This week, we finally managed to install our new (not new ) item of furniture - a mid-18th Century grandfather clock. It's not bright and shiny like more modern ones, but a dark oak with a warm patina which the beeswax polish is drawing out. In order to set it up, we had to do a certain amount of research - how to hang the pendulum, where the weight went on the endless chain - and it got me thinking... where and when did certain divisions of time come from? The time periods which I have written either had household clocks or didn't, I have not written novels from the time of their invention. Clocks have been around for a long time, and the obsession with measuring time in an ordered fashion dates back to at least the ancient Sumerians. It was they who established a circular reading of time and, I imagine, the sixty seconds/minutes came about as much because it was an easy way to divide a circle as anything else. But it wasn't until much later that the precision of seconds ...
Blurb:
The arrival of a mysterious stranger in the happy village of Giggleswick causes a schism that disrupts their innocent, carefree existence. A brave, clever, freethinking boy then sets off on a quest to reveal the stranger’s deception and rescue his fellow villagers.
Review:
I thoroughly enjoyed it. To me, it had elements of The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning, both in content and style. The story is written in a kind of gentle poetry which is more about rhythm than rhyme and that makes it a wonderful thing to read aloud.
The Stranger of Wigglesworth is a picture book for older children. It states clearly on the cover that it is for Ages 6-11, and it's important to keep this in mind when reading it. There are a lot of words in here which littler children wouldn't understand, and some parts of the story are very dark. The only slight issue I had with it was that, on one single occasion, the illustrations got so dark that I struggled to see what was happening, but that didn't spoil the overall reading experience for me.
This is a book to be read aloud where possible - and definitely one to be shared!
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