24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
User-Friendly ( British) history....., July 9, 2000
This review is from: Puck of Pook's Hill (Wordsworth Children's Classics) (Children's Library) (Paperback)
I bought this book for my children many years ago - son is now working in e-commerce (a job that I never imagined would exist when he was born!) - and I found it and re-read it with enjoyment some days ago.
Basically, it's about some (upperclass- there weren't any others in books in those days) children who accidentally conjure up "the oldest thing in England" - Puck.
He, in his turn, conjures up for them Normans, Saxons, and, yes, a Jewish moneylender who was the real clout behind the Magna Carta!
I had to revise my ideas about Kipling after reading this - he's a very contradictory character - but most of it reads (very gently) as a sensible argument for tolerance and diversity.
It's also a very good way of bringing history alive...
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Excellent Work of Children's Fantasy, October 27, 2000
As I am very interested in the historical and mythological nature of Puck (aka Robin Goodfellow), best known for his role as the mischief-making fairy in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, I found these works by Kipling to be invaluable. These two novels are not only an excellent presentation of Puck, but an insight to British history. While considered children's books, I would recommend them to any adult in search of light reading. Truly two wonderful works of literature.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Different look at English history, August 25, 2000
_Puck of Pook's Hill_ is a set of stories, somewhat linked, about the history of England, built around a frame story involving two young children, Dan and Una, meeting Puck in a meadow near their Sussex home. Puck somehow arranges for a series of historical people, ghosts, I suppose, to come and tell stories of events near their home in the past 2000 years. There are four stories told by Sir Richard Dalyngridge, one of William the Conqueror's men, on the theme of assimilation of the Normans and Saxons into one people: the English. There are three Roman stories, set in 375 AD or so, about a Centurion from the Isle of Wight who holds Hadrian's Wall against the Picts and the Norsemen while Maximus, his general, declares himself Emperor and takes Gaul then heads into Rome (where the real Emperor had him killed, understandably enough). The three other stories deal with the rebuilding of the local church in Henry VII's time, a rebuilding project menaced by smugglers, with the flight of the fairies from England at the time of the Reformation, and with the role of a Jew in forcing John to sign the Magna Carta. (This last an uneasy mixture of anti-Semitism with an apparent attempt to not be anti-semitic.)
_Rewards and Fairies_ presents eleven more stories told by Puck's agency to Dan and Una. We meet some familiar characters again (the church builder, and Richard Dalynrydge), and even some major historical figures: Queen Elizabeth, George Washington, Napoleon. On the whole the stories aren't quite as good as those in _Puck_, though "Marklake Witches" is very good, very moving.
Both books include a number of poems, usually closely associated with the themes of the stories.
These are generally fine stories, but for my taste not up to the level of my favorite Kipling stories, such as "Mrs. Bathurst" and "'They'" and "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes" and "The Story of Mohammed Din". Still, the plain craft of the stories is as ever with Kipling remarkable.
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