Saturday Rave: William and the White Elephants by Richmal Crompton

William is one of the greatest heroes of children's fiction.

In fact, he must be one of the greatest heroes of all fiction.

William Brown is brave and inventive and loyal, and he has a terrifically strong sense of right and wrong. True, his ideas of right and wrong may differ from those of the rest of the world around him, but he can be relied upon to support them with passionate argument.

The awful Miss Poll is wearing the vicar's wife's coat (there's a lot of deeply satisfying plotting in William), and William needs to get it back.

'It's - it's sort of gettin' hot, i'n't it?' he said huskily.
'Yes, isn't it?' said Miss Poll, pleasantly.
William's heart lightened.'Wun't you like to take [your coat] off?' he said persuasively. 'I'll carry it for you.'
But Miss Poll, who considered, quite erroneously, that the coat made her look startlingly youthful and pretty, shook her head and clutched the coat tightly at her neck.

What more could anyone want in a book? A charismatic hero and  staggering adventures constantly imperilled by mighty enemies.

And we get lots of chances to laugh at grown ups, too.

Thing To Do Today : say something huskily. This word to describe a hoarse voice seems to come from the rough husk which surrounds grains of corn.