Cascades - "Squib"

by Nina Bawden

Kate finds herself drawn into the mystery surrounding Squib - an ill-treated, scared little boy who bears an uncanny resemblance to her brother, drowned in a swimming accident years earlier.

Genres: Fiction, Childrens

127 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Nina Bawden was a popular British novelist and children's writer. Her mother was a teacher and her father a marine.

When World War II broke out she spent the school holidays at a farm in Shropshire along with her mother and her brothers, but lived in Aberdare, Wales, during term time.
Bawden attended Somerville College, Oxford, where she gained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Her novels include Carrie's War, Peppermint Pig, and The Witch's Daughter.

A number of her works have been dramatised by BBC Children's television, and many have been translated into various languages. In 2002 she was badly injured in the Potters Bar rail crash, and her husband Austen Kark was killed.

Bawden passed away at her home in London on 22 August 2012.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Little children understand magic,' her mother had said once. 'It's a gift you lose as you grow older.'

Squib is a marvellous tale about how children of a certain age look to fairytales to help them make sense of the world. In a little waif which they call Squib Kate sees either a changeling or the ghost of her younger brother swept out to sea years before; siblings Sammy and Prue want Squib as an otherworldly playmate but are worried that he's guarded by a witch in a wood; Prue and Sammy's brother Robin wants to pursue 'useless' subjects like Latin and classical Greek at school but sees himself as a reluctant hero when wrongs need to be righted and Squib needs rescuing.

And the adults, have they truly lost the gift of understanding magic? Kate's mother -- an illustrator of children's books -- believes that 'in real life there aren't any right true happy endings. You have to get used to things as they are.' Meanwhile, Robin's mother was once a competitive swimmer but thinks she will never have the need to demonstrate her skills in this department again. Is life so cruel then that dreams face being forever dashed?

Nina Bawden's novella, a tad over a hundred pages in this edition, demonstrates decisively why she writes so well for and about children. Here are individuals we can believe in -- self-doubting, over-sensitive, imaginative, anxious -- because they have real emotions and real fears. Their interactions are the perennial negotiations that children pursue with each other, the perceived slights which lead to cooling of friendships, the warmth that comes with unforeseen praise, however faintly given.

While the enigma that is the youngster Squib gets the children's attentions in the story it is something else that interested Bawden's earliest readers: "not the plot, although they seemed to find it exciting enough, but the emotions, the feeling, of the characters. 'I didn't know,' they wrote, 'that other people felt like that,'" she confessed in Chapter Seven of In My Own Time. She realised that this was why she read novels:

Of course children want a story just as I do, the gossipy power of what happens next to draw them into the world of the book, but what holds them, what their imaginations respond to, is its emotional landscape.

In her "almost an autobiography" (1994) the author tells us that Squib grew out of a case she had sat on as a magistrate in court. She had wondered at the reactions of the nursery school children who had first observed a little boy suffering neglect and abuse, what they'd thought was going on: "were they curious to see what would happen next, or had they been afraid to mention it in case it was a secret it was dangerous to tell?"

Squib tells of such conflicted reactions of the young quartet -- the two younger siblings, plus Kate and Robin who try to work out the right actions to take in a confusing but increasingly dangerous situation. The seemingly sinister wood (with its suspicious denizens) which features in the book, past which Prue and Sammy have to pass to reach a playground, is real but also a metaphor concealing paths, secrets and strangers.

I have noted before how children's limited experience of the world works both to their advantage and against them. In Squib the received narratives which they've grown up with are powerfully enticing yet potentially deceptive: will the idea of him being a changeling account for Squib's shy, silent and cautious behaviour? Is Squib locked in a tower dwelling or caravan the same as Rapunzel in her turret? And is Katie's rumbling appendix a punishment for her apparent part in her brother's drowning?

Even in such a short story I found a narrative rich in resonances. Kate's mother illustrates children's novels, a counterpart of Shirley Hughes whose accompanying line drawings enhance this novella. Fathers are largely absent -- one drowned, a second might as well be absent for all his effectiveness, and a third turns out, when present, a tower of fury when provoked. How it all will be resolved keeps the reader intrigued during the twists and turns we're presented with: we want to know how things turn out for all the children concerned.

This story fairly fizzes, just like the firework referenced in the title; though a pool of water is involved the tale turns out to be anything but a damp squib.

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 3 out of 5]

70s kids books knew how to be grim and go right up to the limits of nastiness. This one packs tons of observational detail about children's lives and their reactions to bereavement and the horrible unfairness of the world, and also some very arch playing on the connection of children's fiction itself with their self-awareness.

[Mathew · Rating 4 out of 5]

How is the story told?
Squib is narrated through the voice of the assumed author in 3rd person. Although the story is linear, we do flit through the lives of three groups of children who are of different ages. Kate (an only child), Robin (the eldest boy in the family) and his two younger siblings, Sammy and Prue (my favourite and the most realistic). There are flashbacks of a sort where children reflect on past events or a character retells an event.

Patterns:
Although she does not speak down to the reader, Bawden does adopt an adult-to-child tone throughout. We are repeatedly drawn to dark woods and reminded of the fear they hold as well as a child trapped in a tower. These fairy-tale motifs are important and play a part in supporting the sense of dangerous play that the children go through in order to find out more about Squib himself.

Cross-Curricular Links:
The main attraction of the book, for me, is the darkness that hangs over Kate's home. She is drawn to caring and protecting children and this is related to her feeling the blame for her brother's death. This is more a book for shared or guided reading rather than cross-curricular. It feels dated with the language but good readers will see that it is, in fact, a very well-written story.

[Lizzy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was harsh. Yes, harsh. It had violence, abuse, death, Illness, loneliness, all sorts of nasties. Surprised by the shirley hughes drawings (2 in my copy) It was well written, I loved the descriptions of the artist Mum. I just wouldn't want to read it again! Needs a longer more gentle set down than is given.

[KP · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoughtful. I suspect that I wouldn't have enjoyed this as a child, sure to the lack of magic and fantasy, but I've enjoyed reading it as an adult. The children's feelings and thoughts are so well described.

[Sarah Thornton]

Another Bawden with lost children and domestic abuse.

[Jo Beale · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was 11

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good representation of kids' interpretations - especially the way a 5 y/o speaks when they want to keep something secret but don't quite know how!

[Sula · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

[Luan On · Rating 2 out of 5]

Undecided about this one. The titular Squib is a seemingly mute, skittish boy befriended by four children in a playground. No one seems concerned at abandoning him in said playground to a gang of knife wielding boys. And that's the first chapter!

There are themes of child abuse, domestic spousal abuse, abandonment, guilt, childhood folklore, aged mental health, class consciousnness (Robin's the son of Kate's housekeeper). It's a lot to fit into such a slim book. The younger kids Sammy and Prue are unusually independent, allowed to go exploring unsupervised and smoke cigarettes (at the age of 5!) Each child has at least one melodramatic episode of breaking down into sobbing hysterics. It's not established whether the older Robin and Kate are friends - he resents her upper class snobbery and she finds it hard to confide in him, but for the sake of the plot they unite to resolve the mystery of Squib.

A static read, with an initially intriguing premise: what if Squib is a) a ghostly reincarnation of Kate's drowned brother, captured to life via her mother's illustrations, or b) a real life child figure kidnapped up in a tower hidden from the world? Bawden eventually gets around to solving the mystery, but this book is more concerned about the (implausible) characters of the children than advancing the storyline. Not for the easily bored.

[MJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was wondering whether I should give it three or four stars. The character, plot, all that stuff, was OK. It didn't make me feel what the characters were feeling, which is bad. The characters weren't dull or boring...but, they were in the middle. I really don't know what else to say other than, in the middle.

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't find this book as compelling as Nina's War or Peppermint Pig but it did have many similar themes including children misreading adults and adults underestimating children. In this book a group of friends come together to help a boy they aren't even sure they like.

[Baneen · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was really boring. The story line was pathetic. The characters were okay, though.

[Cathy Houston · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting story surprise ending