There’s an old legend that Merlin never died–that he’s imprisoned beneath a stone somewhere on the moor, sleeping through the centuries.  And while he sleeps, what might he dream?

This is the frame-story for Peter Dickinson’s wonderful book, Merlin Dreams.  He tells eight stories, eight dreams of Merlin beneath his stone.  Between each story Merlin half-wakes, remembers his life or senses what goes on above him, then drifts back into sleep…and has another dream.

I’m fascinated by the frame story, and the short stories are excellent too.  Several have a vaguely Arthurian flare, although I don’t think any retell an actual legend.  But there are dashing (and not so dashing) knights, brave damsels and many unexpected heroes.  There’s a king, fallen from honor and strength who needs a little girl to show him the way back.  Another little girl befriends a unicorn in the woods, only to be threatened by men who want to exploit the opportunity to hunt a unicorn.  Two stories feature tricksters who put on shows for country folk they hold in contempt, only to be undone by their own tricks.  There’s a young prince who fights a dragon, and another, particularly ugly young man, who fights a sorceress.  And woven throughout, Merlin remembers his own life, and strange fragments of other scenes and stories.

There’s a wonderful magical, mystical quality to the stories.  Often all is not as it seems, and the magic holds plenty of surprises.  Even though I don’t think these are traditional stories, many have that enchanting feel to them.

Part of it’s very much the writing.  Part of it is the illustrations too.  I honestly don’t know if there are multiple versions of this book, but if there are, make sure you get a copy with Alan Lee’s illustrations.  There are many throughout the book, some dark and shadowed, some vivid and bright.  They bring the stories to life in a new way, and many are just beautiful.

This is generally put in the kids section, and I think the short stories are definitely good for kids.  A word of warning that some of Merlin’s reflections are pretty dark.  And as beautiful as most of Alan Lee’s illustrations are, some could be disturbing for a smaller child.

There’s no Table of Contents to the book, which can be a little inconvenient at times.  But I think it fits too.  After all, it’s not just a neat line of stories.  It’s a series of dreams, and if you could line them up and list them out and easily jump to one or another, I think that would lose some of the flowing, magical quality of the book.

I can’t resist a few more pictures!  You can click on them to see them larger.

    

Author’s Site: http://www.peterdickinson.com/

The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives.  She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad.  She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling.  She traveled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.

And while sitting in an apartment in California, I traveled to an English village with Roald Dahl.  The quote above is from Matilda, Dahl’s wonderful story of a very brilliant little girl.  Matilda loves books, teaching herself to read at the age of three, despite her horrid, neglectful parents who care only about television.  Matilda first shows her spirit through pranks on her parents (retaliation for their treatment of her) but really comes into her own when she goes to school.  Matilda discovers the extent of her own powers as she faces down the terrifying headmistress Miss Trunchbull, to defend her beloved teacher, Miss Honey.

Matilda must be one of those books everyone’s read, right?  If not, get thee to a library!  🙂  It’s a delightful book with Dahl’s full ability to spin out a fun and wild tale.  Everything is taken to an extreme: Matilda reads Dickens at the age of four, and Miss Trunchbull swings little girls around by their pig tails.  But that’s the comic fun of it.  Matilda’s incredible abilities make her entertaining, while her sweetness and unawareness of her brilliance make her a lovable character.  And if Miss Trunchbull was an inch more realistic, this would be a terrible book.

The handling of Miss Trunchbull, and to a lesser extent Matilda’s parents, was particularly interesting to me last time I re-read Matilda.  Maybe it’s because I just read another book about a neglectful and abusive parent–but that one was a serious treatment of the subject, and very much a drama.  Matilda is, of course, a children’s comedy.

Matilda’s parents are portrayed as being dreadful and nasty, but they don’t cause any real harm.  They don’t starve Matilda–they just make her eat TV dinners all the time.  Matilda’s mother leaves her home alone while she’s out playing bingo, when Matilda is only four.  Instead of getting hurt or kidnapped, Matilda cheerfully trundles off to the library.

At school, Miss Trunchbull never hits any children–she just picks them up by their ears, or forces them to eat monster-size chocolate cakes.  She does shut children into a cabinet, but we never see that, we only hear about it.  There’s a discussion at one point on how Miss Trunchbull can get away with everything.  Matilda explains it, “Your story would sound too ridiculous to be believed.  And that is the Trunchbull’s great secret…Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it.  Be outrageous.  Go the whole hog.  Make sure everything you do is so crazy it’s completely unbelievable.”

I think that’s Dahl’s great secret too.  You can write about dreadful things–this is, really, a story about child abuse–but be outrageous and it becomes funny instead of disturbing.  It couldn’t really happen, it has no grounding in reality, and so it’s not upsetting.  The only time Miss Trunchbull’s actions approach reality is in her treatment of Miss Honey–and that’s what finally comes back to get her.

Whatever Dahl’s secret is, it works, and he’s given us a fun and funny story with entertaining and memorable characters.