The Return of Miss Bianca and Bernard the Brave

I blogged about Margery Sharp's Miss Bianca series a few weeks back -- it wasn't a very good post, I was tired and distracted. Thankfully, you don't need me to write about this subject any more, because just yesterday I learned that the New York Review of Books (an imprint of Random House) is bringing the first book in the series, The Rescuers, back into print this summer, in a nice hardcover edition!

Run, do not walk, to your nearest bookstore and order your copy today! Discover for yourself why I love these books unreservedly. If enough folks buy this one, I've no doubt that NYRB will follow up with Miss Bianca and The Turret, books two and three. I know it says "Children's Collection" on the front, but these are not just for kids. Anyone who likes a good gothic, romantic adventure will appreciate these stories. Just put the Disney movies right out of your heads, and step right up to Miss Bianca's Porcelain Pagoda for your ticket into a richly imagined world, where platonic love, honor and redemption are still possible for the smallest among us.

--Freder.

The Real, Original Rescuers

I don't want to write about moving today, although it is much on my mind, a weight that never seems to get any lighter.

Instead I will write about Miss Bianca and Bernard the Brave. Not the Disneyfied version of the movies (although the first one was okay despite its departures), but the source material, the original books by British author Margery Sharp.

Regrettably, the Miss Bianca series is completely out of print. This is a crime. Although I cannot speak for the later books in the series (my family stopped at four for some strange reason, and until later years I never knew that more existed), the first three are among the books that I most fondly remember.

They are Gothic Victorian Romantic Adventure stories -- with mice. When Disney made their version, it was Americanized and transplanted to the Louisiana Bayou, but the books are ornately European and much richer in texture. As illustrated by the great Garth Williams, the books are filled with what Williams himself referred to as "a soft furry love."

But they are also filled with darkness and wonderful villains. In The Rescuers, a young girl is forced into servitude by The Grand Duchess, who with her faithful valet lives in a decaying old mansion attended by clockwork handmaidens.

I have to stop. I may revisit this post later on. I'm not doing it justice. Just too tired. Suffice to say that you should seek out The Rescuers, Miss Bianca and The Turret, and devour them by candlelight at night.