The enduring Beatrix Potter books

Beatrix Potter

This year is the 150^th anniversary of the birth of Beatrix Potter which is being celebrated in a variety of ways especially by the National Trust who benefitted from her generous bequest of her home, Hill Top and 4000 acres of land in the Lake District. She bought up much of the land to stop unwelcome development and protect the farmland and fells which she loved. By giving the land to the National Trust she has protected it in perpetuity.

However she is mostly remembered for her beautiful children’s books. It is fascinating that these old fashioned, little books full of Victorian and Edwardian morals and values are so enduring. They are still in print over 100 years after being published.  How is it that children today are able to engage with these books?

Children love animal stories from picture books to the exploits of Babe and Magnus Powermouse by Dick King Smith or Joey the War Horse by Michael Morpurgo. The difference is that modern animal stories often focus on the animals having super powers or overcome great odds or beating either villainous animals or humans. 

The delightful Peter Rabbit

This is not so with Beatrix Potter books. Her animals do occasionally outwit humans but the books feature much more animals in human, domestic situations. For instance Mrs Tabitha Twitchit trying and failing to dress up her kittens to look their best for a tea party. Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny getting up to mischief and trouble in Mr McGregor’s garden. The difficulties for Ribby the dog being invited to tea with Duchess the cat who she is certain will offer her mouse pie and all the drama of trying to swap pies.

In addition the settings of Beatrix Potter’s books are far removed from life in 21^st century Britain. No cars, motorways, planes, phones or domestic appliances feature – it is about walking or maybe driving a pony and trap, ranges to cook on and huge chimneys to climb and get lost in. Vegetables are grown or taken from Mr McGregor’s garden and all food is cooked at home. 

Squirrel Nutkin

However the beautiful illustrations of the wonderful characters of Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, the naughty Squirrel Nutkin and the foolish Jemima Puddleduck take you right back to that era. It may be unfamiliar but the frequent and lovely pictures instantly recall that time.  The animals wear appropriate clothes for the early 20^th century and the houses, gardens, streets and villages evoke those days.

However it was Beatrix Potter’s amazing ability to depict emotions in her animals that is fascinating.  Kittens look gleeful and mischievous, rabbits trail their ears in a forlorn manner and Peter Rabbit looks both scared and curious. Even Mr Bunny struts along the wall in an authoritarian way looking for his errant son. No surprise that he whips the cat and rescues Benjamin.

Mr Bunny strutting along the garden wall

Animals of course do not have these emotions but Beatrix Potter portrays them in this way to highlight the morals of her stories. Being good is a virtue and being bad leads either to trouble or punishment. The rude and wayward Squirrel Nutkin loses half his tail. The foolish Jemima Puddleduck nearly comes to a sticky end.  Adult figures are often needed to restore errant children.

The foolish Jemima Puddleduck

Modern animal picture books are so different with their huge colourful, double page spreads and they focus far more on the virtues of being good friends, being helpful, being kind and they often have a good sprinkling of wit and what I call wackiness; unusual drawings or offbeat humour. Children love it. 

Benjamin Bunny wearing Mr McGregor's
tam o shanty

Given all of this, it is surprising that Beatrix Potter books have endured and are still purchased today.  However despite their vintage and the different morals they are accessible. Children today can identify with the animals so when the disobedient Peter Rabbit and his mischievous friend Benjamin Bunny get into trouble children can be a little scared in a safe way. In fact re-reading Peter Rabbit still evokes childhood anxieties of being trapped in a hostile environment with no way home.

The situations may be rather different but children’s behaviour even portrayed by dressed up animals hasn’t changed much. Children are still children, naughty and foolish and though they may no longer be beaten or sent to bed with no tea, children do understand that being naughty should be punished even if the punishment is rather different today.

Mr Bunny taking Benjamin and Peter home after beating them.
Note the forlorn ears!

I suspect that each generation will pass on their love of these little books to the next. They have survived and flourished all through the social changes of the 20^th century so I am confident they will continue for many years to come. I hope so.

Singing for Mrs Pettigrew

I have just finished reading Michael Morpurgo’s book Singing for Mrs Pettigrew. It is a lovely compilation of short stories and chapters about his life. Sometimes it is hard to tell which are stories and which autobiographical chapters.  He also gives a little bit of background into how he writes his stories.

I love Michael Morpurgo books because he is a master of the art of writing for children.  He says: I am a grower of stories. I farm them as surely as a farmer does his corn. I am a weaver of dreams: a teller of tales. I have, through my mother reading to me, through my own reading, through inspired teachers, through my great mentors, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ted Hughes and Sean Rafferty, through years of practice, discovered my way of doing it.

He certainly has. His books are so good that adults and children alike can enjoy them.  He can take a simple story and draw you into the event so completely that you are living it with the people. It feels like your life and theirs have become entwined.

The short story Singing for Mrs Pettigrew is a simple tale of the effect of building a nuclear power station on the village of Bradwell in Essex and the devastation it had on Mrs Pettigrew who was evicted from the railway carriage where she lived so that the power station could be built on that land.

Mr Morpurgo generates a great deal of sympathy for Mrs Pettigrew along with her supporters, the young Michael Morpurgo and his mother. You feel anger as one after another of the villagers who had initially opposed the building gradually come to support it and oppose Mrs Pettigrew. Finally you feel intense frustration that after building the nuclear reactors, they have all too quickly become redundant. Nevertheless the huge monstrosity will stand for centuries right by the sea, scarring the landscape because a nuclear power station can never be demolished.  The reactors have to be entombed in concrete for centuries till they are no longer radioactive.

What made the story all the more poignant for me is that I can recall the building of the Bradwell nuclear power station.  I went to a youth camp on the marshes nearby and remember being in awe of the enormous building and slightly frightened by the constant ticking noises it made.

Bramwell nuclear power station on the coast of Essex

I grew up in the era just after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.  We had seen the devastation that the bomb had caused not just to the landscape but the effect of radioactivity on survivors. My mother took me see The War Game at our church hall. It is a short film about the immediate aftermath of a nuclear bomb.  It was a shocking experience for a teenager in those days, already traumatised by the newly released daleks from Dr Who.

Nuclear energy was frightening, unpredictable and what if the nuclear reactor blew up?  Not only would I be wiped out but half of Britain as well. These were my fears most of which were groundless but as more recent events in Chernobyl and Japan have shown – nuclear power can be dangerous.

So I found great empathy with Mrs Pettigrew who is the one small voice silenced and overthrown by the march of new ideas and developments which in turn prove not be as amazing and ground breaking as at first thought.

Time and again, Michael Morpurgo has the genius of being able to write about great events from the perspective of just one small individual or animal whether that is Mrs Pettigrew, Joey the horse from War Horse or Sofia caught up in a massacre at her village in Bosnia or Adolphus Tips the cat left behind in the evacuation of his village in the Second World War.

Michael Morpurgo has written over 100 books. Which one is your favourite?