A book for the children

Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm are all well and good for children in northern Europe, with its dark pine forests, wolves, bears, wicked stepmothers and assorted kings, queens, princes (charming and otherwise) and princesses (sleeping and wide awake) but, with the exception of wicked stepmothers — and stepfathers — how many children who have never travelled outside their own islands can appreciate the menace of the forest in winter, howling wolves with slavering jaws, and the glamour of sceptres and crowns? With one exception, and that only in the beginning, the stories and poems of Lystra McBurnie Brent-Harris are all based in the Caribbean; some venture into the magical, but what’s childhood without a little magic, here and there?

I had some reservations about the poem “The Iguana.” As a very amateur naturalist I worry about these bright green, ancient creatures, the very thought of killing and eating them gives me the shivers. However, since they are game animals the young boys in this poem were well within their rights to kill an iguana, take it home and eat the curried iguana cooked by their mother.

‘Cascadella,’ a story set around Jamaica’s Dunn’s River, is pure magic every young girl should enjoy. So, too, is ‘Orchidia’ — illustrated on the front cover. Every lively young lad may recognise himself (in fantasy, if not in reality) in ‘The Hog Plum Tree,’ set in San Fernando; this story tells of a boy who climbed over a fence to get the fruit and got trapped by the yard dogs.

‘My Favourite Caribbean Tales’ isn’t the only children’s book you’ll find at Nigel Khan, Bookseller where there is a wide range of books for young people, from babies to teenagers, from Disney fantasy to the classic Grimm’s Fairy Tales, The Hobbit (the precursor to The Lord of the Rings trilogy), Alice in Wonderland, the original Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr Seuss (and imitators), et al You’ll find Nigel Khan Bookseller at PricePlaza, Ellerslie Plaza, Gulf City and The Falls, Westmall.