Do you know Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong? Do you know what sneedball is?
If so, you're my kind of person. If not, here's some excellent news: Publisher David R Godine has bought the rights to, and reissued, overlooked classic children's books "How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Retired Sportsmen" and "A Near Thing for Captain Najork."
Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong is maiden aunt and guardian to Tom, a boy who likes to fool around. Aunt Fidget, however, disapproved mightily of fooling around and thinks learning off pages of the Nautical Almanac is a much better pastime. When she loses patience with Tom's fooling around, she calls in Captain Najork and his Hired Sportsmen, who come to town on their pedal-boat to teach Tom a lesson.
This reissue actually happened last year, but somehow I missed it – as a matter of fact I didn’t know there was a followup to the first Captian Najork book. My father read "How Tom Beat Captain Najork…" to my brother and I constantly when we were children, and when we each had kids he tracked down then-out-of-print copies for his grandchildren.
My three-year-old will finally sit still for it, and is beginning to love it as much as I do, probably because of the giggle fits I lapse into whenever I read it. It's a gloriously silly book, full of that sort of surreal
British humor that you either find funny or lame. It was written by Russel Hoban, better known for the Frances books, and illustrated by Quentin Blake, who also illustrated many Roald Dahl novels.
I'd highly recommend checking it out. Hey, it's better than cabbage-and-potato sog.
