“The lank man knotty and tough as a hickory rail/Whose hands were always too big for white-kid glove

[larryhammer]

Slightly pointless genre noodlings:

Should Puck of Pook’s Hill be classified as Mainstream or Fantasy, or both? Or is it better served to call it Children’s Literature, a genre where adherence to realism has never been as strict as in Mainstream?

What about The Jungle Books? Or Just So Stories? What’s the genre status of beast fables anyway?

(Kim’s genre is of course Most Excellent Book.)

(I started to ask whether anyone has written the American (or for that matter Canadian) equivalent of Puck of Pook’s Hill, then realized the Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales series sorta counts, maybe, I think. Are there any others?)

Okay, maybe not “slightly.”

---L.

Subject quote from John Brown’s Body, Stephen Vincent Benét, used because the lines make me think of Carl Sandburg’s children’s biography “Abe Lincoln Grows Up.”

Comments

[mme_n_b]

I think he failed the "surreptitious" part, but it's still one of the best books ever, White Britishism and all.

[larryhammer]

Mm, I personally think that Kim has a better title to that, Raj Imperialism and all.

[mme_n_b]

I'm a sucker for the "DEI won in England, kids, rejoice!" message of Puck and Rewards and Fairies, but aside from that yes, Kim is a very strong contender.