Rereading Our Childhood
Revisiting the children's books that made us who we are today
Rereading Our Childhood
Rereading Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken
Mary Grace and Deborah commemorate the 100th anniversary of Joan Aiken’s birth by reading Black Hearts in Battersea, the second in her Wolves Chronicles series, featuring resourceful orphans and sinister plots in an alt-history version of nineteenth-century London.
Mentioned on the episode:
Other books by Aiken:
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
Also mentioned:
The Shortest History of England by James Hawes
Post on the blog A Son of the Rock questioning King James's Scottish accent
“What’s Your 1918 Girl Job? A Quiz,” Mary Grace’s blog post My Life 100 Years Ago that mentions Jane Fairfax. (Jane Fairfax also comes up on another post, “Jane Austen’s Life 100 Years Ago.”)
“Writing Without Limits: Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase Series,” Albion Magazine Online (discusses Aiken taking time to settle on a main character)
The best and worst of April 1918: Magazines, stories, faint praise, and neologisms (Mary Grace’s blog post that mentions Conrad Aiken)
A well-known letter from T.S. Eliot to Conrad Aiken is quoted here.
The Practical Magic of Joan Aiken, the Greatest Children’s Writer You’ve Likely Never Read (The New Yorker)
Blog on Aiken by her daughter Lizza Aiken
Blog post by Lizza Aiken about illustrator Pat Marriot
Suggested reading for fans of Black Hearts in Battersea: Other books in the series (Deborah), The Book of Three and its sequels (Mary Grace)
You can find Deborah’s author interviews on her blog, Books Q&A by Deborah Kalb, and Mary Grace’s adventures in the 1920s on her blog, My Life 100 Years Ago.
This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.
Podcast website at rereadingourchildhood.com
