Dear Shrink
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Cover Story
The illustration on the cover of this issue of Books for Keeps is from the new large-size edition of The Complete Adventures of Tom Kitten and His Friends, published by Frederick Warne, 0 7232 3288 1, £5.95. We are grateful to Penguin Books for help in using this illustration.
Correction
We are sorry that the booklists for the articles on Judy Blume and C.S. Lewis were incomplete in our last issue. Please add the following editions – all hardback from The Bodley Head.
C. S. Lewis
The Magician’s Nephew
0 370 00926 6, £4.95
The Last Battle
0 370 00933 9, £4.95
Judy Blume
Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great
0 370 30170 6 £4.95
Superfudge
0 370 30358 X £4.50
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
0 370 30171 4, £4.50
Dear Shrink
Their botanist parents' trip to study the Amazon jungle results in pain and separation for three children who have previously taken comfortable middle-class security for granted. The story is told by the middle child, first as a quite amusing account of having elderly Mrs Bartle in loco parentis then, after her death, in the form of Anne Frank-type letters. Addressed to Mr Jung (see title), these give Oliver a way to express his desperate unhappiness as he and small Lucy spend time with truly awful foster parents and in a children's home. Oliver Saxon is intelligent, articulate and suffering in many ways - lonely, frightened, tormented at school, worried about his sister, confronted with strangers and strange situations. The book is compelling, direct, often funny and worth recommending to teenagers. I feel the ending is rather overloaded with incident and the denouement has to be predictable. The family house is wrecked by a boy from the Home; the Saxon children run away, taking another boy in care with them; but Mum and Dad suddenly return and after broken limbs, blizzards and a helicopter rescue, the story ends with a happy Christmas. Should appeal to fairly bright teenagers.