There is a British children's author my daughter calls "Our Friend." She has, as far as I can tell, no idea we exist. Almost.
About three years ago, when my daughter was six and the bedtime Isadora Moon habit had already taken hold, I posted a photo to Instagram: she was on her bed, surrounded by a small mountain of Harriet Muncaster paperbacks. I tagged Harriet, more out of reflex than expectation. She clicked one little heart. That was it.
From that moment, in my daughter's internal filing system, Harriet Muncaster has been "Our Friend." Permanently. Not "the author of Isadora Moon." Not "the lady who draws the pictures." Our friend. The promotion was instantaneous and, three years later, has never been revisited.
Harriet Muncaster's books are, technically, about girls who don't quite fit in anywhere. Isadora Moon is half fairy, half vampire — too pale for the fairy school, too pink for the vampire one. Mirabelle is half witch, half fairy — and decidedly more witch than her well-behaved sister would like. Emerald is a girl who suddenly finds herself a reluctant mermaid princess after her mother remarries an underwater king. The pattern is consistent: a child caught between two worlds, neither of which is quite hers, working out — with mischief and a strong sense of self — how to be at home in both.
We started the first Isadora Moon novel at bedtime, in Italian, when she was six. We read them all. Then we moved on to Mirabelle and read those too. Then to Emerald and her underwater world. Now, at nine, she is reading all three series again — this time by herself, often with a torch under the duvet long past official lights-out. The Italian translations are excellent and have done a beautiful job for the past three years. The next mission, and a polite uphill battle, is to get her to read them in the original English. She is bilingual, perfectly capable, and quietly resistant. We are working on it.
I have a theory about why these books work so well for her. Every one of Harriet Muncaster's protagonists is slightly out of place in her own world, and learns to make that the most interesting thing about her rather than the most difficult. The daughter of a single father who is sixty-one years older than her is, in her own quiet way, slightly out of place too. The half-fairy, half-vampire metaphor is doing more work in our household than Harriet probably ever intended.
She is also, fair warning to readers of the series, mischievous at approximately the same level as the characters she most admires. I take no responsibility for this — it predates the books.
G's Reading is a new monthly column on the channel, dedicated to the books, comics and graphic novels my daughter is currently devouring, and what I, as her seventy-year-old father, think about them. Episode 1 had to be this one.
Harriet — if this ever reaches you — we still call you Our Friend.