According to a new publishing company, Enfance Publishing, ‘every leading author has at least one children’s book in him.’ Every leading author?
From THE GOLLIES KARAMAZOV
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
On a bitterly cold morning towards the end of November, 18—a pale young man left his little room at the top of a toadstool in one of the meaner tree-roots of the province of Toyland, and began to descend the dark and freezing stairs.
He was praying that he would not meet his landlady. Her burrow gave directly onto the corridor, and he had to pass it every time he went in or out. The door was usually open, and he would have to run past to avoid seeing Mrs. Rabbitoyeva, and when he did so he would experience a sensation of terror which left him shaking and sick to his stomach. Sometimes he would be physically sick. Other times, he would become possessed of a hacking and terrible cough, and his thin little body would grow luminous with sweat.
It was not merely that he was behind with his rent, living as he did in wretched poverty: it was simply that he had of late a horrible fear of meeting anybody, of engaging them in the lightest of conversations, of remarking upon the weather. This fear had itself become a sickness. Mrs. Rabbitoyeva, if she saw him, would wipe her paws on her apron (an action which itself brought an uncontrollable trembling to the young man’s emaciated limbs, and set the pattern on his threadbare herringbone overcoat twitching like a nest of spiders), and smile, and nod, and say:
‘Good morning, Noddy Noddeyovich! I have a nice worm ragout cooking on the stove for your lunch.’
Or:
‘You should have a young lady, Noddy Noddeyovich! It is not right for a fine young man to spend so much time in the company of gnomes.’
At this, the young man would fall to the ground and kiss the hem of her garment.
But on this occasion, Mrs. Rabbitoyeva called Noddy Noddeyovich into her kitchen, and, despite the fearful trembling of his limbs which set the bell upon his cap tinkling like some derisory omen of imminent doom, he followed her. He counted his steps, as he always did – eleven, twelve, thirteen, to the table, fourteen, fifteen, to the workbench, where the knives were, and the big meat chopper. The kitchen smelt of boiled sedge, and old ferret offal, and the grey, fatty soup that Mrs. Rabbitoyeva always kept simmering for the pitiful little civil servants who inhabited her dark, cold building.
‘Noddy Noddeyovich,’ said Mrs. Rabbitoyeva, ‘I wish to talk with you about the Gollies Karamazov.’
His trembling worsened. The Gollies Karamazov had recently moved in to the room next to Noddy Noddeyovich, and they came from the Big Wood, and their faces were black as round holes in the white winter ice. Whenever Noddy Noddeyovich saw them, he began to shake all over, and often he was sick down the stairwell, and sometimes he fainted altogether. He did not want to talk about the Gollies Karamazov. He listened for a while to the sound of Mrs. Rabbitoyeva, and it was of no sense, a heavy buzz, like the flies upon the far steppes when spring wakes the eggs.
And then he picked up the big meat chopper, and he brought it down on Mrs. Rabbitoyeva’s old head, and she looked very surprised, and when the blood was all over his hands, their trembling stopped.
‘I should not be here,’ said Noddy Noddeyovich, possibly aloud. ‘Soon Plod Plodnikov of the State Police will be here for his morning glass of tea, and he may engage me in some philosophical discussion about guilt, with reference to the words of Morotny, and it would be better if I were to get in my little car and go Beep! Beep! and seek the advice of Bigears Bigearsnitkin . . .’
From FIVE GO OFF TO ELSINORE
by William Shakespeare
ACT ONE, Scene 1
Cheam, a desert country near the sea. Before the gates of The Laburnums. Alarums off. Sennets. Keatons. Enter Julian.
Julian: Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
The hols are but a short week old, and now
There comes such news as Hecate herself
Would quake to hear of! Five years of study gone
And now I learn that all I have to show
Is two O-levels: one Eng. Lit., one Maths!
Five subjects failed, and I one subject felled
By failure to as fell a fall as folly
Feels!
Enter Timmy, a dog.
Ah, Timmy! Had I but the joy
Of e’en thy meanest flea, I were in luck!
Timmy: Arf! Arf!
Julian: Unmetric!
Timmy: Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf!
Julian (weeps): The very dogs do bend them to my pleas,
Though men do reck me not! But yet I’m wrecked!
Enter Georgina.
Georgina: How now, sweet coz! I am this sec arrived
From Cheltenham Ladies’ College for the vac!
And we shall do such things, we Famous Five—
Find maps, thwart thieves, have midnight feasts
In ruined castles, smugglers’ coves, and more
Deserted cottages than you’ve had hot—
Julian: Eff off, Georgina! All has come to nought!
A sound career with ICI is lost!
And I must hie me with my measly two
And seek emolument as Clerk (Grade IV).
No longer mine, the tree-house and the barge,
The secret passage and – but ho! What comes?
Enter Dick and Anne.
Dick: Look, dearest Anne! We Five are now conjoined
As one, like some great Lyons Sponge Cake late
Divided, and now once more new enseamed!
Julian (aside): It is my younger brother. Dare I ask
How he has fared in this last GCE?
Holloa, sweet Dick! How goes the world withal?
Dick: Withal, indeed! With all six subjects passed, Geog., Maths, Eng. Lit., French, History, and Stinks!
Anne: Oh, rippin’, Dick! Top-hole, spot on, good show!
Julian (aside): This little twit shall yet undo me quite!
Replace me in our father’s rheumy sight,
And get a Morris Minor for his pains,
The dirty swot! I say, chaps, what about
A game of harry cricket?
All: YES!
Timmy: Arf! Arf!
Enter cricket bag. Stumps are set up. Julian bowls the first ball to Dick, who smites it mightily.
Anne: See Timmy run! Run, Timmy, run! Oh, look!
He’s caught the ball between his teeth. Good dog!
Timmy: Arf! Arf! (Dies)
Dick: That ball! ’Tis poisoned! It was meant for me!
But what about this bat?
Julian: ’Tis poisoned, too!
Dick: Then have at thee, foul villain! Take thou that!
Julian: A poisoned off-drive! I am slain, alas! (Dies)
Dick: And so am I! Oh what a measly show! (Dies)
Flourish. Enter bearers. They bear the bodies and exeunt.
Georgina (weeps): Oh, world! The curse of thy eleven-plus!
Two brothers minus! Shall it aye be thus?
From THE POOH ALSO RISES
by Ernest Hemingway
It snowed hard that winter. It was the winter they all went up to the Front. You could get up early in the morning, if you were not wounded and forced to lie in your bed and look at the ceiling and wonder about the thing with the women, and you could see them going up to the Front, in the snow. When they walked in the snow, they left tracks, and after they had gone the snow would come down again and pretty soon the tracks would not be there any more. That is the way it is with snow.
Pooh did not go up to the Front that winter. Nor did he lie in bed and look at the ceiling, although last winter he had lain in bed and looked up at the ceiling, because that was the winter he had gone up to the Front and got his wound. It had snowed that winter, too.
This winter he could walk around. It was one of those wounds that left you able to walk around. It was one of those wounds that did not leave you much more.
Pooh got up and he went out into the snow and he went to see Piglet. Piglet had been one of the great ones, once. Piglet had been one of the poujadas, one of the endarillos, one of the nogales. He had been one of the greatest nogales there had ever been, but he was not one of the greatest nogales any more. He did not go up to the Front, either.
Piglet was sitting at his usual table, looking at an empty glass of enjarda.
‘I thought you were out,’ said Pooh.
‘No,’ said Piglet. ‘I was not out.’
‘You were thinking about the wound?’ said Pooh.
‘No,’ said Piglet. ‘I was not thinking about the wound. I do not think about the wound very much, any more.’
They watched them going up to the Front, in the snow.
‘We could go and see Eeyore,’ said Pooh.
‘Yes,’ said Piglet. ‘We could go and see Eeyore.’
They went out into the snow.
‘Do you hear the guns?’ said Pooh.
‘Yes,’ said Piglet. ‘I hear the guns.’
When they got to Eeyore’s house, he was looking at an empty glass of ortega. They used to make ortega by taking the new orreros out of the ground very early in the morning, before the dew had dried, and crushing them between the mantemagni, but they did not make it that way any more. Not since the fighting up at the Front.
‘Do you hear the guns?’ said Eeyore.
‘Yes,’ said Pooh. ‘I hear the guns.’
‘It is still snowing,’ said Piglet.
‘Yes,’ said Eeyore. ‘That is the way it is.’
‘That is the way it is,’ said Pooh.