Stella & Rose's Books

How could the combination of a sleepy Hampshire village and a country vicar with no scientific training produce the best known general Natural History book of all time?

The book is written as a series of letters. The first nine letters are a fraud in that they were never posted and were written after the "real" letters, many of the "facts" are wrong and yet the book has never been out of print since its first publication in 1789. Indeed it has turned sleepy Selborne into a major tourist venue. So why has "The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne in the County of Southampton" been such an outstanding success?

My husband and I collect illustrated children's books. Anything that takes our fancy really, but we do have a few books in our collection which are illustrated by Nicola Bayley. Nicola is perhaps best-known for her stunning illustrations of cats and indeed her particular favourite is 'The Patchwork Cat' by William Mayne. However, the book that caught my attention was another by William Mayne called 'The Mouldy'.

"Old Mother Goose When she wanted to wander Would fly through the air On a very fine gander"

Thus begins the tale of Mother Goose and her son Jack who buys a goose which lays a golden egg. Jack sells the goose to a dishonest merchant, Mother Goose turns Jack into Harlequin and his ladyfriend into Columbine, The egg is thrown into the sea and a fish brings it back. The merchant threatens to kill the goose but Mother Goose catches it and climbing onto its back flies up to the moon!

Top left: Cover illustration by Blanche Fisher Wright

Ingenious, quirky, beautiful – some of the adjectives to describe the numerous pop-up and movable books available to our children (and adults too) today. It's difficult for us to imagine a time without them but four hundred years ago there were virtually no books for children at all, never mind thenovelty books that are so familiar to us now.

Peter Haining's wonderful and informative book begins with a brief history of children's books leading up to the mid-18th century when Robert Sayer, a inventive bookseller, produced The Harlequinade. This was the first printed item for young children which could be described as a movable book, having turn-up pages with interchangeable pictures.

Tin mining in Cornwall is believed to date from as early as 2150 BC and there is a written account from the first century BC (Diodorus Siculus). The demand for tin in this period had grown as tin together with copper produced Bronze. The Romans certainly used Cornish tin but Roman influence was very limited in West Cornwall so whether they actually mined it there or simply purchased it from local miners is open to debate.

Most tin in this period was produced from alluvial deposits and true lode mining did not commence until the Middle Ages. Up until the early eighteenth century tin was the only metal mined in Cornwall and the smelting of copper or brass making was probably unknown. That rapidly changed as huge copper deposits were found and copper mining became the largest mining operation in Cornwall and this continued until the end of the nineteenth century. Despite this fact Cornwall is best known for its tin mines. Cornish copper deposits were the largest in Europe and the then civilized world. Because of the coal needed to smelt copper, very little copper smelting as opposed to mining took place in Cornwall, instead the ore was shipped to Swansea for smelting.

As children, my sister and I spent hours playing in the small steep sided valley, or dingle as we always called it, alongside our house. Our dingle consisted of a few small wooded areas, an old cider apple orchard and a meandering stream. We would spend hours picking wild flowers, playing hide and seek, making dens out of fern, paddling in the stream, making stepping stones across it and catching bullyheads in it. Luckily we very rarely saw anyone in our dingle as I'm not sure how we would have coped with the encounters experienced by the two children in this book.

Peter and Johanna are the two children and they were young friends of Denys Watkins-Pitchford who often wrote and illustrated using the pseudonym BB. This book contains some well-known folk and fairy tales told within a story about the adventures of Peter and Johanna. The story begins with the author and the children walking down to the Glydebrook stream near the children's home to look for a kingfisher's nest. Luckily for them the young birds had just left their nest and were sat in a row on a branch awaiting their mother's return with food. After watching the kingfishers for a while they all enjoyed themselves messing about by the stream and relaxing in the warm evening air. Peter asked BB to tell them part of the story he had written some years earlier which was the Little Grey Men, he obliged and this becomes the first story within the story.

Being married to someone who enjoys magic and conjuring in their spare time (and who hopes to one day transform this hobby into a career) can, at times, be difficult! We have a house full of a wide array of texts ranging from basic children's conjuring books to complex plans detailing the design and construction of large-scale illusions, and no space to store them! Every surface houses piles of this 'essential' reading matter but a vital tome missing from my husband's already considerable collection comes in the form ofMaskelyne's Book Of Magic, first published in 1936 by George G. Harrap and Co Ltd.

Providing a charming insight into the world of early twentieth century stage magic and outlining various performance techniques ranging from sleight of hand with coins, cards and rope to more elaborate and thought-provoking illusions involving mind-reading techniques, Maskelyne's Book Of Magic provides a comprehensive guide to starting out as a stage magician. Although famous in the 1930s for his ambitious stage shows and membership of the Magic Circle, the most noted work of Jasper Maskelyne - one of an already long family line of established stage magicians - was that undertaken for British Military Intelligence during the Second World War.

These three volumes are truly momentous in many ways. For starters, just seeing them on the shelf makes you wonder what subject could justify such large tomes, being three inches thick, fourteen inches high and thirteen inches wide as well as weighing over five kilograms each. Well, if you are strong enough to lift the books and open them up, beneath the plain and rather dull covers lie some of the most beautiful and informative illustrations on mammals I have ever seen.

Considering the timing of publication of this book, first published in 1904, much had been discovered of the anatomy of many mammals by the "Desk Zoologist without Experience" as the author puts it. But there was a lack of knowledge in another two main areas which the author hoped to put right with this publication. These were firstly "Good pictures both in colour and black and white, drawn from life" and secondly "exact information on the distribution and the life history of the various species."

One of today's most popular dog breeds is the Parson Jack Russell Terrier (or Jack Russell Terrier) which originated with Parson Jack Russell who died in 1883 at the age of 88. Practically everyone you meet in the street has known one, seen a picture of one or even owned one at some time. Our featured book for this month tells us the whole story of its origins, its uses, its development and rapid rise in popularity.

The authors of this book, Jean and Frank Jackson, are known internationally as dog breeders of distinction and completion of this book followed the centenary of Parson Jack Russell's death and coincided with new attempts to persuade the Kennel Club to recognize the Parson Jack Russell Terrier as a separate breed. Today, the Parson Russell Terrier is a recognized breed standard.

One of the joys of working in Rose's Books is rediscovering books of my childhood! Our customers obviously share this joy if the comments ("A trip down memory lane" or "I had that book") are anything to go by! One such rediscovery I shared with Katie my 13 year old daughter - The Malory Towers series by Enid Blyton. We avidly read the whole series together and would indulge in long conversations about the characters, plot and the language ('the hols', 'my people' 'school cert') to the frustration of the rest of the family who had no idea what we were talking about!

Written between 1946 and 1951, the Malory Towers of the title is a boarding school situated on the coast in Cornwall. It is made up of four towers or houses - North, South, East and West. The action mainly takes place in North Tower. The six books in the series follow the school career of Darrell Rivers from her first days (First Term at Malory Towers) to when she is about to leave to go to University (Last Term at Malory Towers).

The Story

The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl is one of the author's shorter works (approximately 60 pages long depending on the edition) so the book can be thoroughly enjoyed in a relatively short time.

This story is told by an eight year old girl, who remains nameless throughout. She tells us of the Gregg family and the 'very funny' things that happened to them the week before. We learn that 'the one thing that Mr. Gregg and his two boys loved to do more than anything else was to go hunting'. Every weekend they would take their guns into the woods and find animals and birds to shoot. However, the little girl telling the story 'can't stand hunting'. She warned the Greggs about it but her warnings went unheeded. 'Well, that did it!'... The girl 'saw red' and she '...PUT THE MAGIC FINGER ON THEM ALL !' - even the family members who weren't there at the time!

We are lucky to have a mobile library service in our little village and recently one of the books on board wasLudwig Bemelmans's book Hotel Bemelmans. I recognised the author's name from the Madeline series of books which are to the left of the shop desk in Rose's Books. So having read about some of Ludwig Bemelmans's experiences in his early life I was intrigued to read a few of his Madeline series of children's books.

The first book in the series is, naturally enough, called Madeline. This was his wife's name but it was the childhood antics of his only daughter Barbara which inspired him to write the series. The books are written in rhyming couplets and the text is simple, sometimes with just one or two words to a page. Every page has a large illustration by Ludwig Bemelmans himself, a few are in colour and the rest in two-tone. Some of the illustrations in the Madeline books I read are of landmarks in Paris and London and, helpfully, the wrapper rear flap provides a list of those he has featured. Madeline made her first appearance in 1939 and millions of copies of her colourful picture books have been sold since.

Can you guess what type of beings the Little Grey Men are? I bet you can... go on... guess!

Yes, the little grey men are gnomes! Not only are they gnomes, but they are the only four remaining gnomes in Britain!

Baldmoney, Sneezewort and Dodder live under an oak tree on the banks of the Folly brook in Warwickshire. "The Little Grey Men" is the story of how the three gnomes set off in search of their long-lost brother Cloudberry. Previously Cloudberry had decided to go off in search of the source of the Folly brook. He never returned...

The three central characters of the story are described by the author as follows:

As a child, one of my all-time favourite novels was (and still is) 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' by C.S. Lewis. This is a fantasy about a land known as Narnia and was first published in 1950. There followed a further six novels, the full seven novels collectively known as 'The Chronicles of Narnia'. 

The interesting thing about these novels is that they are not published in chronological order:

Publication order

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 1950Prince Caspian 1951The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 1952The Silver Chair 1953The Horse and His Boy 1954The Magician's Nephew 1955The Last Battle 1956

Vojtech Kubasta was born in 1914 in Vienna and moved with his parents to Prague when he was four. He lived in Czechoslovakia for the rest of his life and became best known for the many pop-up books he created.

As a young boy Kubasta showed great artistic talent and wanted to be an artist but his father had other ideas – he wanted his son to be a lawyer. A compromise was reached and Kubasta studied architecture which was then considered more of an artistic subject than technical discipline. He graduated in 1938 with a degree in architecture and civil engineering. His career as an architect was short lived as from the early 1940s he worked as a commercial artist and book designer.

I sit at my desk here at Stella Books and constantly catch in my peripheral vision the two large brown eyes and even larger nostrils of King Kong as he sits quietly on our shelf in the Special Book Room. I can't quite make up my mind if the face is scary or scared, possibly the latter. Most definitely the original signed sketch of him inside the book has quite a coy, wry look. 

I'm sure the majority of you are aware of the story of King Kong, the archetypal tale of Beauty and the Beast, with the sad ending of the Beast's death - mind you it would be a little quirky for Beauty to live happily ever after with Kong! Luckily for her, the ship's captain, who of course dislikes women in general, falls madly in love with Ann and she with him - the knight in shining armor who comes to her rescue. It is also very much about the tunnel vision of Carl Denham a film director who goes to extraordinary lengths to better each succeeding film with ever more exotic locations and fantastical ideas.

The daughter of a curate hardly seems the most likely candidate to write about a young scallywag, roaming the countryside with his band of 'Outlaws', but that is what Richmal Crompton found herself doing. Born Richmal Crompton Lamburn in Bury, Lancashire in November 1890, she took a B.A. degree at London University and then followed in her father's footsteps, becoming a Senior Classics Mistress at her old school, and then moving to Bromley High School for Girls, where she taught until 1923.

During her spare time, and during the school holidays, she started to write, and created eleven year old William Brown, whose escapades first appeared in Home Magazine in February 1919. Why it should have been such a success is really rather a mystery, as the magazine was aimed at women, offering a mix of romantic short stories and serials. Be that as it may, 'William' was a great success, boosting the circulation of Home Magazine. A further 40 stories appeared, until October 1922 when William transferred to 'Happy Magazine', where he appeared in nearly every edition until February 1934.

Let me introduce you to Josephine who is 8 years old and is an only child. She is never lonely as she has a large family of dolls - 16 in all, of all shapes and sizes. Most of them have bits missing but Josephine loves them all and together they have great adventures.

The books are written by Mrs H.C. Cradock and beautifully illustrated by Honor C. Appleton. The first title (Josephine and her Dolls) appeared in 1915 and this title, the last in the series, in 1940.

Mrs. H.C. Cradock was born Augusta Whiteford in 1863 and spent her childhood in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. She became a teacher and taught younger children in Wakefield. Here she met her husband Henry Cowper Cradock who was the Vicar of Ossett. They were married in 1893 and their daughter, Aline was born in 1905. Mrs. Cradock began her writing career in 1908 when The Care of Babies, a Reading Book for Girls was published. This was followed in 1909 byThe Training of Children from Cradle to School, and subsequent books for children. Mrs Cradock died in 1941 aged 77.

I have really enjoyed Terry Pratchett's books ever since my brother introduced them to me several years ago. They have so many wonderful layers - you may just skim the surface and read with exquisite enjoyment or you can read a little more slowly and discover the layers beneath connected to Mr. Pratchett's many areas of expertise.

One of the central characters in this children's book is Mrs. Tachyon who has a cat called Guilty "with his fur like carpet underlay, broken teeth and boomerang-shaped backbone" and a shopping trolley filled with strangely moving black plastic bags. She is seen as a "bit.... touched", but it transpires that she lives and moves between many "time trouser-legs". If you look up the meaning of her name you find that tacho is derived from the Greek for "speed, swift, fast" and that a tachyon is any hypothetical particle that travels faster than light!

"The world land speed record requires the minimum of skill and the maximum of courage". Tommy Wisdom

I drive a 1990 1.4 litre Renault 5 Campus that is my pride and joy, (in addition to being something of a running joke with my colleagues), and answers to the appropriately continental name of 'Claude'. Claude and I have had many adventures together but there are a couple of trips that I long to take in him before we are both too old!

If I were to win the lottery, mine and Claude's first port of call would be the North Yungas Road in Bolivia, 'El Camino de la Muerte' (below) - more commonly known as the 'Bolivian Road of Death' - due to its extreme danger, with an estimated 200-300 travellers killed yearly along its winding paths. Built in the 1930s by Paraguayan prisoners it is one of the few roads that connects the Amazon rainforest region of northern Bolivia, or Yungas, to its capital city and is said to be one of the most spectacular routes in the world.