I’m delighted that the 1962 Club is here – join Karen and me in reading and reviewing books from 1962. Any language, format, genre – we’d love to build up a picture of 1962 between us. We’ve been doing these club years for such a long time now, and it’s always a highlight of my reading/blogging year.

It was one thing not to be wanted in the place you were born in. That might not be enough to make you get out – it might only make you more stubbornly determined to dig in. But if there was a place that did want you – wanted you so badly it didn’t even ask whether you had tuberculosis or a criminal record, let alone whether you were popular in the place you came from or whether you liked yourself or whether you had the guts to stand on your own two feet – then what sort of a bloody fool would you have to be not to go there? Surely there, if anywhere, you could start again with nothing chalked up against you, even in your own mind. And I knew joy in the second half of The Jasmine Farm! If the first half was a little over-stuffed and over-complicated, with any number of extraneous characters, the second half is a delight. Because yes, of course, Mumsie follows Lady M to this farm. And I shan’t spoil the other people who turn up, but there is a lightness and openness to the second half of the novel that gives it space to breathe. It means Elizabeth von Arnim can use her customary witty sentences, and the brilliant way that she can give characters depth even while everything is frothy. Write the story that explains how the different people / animals / objects got themselves out of the tree.Floyd isn’t very good at throwing things into the tree. Can you design a game which might help improve your throwing skills? Could you have a competition with your friends in which you have to hit a target? Activity: Before revealing each outcome, ask students to draw what they think might happen based on Floyd's action. This activity encourages critical thinking and allows students to anticipate effects based on causes. Message/Themes 2/5 - if you are looking for a message to pass onto little ones, this book won’t provide that. Maybe determination by the young boy to retrieve his kite? Still, his behavior is not meant to be praised.

degree of separation: I’m quite pleased with this link. The title of Blithe Spirit is taken from Shelley’s ‘To a Skylark’– and his sonnet ‘Lift not the painted veil which those who live / Call Life’ is the source of the title of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil. If I’m honest, I don’t remember masses about this, except that I liked it and it was a bit bleak. And she was reaching out to the bowl when her hand was intercepted, and grasped firmly in a warm grip. The Jasmine Farm (1934) isn’t one of Elizabeth von Arnim’s novels that I see discussed very often. It was her penultimate novel, and I will say at the outset that it is far from her best – but even in the worst von Arnims there is a lot to love, isn’t there?

What else could Floyd have thrown into the tree? Write a new part of the story where he throws other objects up into the tree. Watch this video in which the author talks about things that he wasn’t able to include in the story: At once her divided attention was startled into an extreme concentration. She turned and looked at her visitor with the rebuke of surprise. At no time did Daisy like being touched, and to be touched by strangers, other than in the formality of arrival or departure, had not yet come within her experience. Fortunately the hand grasping hers was gloved. She didn’t like skins.