A Snowy Silver Lining

 So first I must apologise for my absence over the last few weeks. I've been on placement with the fabulous HarperCollins in the children's editorial and publicity departments and trying to be a real person has taken away most of my brain power. However, I finish next week, which will be horribly sad, in fact, why are you making me think about that? How mean!

Moving swiftly on, I'm currently sitting in my pajamas on the sofa, watching Saturday Kitchen Live, and trying not to look out the window. I can't believe it's snowing...in March. Anyone remember March 2012? There was sun, lots of sun. But, ever the optimist, I thought I would search out that silver lining for you all. Not surprisingly, my silver lining involves books. 

The Perfect Books for a Snowy Day

Harry Potter - All of them, because they are all perfect for all occasions.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey: not only does it look like a beautiful book but the story is just as enchanting. 

Jack and Mable, in their cold homestead in deepest Alaska, don't have any children, something that is a constant ache on Mable's heart. One evening, in a rare and playful mood, they make a child out of snow and decorate her with a scarf and gloves. The next day, the snow child is ruined but there are mysterious footprints leading away from the pile of discarded snow and the clothes are missing. When a beautiful little girl appears in the Alaskan forest, dressed in the same scarf and gloves as their snow child, Jack and Mable cannot help but fall in love with her, but it cannot be winter forever and Mable cannot forget those footprints in the snow. So begins a magical and charming story full of love, mystery and beautiful landscapes. Perfect for curling up on the sofa and pretending the wind howling outside is a wolf cry from the snowy mountains. 

The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis: An oldie but a goody and certainly a book I never get bored of. Need I tell you the story? If I do then you don’t deserve to be reading this blog and I demand you go out and read the story immediately. I think this book is great for a snowy, miserable day because the adventures of the Pevensey children start on that very sort of day. If it had been sunny and delightful they never would have resorted to hide and seek and Lucy would never have hidden in the wardrobe, fallen through the back and ended up in a snow-covered, talking-animal inhabited and wonderful land known as Narnia. I recommend you read this and then go and try and get in your wardrobe, I can almost guarantee that you will get to Narnia too, as long as you stay in there long enough. 

For those of you who like denial when it’s miserable outside, I am suggesting The Island by Victoria Hislop. OK, so maybe the leper element is not, ultimately, happy, but it is set in sunny and gorgeous Crete. It is also a brilliant story full of secrecy, love and tragedy that I can promise you will be completely sucked into. Alexis has never known much about her mother’s past, but on a life-changing mission, travels to the little Cretan village of Plaka, which holds the answers to the secrets of her mother’s life. It is heartwarming, sob-worthy and has a blissfully beautiful, albeit tragic, setting. Hopefully you will be so swept away that if you keep your back to the window you won’t even notice the misery outside. 

I could go on, but surely this horrible weather will have gone by the time you’ve read all three books right? RIGHT?

My World Is Not Enough

Last week, for the seemingly annual celebration of my birth, my oh-so-grown-up friends and I, notably all over the age of 22, went to the most magical place you could possibly imagine: 

                                    Harry Potter World

 I think it’s actually called Warner Brothers Studio Tour London – The Making of Harry Potter, but our name was better. As we see it, we have a better claim to be overly excited by the prospect of Harry Potter World than the many seven year-olds that ran around us at Leavesden Studios. We grew up with Harry! We may have been only eight when Harry first discovered he was a wizard, but with book publishing not dove-tailing exactly with human growth the age gap eventually evened out. We are the generation that fancied him, pined after him and so desperately wanted to be a part of his world that our contentment with our own has been considerably damaged since.

However, as much as I would love to write an entire post on the wonders of the magical world, believe me I could, I haven’t. Instead, I thought about how incredible it is that one story has done so amazingly well that aspects of it can be put on show, miles away from anywhere I might add, and people will pay a considerable sum to go and see them, even purchase replicas. We went just as crazy as the children, more so in fact. I don’t think they squealed quite as much at Robert Pattinson’s Quidditch uniform, and I was more than enthusiastic when allowed to push open the doors of The Great Hall along with the other birthday people/children. You could see The Knight Bus, Dumbledoor’s office and Buckbeak the hippogriff, to name but a tiny few. For us, it wasn’t all about the film memorabilia, that wasn’t what was exciting, it was seeing everything you’d imagined when reading the books brought to life and sitting right there in front of you. I walked up Diagon Alley! I really did! And for that briefest of moments you completely forget it’s a film set, to you it’s as real as the gasps you made when Pettigrew got away, or the laughs you had at Lee Jordan’s Quidditch commentary.

“Um, Evie, this is sounding an awful lot like an entire post on the wonders of the magical world.” 

Yes, it is, sorry, but I do have a point and will lead seamlessly to my blog-post question. 

What other books should have visit-able worlds?

For example, Charles Dickens World. Though I’m not sure this would be quite so fun: mainly dark, smoggy London streets and a feeling of damp foreboding. Unless you had people dressed as the characters, that would add a nice, dramatic element and you could have a Christmas Carol section where you were visited by the three ghosts…doubt it would be as fun without the Muppets though.

But you catch my drift? It’s actually quite hard. I had suggestions of Alice and Wonderland or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but that’s creating an actual place that the characters go to in the books. I mean more of a world created out of everything you remember from the books, such as a Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials World where you’d find your daemon, meet a dangerous but ever so nice, giant polar bear, go for a ride in Lee Scoresby’s hot air balloon and try not to get caught by the Magisterium.

So in true publishing condiment tradition, I now give the floor to you. Comment away on what worlds you would like to visit, I look forward to your imaginative suggestions.  

P.S. Photos kindly taken and donated by the beautiful Subha Chelvam.