When my daughter asked “Are there any girls in this story?” during our reading of The Hobbit, I set out to find a book with girls and dragons where the girl isn’t just along for the ride. I came across Naomi Mitchison. I wouldn’t be surprised if other Cannonballers are familiar with Mitchison, but I had never heard of her! She was an extremely prolific (over 90 books!) contemporary of Tolkein, who, among other things:
…was able to write anywhere, which helped because – as a compulsive traveller – she could get on with her writing on planes or in trains. She went to the US in the 1930s, because she was worried about sharecroppers; to Vienna in 1934 when the Nazi-era storm clouds gathered, and she smuggled letters from endangered people to Switzerland in her knickers. (From her Guardian obituary)
Travel Light comes in at a lean 135 pages, and it features a plucky girl protagonist, Halla. Halla is raised by bears and dragons, and then whisked off to the world of man (Constantinople) thanks to All-Father, Steinvor the Valkyrie, and a general acceptance of adventure. The chapters are short and efficient and Mitchison’s prose is charming. Throughout her adventures, Halla learns about herself and how to both use and subdue her bearish-ness and dragonish-ness. Specifically, and relevant to the title of this book, she must learn not to hoard and hibernate, as her dragon/bear caretakers did and do, but to “travel light” and be self-sufficient and ready for whatever adventure the Fates are weaving for her.
I love this moral, particularly for a girl reader. Halla is a great character. She is her own boss, and she has her own skills which she uses at her own discretion. She is clever and hardy. She takes the lessons from her childhood and uses them as she navigates the big, weird world. She turns situations to her advantage because she is observant; she wasn’t raised by men, so she is very good at interpreting men’s actions, especially when those actions don’t match their words. It’s clever framing, and for the right type of girl reader, I think it could be very poignant.
Unfortunately, I doubt very much that my 7 year old is that reader. My 9 year old son enjoyed it for the most part, but noted that it wasn’t as “active” as The Hobbit, which is true. The story draws heavily on Norse mythology, with which my kids are only passingly familiar and mildly interested. We stopped on every other page to explain the backstory and references: Beowulf, Byzantium, Valkyries, the weaving of the Norns, All-Father, What is a Governor in the Holy Roman Empire?, etc. I of course don’t mind stopping to explain things – it’s the whole point of reading together – but I found myself wishing we’d waited a few years so my 7 year old had a little more context.
Part 1, which focused solely on Halla’s upbringing with the bears and dragons, was very good for all ages, very delightful, no notes. However, Parts 2 and 3 deal almost exclusively with men and their tricks – Halla accompanies some new friends to Constantinople in order to complain to the Emperor about their cruel, corrupt local Governor. They do this by working with/paying off a priest – again, lots of politics here, no bears, no dragons. After the very readable bears and dragons, this felt almost like it was written for adults in a fairy-tale style. Same goes for Part 3, which was very narrative-driven and as a result felt very tell and not very much show; again, lots of stopping to explain what was happening. The ending, however, is very good.
At one point in Part 2, Steinvor the Valkyrie refers to women at the market as “sl*ts” and there is a gnarly description of her carrying a hero off with his brains dripping out of his head – I was genuinely shocked, so I just skipped the whole paragraph because wtf? I’m already giving my kid a crash course in Beowulf and the Holy Roman Empire, I would rather skip the introduction to misogynistic slurs today. (This is the only language in the book that I skipped; everything else was fine, language-wise, which makes the choice all the more puzzling to me.)
I would recommend this book to the right reader. I think 7 is too young, and I think it’s a book best read to oneself, not aloud. A 14 year old (or grown up!) who is very into mythology and has already read/loved LOTR etc. and its ilk, is aware, even obliquely, of the cruelties that a girl might face in the world, and is tired of girls being the sidekick in boy-centric adventures? Absolutely. A 7 year old girl who has only just read The Hobbit and doesn’t know what Constantinople is? Nope.
Rating: 3/5 because while I appreciate it and am very glad it exists, it was too tricky a read-aloud for me to fully enjoy. The wide variety in tone and age-appropriateness was a little odd, and I didn’t particularly enjoy reading it aloud to its intended audience. That said, I think for the right reader this could be a really, really great book.