Musing Mondays (August 26)

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Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…

• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it!
• What you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

My Musing:

Children’s Books

I have been looking at children’s books to donate to the primary school my children attended. I want to give them some books that will be enjoyed by the many with the secret hope that one or two will spark that special feeling of finding ‘your book’ in a child.

The first book I have chosen is sadly no longer in print so I have managed to find a good second-hand copy.
Thursday’s Child by Noel Streatfeild was ‘my book’, I think I was initially drawn to it partly because I was born on a Thursday and secondly because I had loved Ballet Shoes. Thursdays Child tells the story of Margaret who was left on Church Steps in a basket with three of everything of the very best quality and a note

“This is Margaret whom I entrust to your care. Each year fifty-two pounds will be sent for her keep and schooling. She has not yet been christened”

The year Margaret turned ten the money stopped arriving and it was decided by the elderly spinsters who had looked after her with their faithful servant Hannah that she was to be sent to an orphanage.

What follows is an adventure that encompasses a cruel matron, some firm friends and an escape on a canal boat. There is also a sequel ‘Far to Go’

Thursday’s Child was based upon a firm friend of Noel Streatfeild, Margot Grey, who had been sent to France to learn the hotel trade at 14, she died in the 1960’s and Noel explained how she used her friend to write Thursday’s Child in an article in 1974

‘What an interesting child she must have been,’ I thought, ‘to be so proudly independent almost from the day she was born.’ … Then one day, when I was thinking about a new book, I decided to use Margaret. Not, of course, with the real Margaret’s story, but using as the central figure the sort of child I was sure the real Margaret had been. I called my Margaret, Margaret Thursday and the book Thursday’s Child because, following the old rhyme, she had far to go (in The Noel Streatfeild Easter Holiday Book, 1974:142)

Although not as popular as Ballet Shoes, my daughter loved this book almost as much as I did so here’s hoping that someone else will find Margaret’s story just as enthralling.

Related articles

• Musing Mondays (Aug. 26) (shouldbereading.wordpress.com)
• Children’s Books: A Break from the Adult World (thepoeticsproject.com)