Books For Keeps
  • Home
  • Reviews
  • Articles
  • Past Issues
  • Latest Issue
  • Authors and Artists
  • Latest News
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
July 1, 2014/in I Wish I'd Written /by Richard Hill
This article is featured in BfK 207 July 2014
This article is in the I Wish I'd Written Category

I Wish I’d Written: Natasha Farrant

Author: Natasha Farrant

Natasha Farrant says Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson is ‘everything I wish I’d written and would love to write’.

Journey to the River Sea is storytelling at its most traditional, but to me it feels fearless. Oh, I don’t mean radical or controversial or boundary breaking. I mean fearless in its joyful unfettering of imagination, in its unleashing of emotion, its homely wisdom. Ibbotson gives us the Amazon jungle, parrots, hibiscus flowers, alligators (not crocodiles), comedic detectives, intrepid explorers, kindly Indians, soulful Russians, English aristocrats, a ghastly step-family to rival any in Dahl. She gives us not one orphan, but three. “People make their own worlds,” the governess Miss Minton tells us. “I think children must lead big lives… if it is in them to do so.”

Ibbotson’s flights of imagination go beyond the improbable. Her emotional excesses fringe sentimentality. Her wise pronouncements, in a lesser writer, would irritate, but she was never a lesser writer. Beneath the exuberance, her novels are ruthlessly structured, their natural warmth counterbalanced by a wicked sense of humour. Journey to the River Sea makes me laugh and sob and want to run away to Brazil to have an adventure. You can’t ask for much more from a book.

Journey to the River Sea (978-1447265689) by Eva Ibbotson is published by Macmillan Children’s Books at £6.99 pbk.

Natasha Farrant’s latest book, Flora in Love: The Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby (978-0571297979) is published by Faber and Faber at £6.99 pbk. It is longlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.

Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on WhatsApp
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share by Mail
http://booksforkeeps.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/bfklogo.png 0 0 Richard Hill http://booksforkeeps.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/bfklogo.png Richard Hill2014-07-01 09:05:482021-11-28 19:18:33I Wish I’d Written: Natasha Farrant
Download BfK Issue BfK 255 July 2022
Skip to an Issue:

Related Articles

I Wish I’d Written: Puneet Bhandal
BfK 255 July 2022
I Wish I’d Written: Derek Keilty
BfK 253 March 2022
I Wish I’d Written: Elys Dolan
BfK 252 January 2022
I Wish I’d Written: Daisy May Johnson
BfK 249 July 2021
I Wish I’d Written: Cath Howe
BfK 248 May 2021
I Wish I’d Written: Em Norry
BfK 247 March 2021
I Wish I’d Written: Alex Wheatle
BfK 246 January 2021
I Wish I’d Written: Sarah Lean
BfK 245 November 2020

About Us

Launched in 1980, we’ve reviewed hundreds of new children’s books each year and published articles on every aspect of writing for children.

Read More

Follow Us

Latest News

Sarah Hagger-Holt wins the 2022 Little Rebels Award for Radical Children’s Fiction 2022

July 21, 2022

Maisie Chan and her editor Georgia Murray of Piccadilly Press win the 2022 Branford Boase Award

July 14, 2022

Valerie Bloom wins the CLiPPA 2022

July 8, 2022

Contact Us

Books for Keeps,
30 Winton Avenue,
London,
N11 2AT

Telephone: 0780 789 3369

ISSN: 0143-909X (this is our International Standard Serial Number).

© Copyright 2022 - Books For Keeps | Proudly Built by Lemongrass Media - Web Design Buckinghamshire
Reading for Meaning Obituary: Josephine Pullein-Thompson
Scroll to top