The Box of Delights: Or When the Wolves Were Running (Kay Harker)

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In the busy market-place there were open-air booths selling all manner of matters for Christmas; chiefly woollen mufflers, nailed boots, cloth caps, hedger’s gloves and the twenty-eight-pound cheeses, known as Tatchester Double Stones." To be fair to the BBC, there was an audience for this stuff. I was a well-mannered bourgeois prep-school boy and I had grown up reading these books: Lewis Carroll and E. Nesbit, Richmal Crompton and A. A. Milne. As children we didn’t understand that these things might be out of date or jar with contemporary mores. These were the kind of stories we were given, so these were the kind of stories we wanted. My kids and I were eager to finish, not because they cared at all about the ending, but because they wanted it to be over with. My daughter (age 8) was also convinced that the epilogue would tie it all together and it would suddenly make sense. When we got to the final line, she yelled out, "Are you kidding me?" The opening and closing title music features an orchestral arrangement of " The First Nowell" extracted from the third movement of the Carol Symphony by Victor Hely-Hutchinson. It had been used for earlier radio adaptations and has become synonymous with the story. [5] Big Finish 2021 [ edit ] And it NEVER happens. Kay doesn't get a dog on Christmas morning, because the book ends at Christmas Eve midnight. What was the point of that whole charade?!?

Poet John Masefield's 1935 British Empire-era fantasy finds twelve-year-old Kay Harker home from his boarding school just in time to help a magical old Punch and Judy showman. At least, that seems to be what happens. The plot's pretty convoluted. But the images Masefield conjures up are gorgeous. The Box of Delights is a children's fantasy novel by John Masefield. It is a sequel to The Midnight Folk, and was first published in 1935. The central character is Kay Harker who, on returning from boarding school, finds himself mixed up in a battle to possess a magical box, which allows the owner to go small (shrink) and go swift (fly), experience magical wonders contained within the box and go into the past. But that ending is also most deeply Christmassy in being childish. And what is Christmas but childish ? For indulging children, of course, but also for putting aside the sterner parts of our adult selves, the officious, regulating, tasteful parts. It is impossible to have a tasteful Christmas and a good one. You have to choose one or the other. Christmas is a time of self indulgence and merry making. It requires a degree of tastelessness.The characters only spoke when it was necessary for them to move the disjointed plot along (although, one could argue that this was because of the ending), yet it seems Masefield had fun with word play, making the Police Captain and Maria go on longer than needed just for fun. Twas the Night Before Christmas: Edited by Santa Claus for the Benefit of Children of the 21st Century" (2012) being Pamela McColl "smoke-free" edit of Clement Clarke Moore's poem Our festive offering in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre this winter,Piers Torday’s magical reimagining of John Masefield’s much-loved festive children’s 1935 classic The Box of Delights will run from Tuesday 31 October 2023 until Sunday 7 January 2024.

If you cannot open a .mobi file on your mobile device, please use .epub with an appropriate eReader. As an ending, that is; the book itself has plenty of faults along the way. It is a grab bag of early 20th century children’s book tropes, and some just don’t quite work, not at this remove. But some very much do, particularly the snowy, wintry, Christmassy bits.

The Box of Delights is a children's fantasy novel by John Masefield. It is a sequel to The Midnight Folk, and was first published in 1935. It is also known as When The Wolves Were Running. And when little Maria shows up again, and tells her story, how she was detained and imprisoned and questioned by an evil gang, everyone takes it in stride. Oh sure, people get kidnapped all the time. No big deal. How can you just go to dinner and play with your toys and take a posset and go to bed when your own sister is kidnapped and thrown in a dungeon somewhere? What is wrong with you?!? These characters make no sense. This classic of English children's literature, sadly overlooked by most on this side of the Atlantic, has just been reissued in a beautiful edition by the New York Review Children's Collection...Although The Box of Delights was first published in 1935, Masefield's intoxicating prose has lost none of its pull...in this wonderful tale of bravery and intrigue that deserves to become another staple of the holidays." --The San Francisco Chronicle Then there's Kay. People offer Kay money, mysterious and fabulous gifts, opportunities to time travel and experience magical events, and speak of him and to him as though he is the King of England. No reason is given for this. He does not appear to be nobility, particularly smart, or particularly good looking. He lives in a manor house, has an endless supply of funds, and his only guardian is "the beautiful Caroline Louisa." Where are his parents? Who is Caroline Louisa? At first I thought she was his sister, but she's more like a nanny, I guess. He's apparently so wonderful that all he needs in the way of guardianship is a beautiful young woman to cater to his every whim. Young Kay Harker, returning from school to his family home Seekings and his festive visitors in the shape of a gang of cousins, is given the Box of the title to care for and protect by a mysterious travelling Punch and Judy man, Cole Hawlings. As is the case in these types of books, the Box is a treasure of such magnitude that by rights it should be entrusted to a private army rather than a small boy, and it isn't long before a gang of crooks with a rather magical bent, led by the dark Abner Brown, are on its trail and menacing Kay and his cousins.