Non Blyton Knight Children's Paperbacks

[pete9012S]

Please feel free to post pics or links to any yourself.

[Debbie]

I have that one!

I have a bit of an odd story about it, which I may have told before, so sorry if I have.

When I was in year 6 (age 10/11) our teacher read us a story about a group of children who find a baby and look after it. I searched for this book as an adult. I remembered the plot fairly well, but there was a particular passage that I could remember pretty much word for word - and I could hear it being read in my teacher's voice in my head.

One time I asked on a forum if anyone knew the book and got two suggestions: "Una and the Heaven baby" and "Three girls and a secret".
And I bought both.

I found that the plot was from "Una and the Heaven Baby" and the scene from "Three girls and a secret". I must have read the second book at some point and remembered the scene.
They're both good stories, although, other than children looking after a baby, vastly different plots so not sure why I'd got them so combined in my head.


I don't know how to put photos on here, but I have most of Malcolm Saville's Susan and Bill series in Green Knights Paperback.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Brilliant idea for a topic, Pete, and I enjoyed reading your story of the two books, Debbie.

I haven't read Three Girls and a Secret (or anything else by René Guillot) but the hidden baby makes me think of Enid Blyton's The Very Big Secret - though it sounds as if René Guillot's book is for slightly older readers.

Knight paperbacks of the 1970s are very nostalgic for me. I have some of Malcolm Saville's Susan and Bill books in Knight too, Debbie, and a few of his Michael and Mary titles - although I only collected them as an adult.

My sister and I had Ruby Ferguson's Jill series (pony books) in Knight, and some other pony books by the Pullein-Thompson sisters and various other authors, but I no longer have those. However, I do have a Knight copy of Silver Snaffles by Primrose Cumming.

I have four of H. E. Todd's Bobby Brewster titles as Knight paperbacks too, though I first encountered Bobby Brewster in hardbacks from the library.

I still have two Knight paperback Ruth Arthur books from my childhood - A Candle in Her Room and Requiem for a Princess. They're spooky stories and I particularly liked A Candle in Her Room, about an evil doll.

My childhood copy of Pamela Brown's The Swish of the Curtain is also a Knight book. I have the rest of the series as well, but not in Knight editions.

Looking at my bookshelves has reminded me of three one-off Knight paperbacks - A Handful of Ghosts by Barbara Ker Wilson, Knight Book of Secret Codes by Falcon Travis and Knight Book of Things to Make and Do by Leslie Marshall.

I'll try to say more about some of these, and see if I can post some pictures or links, when time allows.

[Judith Crabb]

According the internet, Anita, it would cost you about $50 AUST to replace that lill' ole Knight paperback of 'Silver Snaffles' so best look after it.

[Anita Bensoussane]

It was a lucky buy as I picked it up in a charity shop for £1! I didn't come across Silver Snaffles as a child but Kate Mary recommended it on these forums some years ago. I read it in the Fidra Books reprint as I didn't have the Knight version until much later, and I found it entrancing. It's not a typical pony book as it has a fantasy element and a hauntingly bittersweet ending.

The Knight edition dates from 1976:



https://booksandmud.blogspot.com/2012/0 ... rback.html

The blurb on the back says:

Silver Snaffles

'Through the Dark Corner, and the password is Silver Snaffles,' said the old pony Tattles to Jenny. He takes her to a secret riding stables where the ponies can talk and where they teach her to ride, as she has always longed to do. She soon makes friends with them and has many adventures which she will never forget.

[Katharine]

An interesting topic.

I can't think of any paperbacks in my collection, but I will keep an eye out in case I have any hidden gems.

[Kate Mary]

I’ve got Bambi by Felix Salten in a Knight paperback, a 1967 edition. I used to have The Hound of Ulster by Rosemary Sutcliff in Knight but that has got lost/mislaid over the years, which is a shame it is a brilliant book.

Regarding Silver Snaffles, I checked the price of copies on AbeBooks. A Knight edition is on offer for £45.52 + p+p and a Fidra paperback £56.34. My Fidra copy turned out to be a good investment!

[Courtenay]

It was a lucky buy as I picked it up in a charity shop for £1! I didn't come across Silver Snaffles as a child but Kate Mary recommended it on these forums some years ago. I read it in the Fidra Books reprint as I didn't have the Knight version until much later, and I found it entrancing. It's not a typical pony book as it has a fantasy element and a hauntingly bittersweet ending.

...

https://booksandmud.blogspot.com/2012/0 ... rback.html

The blurb on the back says:

Silver Snaffles

'Through the Dark Corner, and the password is Silver Snaffles,' said the old pony Tattles to Jenny. He takes her to a secret riding stables where the ponies can talk and where they teach her to ride, as she has always longed to do. She soon makes friends with them and has many adventures which she will never forget.

Wow, now that book sounds well worth reading, if only I could find an affordable copy some day! I've never ben hugely into horse books, but horse books with talking horses sound, well, positively Narnian.

Meanwhile, at that link you've provided, Anita, I'm delighted to see a reference to Elyne Mitchell's Silver Brumby series, which is an Australian classic and one of the few sets of horse books I read and re-read and hugely enjoyed as a child / teenager. Well, the first four books, at least. Sadly, it's one of those series where, after some years, the author decided to continue with it, but her writing style had changed by then and the stories became more and more vague and nebulous.

It got even worse in the 1990s (during my lifetime by then — the first four books were written in the 1950s and '60s!) when there was a revival in popularity of the series due to a couple of film and TV versions (which only vaguely resembled the books), and Mitchell wrote several more books that were ostensibly sequels, but again, so different from those original four and so unexciting that I don't really count them as belonging to the same series. I now have the original four in Knight paperbacks (which is how I first read them, from my primary school library) and I won't touch the rest!

If any of you here are into classic horse stories, though, I do highly recommend those four (and if you'd like to go on to the rest of the series, you can make up your own minds as to whether they're worth it). They are The Silver Brumby; Silver Brumby's Daughter; Silver Brumbies of the South; Silver Brumby Kingdom. For those who may not know, "brumby" is our term in Australia for a feral horse roaming the high country — actually an ecological nuisance, but much romanticised regardless!

[Anita Bensoussane]

I saw the Silver Brumby books in the library and bookshops when I was young but I'm not sure that I read any, sadly. I do like the word "brumby" though!

Moving away from ponies, the two Ruth Arthur books that I mentioned look like this:



https://www.amazon.com/Requiem-Princess ... 0340265973




https://richarddalbyslibrary.com/produc ... 9984027829


Requiem for a Princess is a 1981 edition and A Candle in Her Room is a 1980 edition. These are the blurbs on the back covers:

Requiem for a Princess

Willow Forrester was enchanted when she first saw the old house by the sea in which she and her mother were to stay as paying guests.

But beneath the surface serenity of Penliss, secrets lurked. There was the witchlike Amalie, the old cook, who seemed able to look into the past and the future. There was the compelling portrait in the drawing room of a mysterious Spanish girl, Isabel de Calverados, who had lived at Penliss in the sixteenth century. And then there was the strangely decorated talisman Isabel had worn in the portrait, and which Willow found one day buried in the 'Spanish' garden.

That same night Willow's dreams began - strange dreams of Isabel which terrified her on awakening. For her fascination with the Spanish girl had become an obsession - AND IT COULD ENDANGER WILLOW'S OWN LIFE BEFORE SHE COULD BREAK FREE...

A Candle in Her Room

I stood in the empty room, my heart thumping in the silence.

I sensed somebody - something - was already in occupation. I felt hostility like a bad smell seeping through the room. There was an air of expectancy, as if the room had been waiting for someone...

Waiting for - ME?

Three different girls come under the evil influence of the strange wooden doll Dido. From the moment it is found in the attic one rainy day, it seems to hold the old house under a curse - and three generations are powerless to destroy it...

When I was young I used to enjoy creepy stories in comics like Misty and Jinty, and these books were like extended versions of those.

[Judith Crabb]

Inspired by all of the above I returned to my paperback shelves (apart from Puffins rather thin, as I put aside paperbacks only of books I thought I might want to read but didn't have in hard-back). I had one I didn't remember at all - 'The Gobbling Billy' by William Mayne and Dick Caesar. Never in a fit would I have read it as a child. For a start, it's about a vintage racing car, not a childhood obsession of mine. Secondly, the cover appears about as alluring as a dead mouse (sorry about that - I'm having trouble with mice in my kitchen and feel rather like spreading the misery). I started reading it a few days ago and am staggered that it would have been chosen in a series for children. Presumably its original publication by Victor Gollancz in 1959 under the pseudonym Dynely James was for a more general readership? Anyway, it is the origin of my sudden interest in hand-me-downs, as the first few pages deal with the indigent and Irish Diarty family. If you are a practiced reader of literary fiction you might still find the narrative challenging - oblique, opaque, allusive - everything that Enid Blyton isn't. But, hang on, it's brilliant anyway. The book is a 'Black Knight' presumably for the oldest readers of the series. Very few children would have had the sophistication to tackle it and then persevere, but there must have been some. So far I've read only the first two chapters as I was determined to understand every bit of dialogue, every implication. Yes, I'm enjoying it and expect it to get easier as I get into it. I'll let you know what I think when I finish it.
So, all those years ago William Mayne was writing 'literary fiction' for children.

[pete9012S]

I noticed these two books in my Knight Five Go Adventuring Again recently.

I hadn't heard of either book, so I looked them up.
Here's the second book mentioned:
(The first book, Flight Of Sparrows Roy Brown is proving elusive in Knight paperback edition)

[Anita Bensoussane]

I'm not familiar with Flight of Sparrows or Corcoran's the Name, Pete. Flight of Sparrows appeals to me more as I enjoy books set in bygone London and I like the sound of "young Sprog, the strange boy and his dog."

I have a few of Malcolm Saville's 'Michael and Mary' and 'Susan and Bill' books as Knight paperbacks. Here are two of them:



https://www.witchend.com/shop/books/the-fourth-key






https://www.witchend.com/shop/books/sus ... lden-clock

Sorry - I can't seem to reduce the size of the first image! The cover of The Fourth Key looks enticing and the cover of Susan, Bill and the Golden Clock is rather unsettling, especially as the children's faces have a strange yellow-green tinge.


The Fourth Key is a 1970 edition and the blurb says:

A 'Michael and Mary' story, set in Sussex, by one of the most popular writers of adventure stories for children.

Michael and Mary's new home in the country was once used by smugglers and so it is a good place to look for the legendary smugglers' treasure.

With a special message from the author.

Susan, Bill and the Golden Clock is a 1976 edition and the blurb says:

Susan, Bill and the Golden Clock

A stranger arrives at Redmarsh Farm and is suspiciously interested in the family heirlooms.

Susan and Bill are staying at Redmarsh for a special holiday and are intrigued by the strange habits of a woman who arrives and insists on staying as a paying guest.

[Judith Crabb]

I thoroughly recommend 'The Gobbling Billy' by William Mayne and Dick Caesar. It is a rollicking read which is also witty and warm-hearted with a satisfying conclusion where everyone gets their just deserts. The title refers to a Gobelin-Billet French vintage car which is restored by Bob Harcombe, with the help of the children of the impoverished Diartys (Bob falls for the older daughter). Newly arrived in Ireland to work on a computer named 'The Belfast Thinker', shortened to Bel, (the Fast Thinker), Bob is the proud possessor of an old Bentley, and decides to enter the Edwardian section of a road race if he can get The Gobbling Billy up and running. There are stock characters - the villain, the rich American, indomitable Irish women (even Molly and young Norah prove their mettle as pit-stop operatives) and the race is on!
An ideal 'comfort read' in these sometimes dark days. Of course if you happen to be a petrol head as well as a keen reader (I remember fondly a family of vintage car owners who supported our early used book business), all the better.

While children are capable of reading anything and everything, and a highly literate child may well enjoy the the book, I cannot believe that it was written for children. Take for example an exchange between the villain's girl-friend and the secretary of the car club. In pursuit of The Gobbling Billy the villain Eldon has left Cynthia at the club:
"Sustain your morale with some more gin," said the secretary. "How many miles do you do to the gallon?"
"It depends who's driving," said the girl-friend, and forgot about Eldon Rawley for the time being.

[Anita Bensoussane]

When I was little I used to borrow H. E. Todd's books of short stories about Bobby Brewster from the library. They were hardback editions with lovely Lilian Buchanan dustwrappers. As an adult I've collected a few Bobby Brewster titles from charity shops, but in Knight paperback. They have cover pictures by someone else (one book names the artist as David Barnett) but they still have Lilian Buchanan's illustrations inside.

Here is the cover of Bobby Brewster's Torch, dating from 1972:



https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bobby-Brewster ... C69&sr=8-1


The blurb says:

Through his appearances on television, particularly on BBC 'Jackanory', and the story telling sessions he has held in libraries and schools not only throughout Britain, but also in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Hong Kong, H. E. Todd can claim to be one of the best-known story-tellers in the world.

Here, for the first time in paperback, are the nine stories from BOBBY BREWSTER'S TORCH plus an extra story, BOBBY BREWSTER'S KITE, making ten in all in one volume.

The book is a Red Knight and it says, "This is a Red Knight Book which means that it is a distinguished and enjoyable book for young readers of today". I love the word "distinguished"! The Green Knight Books say, "This is a Green Knight Book which means that it is a book by one of the most popular authors of all."

Bobby Brewster lives in an ordinary house with his parents, but extraordinary things keep happening to him. In many of the stories, an everyday object such as a torch, kite, tree, statue or weighing machine begins speaking to him or communicating with him in some other way, leading to all kinds of fun and confusion. As a youngster, I was enthralled and longed for magical things like that to happen to me!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Knight Book of Things to Make and Do by Leslie Marshall, published in 1973, is interesting as it includes eight pages of black-and-white photos (as well as line drawings and diagrams throughout).It's packed with ideas for things that are pretty easy to make from sheets of card, tissue paper, boxes, cartons, etc. The sailing ship, hobby horse, castle and jumping jack/dancing doll look particularly good.



https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185903603176 ... 53ef32ab96

The blurb says:

Do you ever wonder what to do next? Here's the answer - a whole collection of things to make and do. All the materials you will need are easily got, and most of them can be found around the house.

I can't find a picture of Knight Book of Secret Codes by Falcon Travis, published in 1977, but the cover is bright yellow with a cartoon drawing of a spy. Just the thing for would-be spies and detectives!

The blurb says:

Knight Book of Secret Codes

Enjoy exchanging secret messages with your friends which no one else will understand!

You can learn all about poly-alpha ciphers, code grilles, symbols, acrostics, invisible inks and special code words like owl and hawk. And there's a section on codes and ciphers in games and contests, and another on how to be a code-breaker. Everything you need to be a super sleuth!

During the war Falcon Travis served in a branch of Military Intelligence whose task was radio interception, decoding and deciphering messages, identifying the senders and locating their transmitters.

Exciting stuff!