Actually, although I wouldn't generally compare Ferguson and Forest, I think they both have a bit of a gift for riffing off the genres they are writing in - both of them refer explicitly to other books in their type of genre, (at least Forest does in the school stories) - but also keeping within the conventions too - ie culminating in the triumphant school play/gymnkhama/cricket match.
Jill quite often remarks that in a book her adventures would turn out very differently, and not with "lugging a lame pony across the fields with my arms full of sopping tack or similar" (quote something like that anyway). Rather like Lawrie, she tends to be always fantasising about the latest pony adventure she has read - so when she meets Miss Crombie she starts comparing her to a book called "Lady Di and her Arab" and when she goes pony trekking she has been reading a book about pony trekking in Ecuador and can't help comparing her own more humdrum adventures.
I think it's Jill's voice, and her wry observations about the differences between fiction/reality and of the adult world, that gives the book their charm, even as an adult, as well as their more escapist qualities which is obviously incredibly appealing to kids. (And she never sleeps in a haystack, by the way, that I remember.)
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Ruby Ferguson's Jill books
Date: 2014-08-03 09:43 am (UTC)Jill quite often remarks that in a book her adventures would turn out very differently, and not with "lugging a lame pony across the fields with my arms full of sopping tack or similar" (quote something like that anyway). Rather like Lawrie, she tends to be always fantasising about the latest pony adventure she has read - so when she meets Miss Crombie she starts comparing her to a book called "Lady Di and her Arab" and when she goes pony trekking she has been reading a book about pony trekking in Ecuador and can't help comparing her own more humdrum adventures.
I think it's Jill's voice, and her wry observations about the differences between fiction/reality and of the adult world, that gives the book their charm, even as an adult, as well as their more escapist qualities which is obviously incredibly appealing to kids. (And she never sleeps in a haystack, by the way, that I remember.)