Bookmaking With Kids

When the ordinary world between the covers of a book slowly turns curiouser and curiouser … when words on the page turn into characters you can see and hear … when you stay up long, long past bedtime to find out what happens, that’s a good read. And that’s the Carbonel series.

Technically more than 50 years old but in truth timeless, Barbara Sleigh’s three Carbonel stories have been beautifully reprinted by the New York Review’s Children’s Collection.

Kids 9 and up can read the books solo. (I think there’s equal appeal for boys and girls, by the way.) But you could and should read them aloud—to littler children, older kids and any grown-ups who stray within earshot.

The first of the books, Carbonel: The King of Cats, starts with a good deed gone awry.

Rosemary Brown, age 10, sets out to supplement her mother’s meager earnings by buying a broom and hiring herself out to clean houses during summer vacation. She ends up in tears, with a dilapidated broom and a cat that cost her her last three farthings.

But just at that moment, quite clearly and distinctly, the cat said:

“It’s a better bargain than it looks, you know.”

“Who said that?” Rosemary could not believe her ears.

“Me, of course!” said the cat. “Oh, yes, of course I can talk. All animals can, but you can only hear me because you are holding the witch’s broom.”

Carbonel, she soon learns, is a royal cat who was stolen as a kitten and enslaved by a witch. Rosemary’s three farthings freed him from the witch, but not from a Silent Magic spell that dooms him to more servitude. Rosemary immediately vows to help him. And so begins a quest for the witch’s hat, her cauldron and a book of spells needed to undo the curse.

It’s a tricky business tracking down clue after clue after clue while keeping grown-ups clueless. But Rosemary and her friend John go about their sleuthing undetected, with an appealing blend of resourcefulness and humor, courage and kindheartedness. Oh, and poetic ingenuity, too, because the broomstick won’t budge unless bidden in verse!