Moon Cake and Other Stories

by Joan Aiken, Wayne Anderson (Illustrator)

Powdered sea-horse, green-glass tree snails, and moonbeams: these are the ingredients for Mrs Lallyday Lee's moon cake. Can Tom resist a taste? This collection of short stories also tells of a dancing palm tree, entrancing music, and hatching dragons.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Childrens

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Joan Aiken was a much loved English writer who received the MBE for services to Children's Literature. She was known as a writer of wild fantasy, Gothic novels and short stories.

She was born in Rye, East Sussex, into a family of writers, including her father, Conrad Aiken (who won a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry), and her sister, Jane Aiken Hodge. She worked for the United Nations Information Office during the second world war, and then as an editor and freelance on Argosy magazine before she started writing full time, mainly children's books and thrillers. For her books she received the Guardian Award (1969) and the Edgar Allan Poe Award (1972).

Her most popular series, the "Wolves Chronicles" which began with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, was set in an elaborate alternate period of history in a Britain in which James II was never deposed in the Glorious Revolution,and so supporters of the House of Hanover continually plot to overthrow the Stuart Kings. These books also feature cockney urchin heroine Dido Twite and her adventures and travels all over the world.

Another series of children's books about Arabel and her raven Mortimer are illustrated by Quentin Blake, and have been shown on the BBC as Jackanory and drama series. Others including the much loved Necklace of Raindrops and award winning Kingdom Under the Sea are illustrated by Jan Pieńkowski.

Her many novels for adults include several that continue or complement novels by Jane Austen. These include Mansfield Revisited and Jane Fairfax.

Aiken was a lifelong fan of ghost stories. She set her adult supernatural novel The Haunting of Lamb House at Lamb House in Rye (now a National Trust property). This ghost story recounts in fictional form an alleged haunting experienced by two former residents of the house, Henry James and E. F. Benson, both of whom also wrote ghost stories. Aiken's father, Conrad Aiken, also authored a small number of notable ghost stories.

Reviews

[Ellie · Rating 5 out of 5]

i read this when i was younger and its the only book i would want to read. I've never read any other since. i had lost the book and forgot the name after searching and searching i found this website and saw the cover and instantly knew it. childhood memories came flooding, words cannot describe how much i loved and love this book. I recommend this book 100% for young listeners and readers as well as young adults/adults

[Genetic Cuckoo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had thought it was a book of folk stories and legends but it's just a collection of children's stories. I'm not sure the target age group, as most of the stories are fairly dark and involve death. Apparently this is the same author as Wolves of Whillaby Chase, but I haven't read the book yet, so can't say if the writing is similar.

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of short stories (nominally for children) is exactly what you would expect short stories by Joan Aiken to be: remarkable, unexpected and all imbued with a least a hist of the strange and weird. Some moving and gentle others with a edge of the sinister and scary all with at least some totally unexpected elements that rock your expectations on their heels and make you reevaluate the world view of the story you are reading. The best might make you reevaluate your own 'real world' at least a little.

I have a long standing fondness for Joan Aiken and her own special brands of strange and weird, so I enjoyed these stories, short enough to chew through one or two while waiting for a bus or filling in time on a tea break. I am uncertain about their target audience however, the collection is definitely marketed as children's fiction and it was written in the 90's which is not THAT long ago. However I am not certain that all children would warm to them. Ones who liked mythic stories, perhaps, but as a child I would have found them unsatisfying since I had a fondness for explanations and many of these stories leave the reader with a big ? sign floating around in their mind.

[Lillerina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read these stories so many times since I was a little girl. I still think sometimes about the Ike (pour hot water on it!), the petticoat palm and the barmkins. Aiken was among my favourite authors as a child, and rediscovering her work as an adult is a joy.