Frewyn Fables: The House Guest Blog Tour Guest Post

    Today on Pandragon Blog I'm honoured to help out one of my own today! And by one of my own, I mean one of my own Paper Crane Books authors!   The House Guest is the most recent novel of the Freywn Fables series by Michelle Franklin - who was one of the first authors I got speaking to when I first joined Paper Crane Books, and she (like all the others) were quick to welcome me to the team. She's a fantastic person and I had the joy of reading The House Guest and gave it a five star review (although I would have easily giving it ten if I could!) and when I heard that she was doing a blog tour I was quick to sign up for it! If you haven't read it then I highly recommend it - it's a really entertaining Childrens book and one that I think adults will enjoy reading as well.   But anyway, today I'm honoured to have her on my blog as she gives us a really cool guest post. Be sure to check out the rest of the tour by clicking on the picture above.     Blurb:   When winter comes early to Frewyn and the first snowfall of the year traps a young mouse in her home, fate brings an old mole to her door, but is the young mouse prepared for all the challenges that catering to a fussy house guest can bring?   Add the book to Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22304102-frewyn-fables     Buy links:   Amazon Smashwords     About the Author   Michelle Franklin is a small woman of moderate consequence who writes many, many books about giants, romance, and chocolate.     Social media links   Official website Facebook Twitter       Children's books that inspire me: The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White   While I read countless classics as a child, there are some books that I missed while my early tastes were being led by adults who had never dabbled in any British classics. Though I was fed an eclectic diet of everything from Dr Seuss to Huckleberry Finn, which I barely understood at the time, there were many great children's novels which I have only just recently discovered. The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White is one of them. Everyone has heard the title of the book at one time or other, and even though Jo Rowling attributes this book as part of her inspiration for Harry Potter, The Sword in the Stone is being read less and less nowadays, and for the life of me I cannot understand why. I had seen the Disney adaptation as a child and was content to stop there until I saw a new edition of the book nestled in the corner of the classics shelf during one of my book signing events. For those who don't know, The Sword in the Stone is the first book in the Arthurian pentology (sometimes published as a tetrology) titled The Once and Future King, detailing the life of King Arthur from the time of his childhood until his death and even beyond. The Sword in the Stone was written at first as a stand-alone novel, telling the reader about Arthur, or the Wart as his brother Kay calls him, and his time spent under the sage Merlin's tutelage. I read what has become known as the adult version, or the version that exists as part of The Once and Future King which removes much of Arthur's exploits with Robin Hood and incorporates chapters from the Book of Merlin, the fifth book in the series, which was only published after White's death. I decided to go on a quest for the original version, which is still published as a separate text, and after finding it and reading it once, I immediately began the book again. The language, the imagery, the sense of wonder which every sentence conveys is incomparable to any children's book we have today, and part of the magic of The Sword in the Stone is that the book is not just a biography of Arthur's boyhood, but it is a glimpse of Merrie Olde England, that paracosm of an idyllic pastoral society which seems to be forgotten in much of modern literature. It had ents before Lord of the Rings did, old wise and exasperated wizards in towers before the Belgariad, along with a myriad of other firsts in the fantasy genre, making it one of the most revolutionary texts of its time. After reading the original, American, and revised versions of the book, I became an avid admirer of T.H. White and all his works, leading me on a quest to obtain all his original works, and so I have, all because I saw a book on a shelf I thought would be interesting to read. A book read on a whim led me to find one of my favourite authors, and if you have not read The Sword in the Stone or any of T.H. White's works, I sincerely urge you to do so.       I actually have to agree with Michelle here - The Sword in the Stone was always one of my favourite stories and remains for me a great tale of how someone can aspire to something even if they come from nothing. Thanks so much to Michelle for joining me and guys - please support this great author as well as the other amazing authors at Paper Crane Books.   Thanks for reading guys!       ------------------------

PANDRAGON

 

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