This blog is for everyone who uses words.

The ordinary-sized words are for everyone, but the big ones are especially for children.



Saturday 10 March 2012

Saturday Rave: Carbonel by Barbara Sleigh.

'I knew a witch once who was thrown.'
'Goodness!' said Rosemary. 'What did she do?'
'Nothing. There was not much she could do. It got clean away. Nasty things, runaway brooms, apart from the expense of getting a new one, and the trouble of breaking it in.'

So speaks Carbonel, the exiled King of Cats, bought by Rosemary from Mrs Cantrip but still enslaved and unable to come into his kingdom.

This lovely book comes from a time when mothers went off to work and left their children to their own devices all day.

This was convenient in lots of ways for all concerned, but it could be rather lonely.

Well, it was until Rosemary started understanding what her cat was saying, in any case.

Word To Use Today: cantrip. This lovely word is Scottish, and means magic spell, or sometimes a mischievous trick.
Where the word comes from before that is, I'm afraid, as great a mystery as the magic itself.

3 comments:

  1. Carbonel is super! So glad to see it raved about here.

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  2. Erika W.
    I have discovered your blog today, via Adele Geras. It is charming and I will pass it right on to my 11 year old granddaughter. I have stayed in the Dunmore Pineapple --lovely to see it popping up here. Now I need to see if Barbara Sleigh is in print again--a reference for the aforesaid granddaughter.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Welcome to The Word Den, Erika, and welcome to your granddaughter, too.

    Gosh, I do wish I'd stayed in a pineapple.

    I'm not sure if Carbonel is in print, but it's available from Amazon. It's on Kindle, too.

    ReplyDelete

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