The Pearl ¦ The Red Pony

Puffin have reissued two classic Steinbeck novels, both of them dealing with the brutally harsh vicissitudes of working lives lived close to the elements. In The Pearl, an impoverished pearl diver discovers a fabulous treasure which he hopes will transform life for himself and his family. It does so, by generating monstrous forces of greed, betrayal and violence against which Kino, Juana and the baby Coyotito are helpless. The tranquil clarity of Steinbeck's writing expresses an almost mystical sensitivity to the beauty against which the tragedy implacably develops.

The Red Pony presents four episodes from the painful coming of age of Jody Tiflin, the son of frugal California ranchers in the 1930s. Jody trains and nurtures a longed for pony only to see it sicken and die. He talks to a mysterious old paisano who emerges from the Salinas valley and disappears into the mountains after Jody's father refuses to allow him to remain on the ranch, his birthplace. He helps look after a mare which is carrying the colt he has been promised, and sees her butchered when the birthing goes wrong. He listens to his grandfather's oft repeated stories, and realises the sense of loss in which the stories are grounded. The underlying theme, again expressed simply and poignantly, is the sorrow of childhood's end, the longing and regret arising from the discovery of human fallibility and transience. These books are masterpieces of storytelling, rich in incidental detail of time and person and place. The themes are powerful and troubling, and there are episodes of violence in both books, but these aspects of the stories are mediated by honest and sympathetic writing. Essential books for any classroom from late KS2 onward.