Outsiders

The six stories in this little book, newly collected from previously published work, reflect Crossley-Holland’s lifelong interest in legend and folktale, drawing on stories handed down orally over generations in Scotland, Wales and East Anglia. The title sums up their unifying theme. All concern figures who in some way or other are displaced, stranded between two worlds, and living – sometimes happily, sometimes not – in a world which is not their own. Either that, or the place itself is stranded – literally, being the strand or shore – between land and sea. The last tale, ‘Sea Tongue’, is not so much a story as a prose poem, and in others the writing is so spare, laconic, stripped down to essentials, that it seems to be asking for support from another art form like dance or music, or at least the speaking voice. In fact two of them, ‘The Green Children’ and ‘The Wildman’ have also been written by Crossley-Holland as librettos for operas by Nicola LeFanu. Birmingham’s excellent illustrations bring out their preoccupation with the mysterious edge of things, but essentially this is a book to be read to and with young children, rather than by them.