The Story of the Amulet by E. Nesbit

Charming time travel adventure for kids

I don’t read much children’s literature, but occasionally I’ll try a classic book that was intended for a juvenile audience. Children’s literature prior to World War I was generally written at a higher reading level than much of today’s kid-lit (think Treasure Island, for example), so today those children’s books of old mostly appeal to adult readers. I had read good things about E. Nesbit’s The Story of the Amulet, published in 1906, and decided to check it out. Nesbit (1858–1924; the E. is for Edith) was a prolific British author of fiction for both kids and adults. Unbeknownst to me before I started, The Story of the Amulet is actually the third novel in a trilogy. The events of the first two novels are briefly recapped in the first couple chapters of this third installment, so it’s not hard to figure out what’s going on. In this trilogy, four juvenile siblings discover a creature called the Psammead, or sand fairy, a kind of furry rodent-slug who can talk. The Psammead has the power to grant the children wishes, which leads them into all sorts of adventures.

In The Story of the Amulet, the kids are stuck at home with their nanny for the summer while their mom and dad and baby brother are out of the country. Their biggest complaint is boredom, and they long for their parents to return home to London and pay attention to them. (That’s rather ironic, because every good kid-lit adventure happens while the parents are away.) The children are reunited with the Psammead after finding him in a pet store. For some reason, the Psammead is unable to grant their particular wish, but he informs them of a wish-granting magic amulet, one half of which exists nearby. The children must find the other half for their wishes to come true. The half that they acquire in London, however, does have some powers, including time travel, so they use the first half of the amulet to search for the second.

Nesbit’s writing is really very lively and clever. The kids are quite likable and realistic. They are polite and intelligent without being saints or geniuses. The Psammead also has a fun personality, haughty and condescending, like a cross between The Odd Couple’s Felix Unger and that alien genie who used to hang out with Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble (the Great Gazoo, for those old enough to remember). The story has a touch of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure to it, but smarter. The fish-out-of-water scenarios of time travel generate much amusing humor.

The plot has its faults. It reads more like a meandering series of scenes rather than a cohesive novel. The premise of the amulet is used as an excuse to put the children into time travel situations, but overall, it doesn’t really make much sense. What I mean by that, in the case of a fantasy book, is that it defies its own internal logic. Throughout the book, the Psammead is granting wishes left and right, but for some reason he can’t satisfy the children’s desire to bring their parents home? Likewise, the magic amulet exhibits an almost limitless power to transport people through time and space, but for some reason it can’t help them find what they’re looking for? The final chapter amounts to a weak ending. What happens in the conclusion leads the reader to ask himself: What was stopping this from happening ten chapters ago? Of course, that would have cut short the adventure, and it’s the ride that matters here. The book is good clean fun, and the characters are enjoyable. If you like classic children’s literature, The Story of the Amulet is worth a look-see.

The Great Divide: Nature and Human Nature in the Old World and the New by Peter Watson

Long-lost cousins with vastly different upbringings

When Europeans first discovered the Americas, it was the meeting of two vastly different cultures, two populations that were entirely alien to one another. In his 2012 book, The Great Divide, British intellectual historian Peter Watson investigates how and why the peoples of the Old and New Worlds developed so differently. Watson makes the case that differing environmental conditions in the two hemispheres—climate, topography, flora and fauna—forged two diverging trajectories of civilization and culture. In The Great Divide, he has compiled compelling evidence to that effect into a sweeping overview of human history. Some factors that he considers are the role that natural disasters played in the creation of gods and religions, how different flora and fauna affected the rates at which agriculture and cities developed, how the use of psychotropic plants influenced cultural ideologies, and why was human sacrifice such a widespread practice in the Americas?

As I’ve come to learn from previously reading his books Ideas and The Modern Mind, Watson is a master generalist who can pull together concepts and data from a wide variety of fields in the sciences, humanities, and the arts and unify them into a remarkably cohesive whole. The Great Divide, however, is pretty much all about archeology, anthropology, and paleontology. I thought this book would have something to say about the cultures of the Old World and the New after the first transatlantic contact, but with the exception of some brief coverage of the Spanish Conquest, it is entirely concerned with events prior to 1492. Watson’s investigation begins with the dawn of humans and spends a lot of time in the Ice Age. Socrates, Buddha, and Confucius don’t show up until chapter 18, and the Spaniards don’t reach America until the 23rd and final chapter. The Great Divide is basically a comprehensive summary of world archaeology, as much as we knew in 2012. I enjoy reading about archaeology, but because I read quite a bit on that subject, a lot of this was review for me. Nevertheless, as is always the case with Watson’s books, he enriches the general narrative with plenty of interesting facts and connections that will be new and intriguing to most general readers.

If the purpose of this book is to compare and contrast the pre-1492 trajectories of the Old and New Worlds, it is not entirely successful. Watson presents a few chapters on the history of the Old World, followed by a couple chapters on the history of the New World, and back and forth, and back and forth. Only in the conclusion of the book, when recapping all the evidence presented, does Watson really take the time to make side-by-side comparisons between the two domains and draw generalizations and theories from their differences. The two hemispheres, not surprisingly, do not get equal time and consideration. It seems like the book is about two-thirds Old World and one-third New World, simply because there’s so much more pre-16th-century information available on Eurasia than there is on the Americas.

The Great Divide is an excellent synthesis of human history that draws interesting parallels and deviations between the peoples of the Eastern and Western hemispheres. This book will not, however, captivate the general reader to the same extent as Charles Mann’s excellent 1491 or perhaps Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (which I haven’t read, but it was a popular bestseller). Although Watson does generate similar wow-factor by delivering insightful revelations to curious readers, The Great Divide has more of a textbook execution to it, rather than the more investigative science journalism feel of Mann’s work. Notwithstanding, if you are at all interested in the ancient history of world cultures, this book’s breadth and depth make it a must-read.

The ebook claims that an Appendix 2 is available online at the Harper Collins website, but it’s not there, and that’s really annoying.  

The Mammoth Book of Crime Comics, edited by Paul Gravett

Mammoth? Yes. Best? Not really.

British publisher Constable & Robinson has an extensive line of “Mammoth Book” anthologies. The Best Book of Crime Comics, published in 2008, is one of the few volumes in that series devoted to graphic storytelling. Edited by comics critic Paul Gravett, this book consists of 24 crime stories taken from comic books and newspaper comics, reprinted in black and white. The reproduction quality of the art varies with the source material but overall is pretty good.

What this collection does well is give a broad overview of the crime comics genre by presenting a wide variety of selections: old and new, American and European, hard-boiled and comical, pulp fiction and avant garde. The individual stories selected to fit those categories, however, are not necessarily exemplary works. The thought process behind putting this collection together seems to have been, “You can’t have a collection of crime comics without including . . . (Will Eisner, Alex Raymond, Alex Toth, Mickey Spillane, Max Allan Collins, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, etc.)” There are also certain characters that seem like must-haves: Eisner’s The Spirt, Dashiell Hammett’s Secret Agent X-9, Spillane’s Mike Hammer, and Collins’s Ms. Tree are all here. Even so, in many cases the story selected for inclusion can’t really be said to be that character’s best. The Ms. Tree story is more of a character-development piece about her pregnancy than an actual mystery. The chosen X-9 adventure is rather tedious and silly, and someone made the unforgivable mistake of printing some of the strips out of order.

These days it seems anyone who publishes an anthology is contractually obligated to put Neil Gaiman’s name on the cover, even though crime fiction is clearly not his area of expertise. His story, “The Court,” is somewhat interesting but has an element of legend and fantasy to it that really doesn’t fit in with the rest of the collection. Likewise, Alan Moore, writer of Watchmen and Swamp Thing, is another big name in comics not known for this genre (From Hell excepted). He gets not one but two stories, both of them pretty bad, one of which doesn’t even involve a crime.

In general, the stories from the 1940s and ‘50s are more successful than the newer selections, the most recent being from 1996. EC Comics great Johnny Craig’s story “The Sewer,” originally published in Crime SuspenStories, is phenomenal. Alex Toth’s “The Crushed Gardenia” is a superb and chilling portrait of a killer. Spillane’s Mike Hammer adventure, a series of Sunday newspaper pages, is also exceptional and surprisingly violent and graphic for its time. Eisner’s “The Portier Fortune” may not be the most innovative Spirit story, but it’s still a quality piece of work like just about everything Eisner ever did. The same could be said for Simon and Kirby’s “The Money-Making Machine Swindlers.” Of the newer entries, Charles Burns’s poisonously macho masked-wrestler detective El Borbah stars in one of the book’s best entries. Spaniards Enrique Sánchez Abuli and Jordi Bernet also deliver an outstanding hard-boiled comic noir story from their Torpedo 1936 series.

In his introduction to the book, Gravett insinuates that if today’s readers think they know the crime genre from reading Frank Miller’s Sin City, they’ve got another thing coming. Although it’s great that Gravett is introducing those readers to classic comics from the golden age of pulp fiction, most of the selections in this volume, particularly the more recent ones, don’t really hold a candle to the Sin City series, either in storytelling or in art. Any collection of EC’s Crime SuspenStories would surely outshine this grab bag, and for those looking for more contemporary crime comics, I would recommend the Hard Looks collections edited by Andrew Vachss.

Stories in this collection

“Old Gangsters Never Die” by Alan Moore and Lloyd Thatcher

“Torpedo 1936: The Switch” by Enrique Sánchez Abuli and Jordi Bernet

“The Money-Making Machine Swindlers” by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby

“87th Precinct: Blind Man’s Bluff” by Bernie Kirgstein and unknown writer

“The Murderer of Hung” by Dominique Grange and Jacques Tardi

“Murder, Morphine, and Me” by Jack Cole

“El Borbah: Love in Vein” by Charles Burns

“The Spirit: The Portier Fortune” by Will Eisner

“Secret Agent X-9” by Dashiell Hammett and Alex Raymond

“Commissario Spada: Strada” by Gianluigi Gonano and Gianni De Luca

“Lily-white Joe” by Bernie Krigstein and unknown writer

“The Crushed Gardenia” by Alex Toth and unknown writer

“Ms. Tree: Maternity Leave” by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty

“Roy Carson and the Old Master” by Colin McLoughlin and Denis McLoughlin

“Mary Spratchet” by anonymous

“Alack Sinner: Talkin’ with Joe” by Carlos Sampayo and José Muñoz

“The Button” by Bill Everett and unknown writer

“Kane: Rat in the House” by Paul Grist

“Whodunnit?” by Fred Guardineer and unknown writer

“Mike Lancer and The Syndicate of Death” by Mickey Spillane and Harry Sahle

“Mike Hammer: Dark City” by Mickey Spillane and Ed Robbins

“The Court” by Neil Gaiman and Warren Pleece

“The Sewer” by Johnny Craig

“I Keep Coming Back” by Alan Moore and Oscar Zarate

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Modern Book Illustrators and Their Work, edited by C. Geoffrey Holme and Ernest G. Halton

British book illustrations of the Art Nouveau period

Published in 1914, Modern Book Illustrators and Their Work is an art book reproducing about 170 book illustrations by 50 artists. Some of those artists are only represented by one image while others may account for as many as eight or nine. The artworks are presented in alphabetical order by the name of the artist. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of the illustrations are reproduced in black-and-white. While there may be a few genuine etchings or wood engravings among the selections, almost all appear to be pen-and-ink drawings. Seven painted illustrations are reproduced in full color. Scanned copies of this book can be downloaded for free from HathiTrust and the Internet Archive.

According to the book’s introduction, the majority of the selected illustrations were created after 1890. Salaman describes “the ‘90s” as a sort of golden age of book illustration in which artists made marked advancements over the previous decades. “Modern” is a relative term, of course. These illustrations were made slightly before the career of Rockwell Kent, who would be considered America’s quintessential modern book illustrator. To today’s viewers, these drawings will seem decidedly pre-modern. Most of them are drawn in an Art Nouveau style or mimic the style of the Pre-Raphaelite painters, similar to the kind of illustrations produced by William Morris’s Kelmscott Press. For illustrators or printmakers looking to emulate those styles, this would be a good sourcebook of images from which to draw ideas and techniques. A minority of the artworks exhibit a realist style that might have been influenced by French painters like Jean François Millet and Gustave Courbet.

The subject matter of the art falls into two main categories. The first would be fanciful depictions of fairy tales, folk tales, mythological subject matter, or literal “faerie stories” (i.e. populated by fairies). The second category is Dickensianesque images of England, either drawn in a comical style like the caricatures of Daumier or in a more realist style when depicting landscapes, cityscapes, or members of the working class.

Just about every illustration in the book demonstrates a high level of craftsmanship and intricate detail. Contemporary draughtsmen can learn much from their composition, design, and ornament. Though the style depicted is not as forcefully eye-catching as later black-and-white masters like Kent, Lynd Ward, or Barry Moser, this volume is a delightful time capsule of this whimsical and picturesque era in book illustration. Lovers of old books will enjoy browsing through these images and imagining the stories they might have accompanied.
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Illustrations from the book:

Dion Clayton Calthrop, The Homes of the Four Winds, from The Guide to Fairyland

Sydney R. Jones, Nijmegen, Gelderland, from Old Houses in Holland

Donald Maxwell, The Weavers, Canterbury, from Adventures with a Sketch Book

R. James Williams, The Three Little Crones, Each with Something