Posted by Peter H on March 27, 2006 at 10:57:12 from 213.122.107.114 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: Missee Lee and Peter Duck posted by Hannah on March 27, 2006 at 06:21:22:
I have always regarded 'Missee Lee' as 'real'. It has too many accurate observations in it to be a fantasy. Eg: Titty cutting a blaze on a tree and watching the 'thick syrup' ooze out, then the prompt arrival of the butterflies, and then later on seeing the butterflies drowned in the syrup.
The problem with ML is that you have to have read one or more of the other books first, otherwise you won't know who all the children are, and who the hell Capn Flint is. AR usually tries to inform new readers about the characters by using 'flashbacks' but he doesn't in ML. Only a small defect.
GN? is surely 'real'. I have never understood Christina Hardyment's logic in saying that because a gun goes off, that makes the story unreal. Rather the opposite, I would have thought.
While I'm on, as it were, I would like to say thanks to Fiona for a challenging, opinionated, bang-on-topic post, which gets people thinking. Also - marks for courage. (If Fiona's post had had the name 'Peter H' on it, by now the sky would have fallen in - five rounds of rapid scatter-gun fire from John Nichols, a lofty ticking-off from Jock ('you're over-prescriptive') replete with html's for my further edification. Oh, and Peter R would have challenged me to a fight . . . ;-)