected being forced to carry a baby with women's rights and with what was happening with the Taliban in Afghanistan until I read the passage in which Offred has her picture taken by a group of Japanese tourists and tells them yes, she is "happy" (because she has already had her daughter, husband, mother, and best friend taken away and she has been beaten and terrified into submission). Later I came to appreciate The Handmaid's Tale for its deft weaving of the rights guaranteed by the United States Bill of Rights into the fabric of the fiction, but at first reading, it was the visceral aspect that got me. Offred is a womb with legs, nothing more.

Anna: Everyone always asks for book recommendations, but what is one book you think people should avoid at all costs?
Jeanne: Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. To me, it is the epitome of a novelist's misguided attempt to write nonfiction thinly disguised as fiction. It is an environmentalist argument that she made much better in her (later) nonfiction book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I love most of Kingsolver's novels, but she really needs to guard against her tendency to try to preach in her fiction.

Anna: What is the first book you remember reading?
Jeanne: Happy Birthday to You! by Dr. Seuss. My parents read this to me every year on my birthday--still will, if we're together. So I memorized it very young and could "read" it before anything else. One of my favorite parts was always when the animals would stand on their tiptoes because it was such an honor to be "the tallest of all-est." I have always been taller than almost everyone else, so I liked thinking that was a good thing.

Anna: When I'm browsing books, sometimes I come across a title that hits me. I don't always read the book, but the title amuses me or gets to me in some way. What's your favorite book title? Have you read the book? (Ex: The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things. I probably won't ever read this book, but I chuckle every time I see the title.)
Jeanne: If I have to pick just one, it will have to be another YA title, one that I chuckle at every time I go to a bookstore: One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies. I haven't read it because my daughter skimmed through it in the store once and told me it wasn't really worth reading. What a great title, though!

Anna: What's the one book you love and wish you'd written?
Jeanne: Whoa! I'm going to take this in the spirit of "what book do you think it's even remotely possible you could have been in the right spirit to be able to write if you were a million times cleverer and more patient than you are?" And the answer is: Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Okay, yeah, I know. It's presumption to even think it. But it's the way I wish I could write, if I could write fiction at all, which I can't. If I had written something like that, I would have just strutted around the rest of my life crowing like Peter Pan: "Oh, the Cleverness of Me!" But really, I'm too earnest.

And that's my interview. If you would like me to interview you about books and what you think of them and all, leave me a comment with your contact information. If you would just like to comment on my opinions, well that's okay, too.