The Dark Portal: Cover and Prologue
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i_read_whatFor my first review for this community, I decided to tackle a very different genre from kalinara who is so excellently perusing fantasy and science fiction, and went for that oddly big genre of Children’s Books About Anthropomorphic Animals, Often Rodents. Quite why this is such a popular genre I’m not sure (though I think it is a less popular genre today than it was, nobody seems to be writing the 2010s version of Redwall, though if anyone is, point me in their direction, I am interested to see where this genre is going) but I read a lot of it as a child.
And, to start off with, I am not in fact doing Brian Jacques’s Redwall, possibly the most famous example, but Robin Jarvis’s The Deptford Mice, a book series that I loved as a child, but also which profoundly terrified me to the point where I hid the books at the back of my bookshelf so that things couldn’t escape from them. (I don’t actually remember how old I was at the time, or to what extent I thought this was a possibility.) I like to think that adult me will be less terrified, but I am also interested to see how they hold up to a reread and, at that, an adult reread.
Of course, when reviewing a children's book I think the question 'but does it matter what an adult thinks of it?' should probably be asked. I don't think I have a good answer to it, to be honest, but I do think a lot of children's books are in fact very readable and enjoyable by adults, so I don't think the entire genre should be filed away under 'For children, therefore adults don't need to concern themselves with it', and that by doing so, by making the assumption that a book for children is less complex and doesn't need to be good, a huge disservice is done both to the genre and to children. In some ways I think that books we read as children possibly have a more fundamental affect on us than books we read as adults; as children we're absorbing so much about the world around us, and the right book at the right time can profoundly change your perspective upon the world (not that this doesn't happen as an adult, but I think it happens more, and probably with us realising it less, as a child).
Maybe rereading a bunch of children's books as an adult will help me to come up with a better answer to this question, but I don't think there is any simple or right answer to it, and probably fundamentally if a children's book means something to children, then it is doing something right.
The first book of this series, The Dark Portal, was published in 1989, and was a runner up for the Smarties Book Prize for that year. This award no longer exists, but winners include a lot of familiar titles like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Double Act, We're Going On A Bear Hunt, and Journey To The River Sea.
I have an ebook version of this series (thankskalinara !) so the first difference I notice is that this version doesn’t have the black and white ink drawings that I remember from my childhood copy. These drawings probably contributed a lot to my ‘Hide at the back of the bookshelf!’ actions, because even looking at them as an adult they are definite nightmare fuel. They are gorgeous, however, and packed full of symbolism that I don’t think I recognised as a child, distracted by all the terrifying facial expressions. Despite my current copy lacking these, I will crib a few from the internet through these reviews, because I remember a lot of these drawings so vividly that I think they’re a very important part of reading this book.
Anyway, to begin, this is the cover of this version of The Dark Portal. It’s not actually completely traumatising!
The version I had as a child had the following cover, which is actually a much better example of Robin Jarvis’s art style, though both covers look like his own work.
The former cover probably gives a better idea of where the story is going: dark things looming in dark places is the main thrust of the book, and the mouse being tempted into the dark is recognisably one of the main characters of the book. But beyond nostalgia, I do like the terrified mouse cover, as it too portrays one of the crucial features of the book: terrified mice. I also like the detail of the little metal charm the mouse is wearing, as mouse brasses (as they are called in-story) are a really important part of the plot. I also just really like Robin Jarvis’s art style, and his almost total disregard of mouse anatomy (just look at those prehensile thumbs!), and I like the limited colour palette of this cover. But both covers are good, suitably ominous, indicating mice are involved in the story, not revealing any important spoilers.
This copy starts off with a little forward from Robin Jarvis, which I have no memory of, where he talks about his story ideas.
They generally all start as a sketch or drawing and then take shape as a character is developed around them…. I started making sketches of mice because they were the smallest things I could think of to draw…. I had envisaged it as a picture book, but it became a 70,000 word manuscript.
Thanks Robin Jarvis for validating my feelings that your drawings are important to your story! This little intro also reveals that these are apparently his first books, which I didn’t know before.
After this we have a Dramatis Personae of the main characters. This introduces us to the fact that our main characters are going to be mice and rats. Unsurprisingly for this genre, the mice are the good guys, and the rats are the bad guys. I really don’t think this counts as a spoiler, because for some reason the rats are (almost) always the bad guys and the mice are the good guys. I’m not sure if this is from some collective British (most of these rodent books are by British authors, in my experience) trauma about the Bubonic Plague, or something (…actually, let’s come back to this thought in a few chapters), or because mice are smaller and cuter. I suspect the latter, but to be honest most people I know can’t reliably distinguish between mice and rats anyway, so I’m not sure that the distinction really matters to a lot of people.
Anyway, I digress, a lot, but I am beginning to suspect that adult me has a lot more feelings about this vilification of rats than child me did, who was a lot less concerned about fair representations of rodents.
The good and bad nature of the characters is not only demonstrated to us by the names (the mice get to be called things like Arthur Brown and Arabel Chitter, while the rats get to be called One-Eyed Jake and Skinner), but by the little descriptions we get of them. The aforementioned Arthur Brown is a Loving father and devoted husband. Albert is a commonsensical mouse, not usually given to rash actions while One-Eyed Jake is A popular rat who is threatening to oust Morgan from office. (And as we soon discover, Skinner’s name is very literal.)
Look, the morality in these books is not super complicated. Mice, good guys, tormented by rats, bad guys.
Okay, now for the prologue, entitled, ‘The Grille’.
The prologue is written in a distant narrator fashion, from the point of view of a human, and doesn’t waste any time in making sure the readers are prepared for upcoming gruesome events, with the very first paragraph telling us how everything wants to kill mice.
When a mouse is born he has to fight to survive. There are many enemies - owls, foxes and course, cats; but mice suffer far more at our hands. I have heard of a whole family of kind, gentle mice, wiped out by eating poison - four generations gone and only the baby left because it was too small to eat solids.
Thanks Robin Jarvis, this book sounds like it’s going to be super cheery. Interestingly enough, I’m not sure if humans actually do pose a big threat to mice in this series. I think they’re too busy being tormented by all the other things in that list of enemies, plus rats. (Mostly rats.)
Mice are all descended from rural families and they remember their traditions wherever they live. They honour the green spirits of the land as Man once did and every spring they hold a celebration for the awakening year, calling to the Green Mouse to ripen the wheat and see them safe.
I hadn’t thought before about what species of mouse these mice are supposed to be, but I’m guessing house mice (Mus musculus), given that they’re the commonest and most adaptable British mouse species, and the one that has (as the name suggests) taken very well to living commensally with humans. These days commensal populations living around human habitation are more common than truly wild populations.
I’m digressing again, the actual important bit of this paragraph is the mouse religion and beliefs bit, where the Green Mouse is a not-subtle take on the Green Man. This is very relevant to the following story, where the Green Mouse, spiritual beliefs, and magic play increasingly large parts.
We next learn that the mice our story is concerned with live in Deptford, London, in an old empty house without people, and they survive on cakes and chocolates from the blind lady who lives next door, and berries from the garden. I am really concerned about the nutritional content of this diet, but I think as a child the concept of solely eating cake, chocolate, and berries was probably an amazing one.
The only blight on their carefree existence was the sewers - or rather the rats that lived in them.
Dun dun duuuun!
Cut-throats and pirates the lot, of them. Thin and ugly, a rat would smack his lips at the thought of Mouse for dinner. He would kill, peel and, if he was a fussy eater, roast it.
Peculiar comma usage aside, the scene is now being set for our conflict in this story. Also, like I said, Skinner the rat’s name is very literal. And the anthropomorphic nature of our rodents becomes very clear: in reality, rats are not known for skinning their food, or for their mastery of fire (sorry if this is disabusing anyone’s ideas about rats). Also, in defence of rats, the two rat species Britain has (the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus, and the black rat, Rattus rattus, the former being the common one) are probably not as bloodthirsty for the flesh of mice as this book is suggesting. They’re both omnivores, and will eat anything they come across, but while black rats do hammer insect and bird populations, both species mostly eat less mobile food, focusing on fruits, nuts, and cereals.
And, ironically, the one character we meet who is closest to a literal pirate is actually a mouse, but there you go.
Life lesson: don’t learn about rodent behaviour from children’s books about anthropomorphic rodents.
Apparently this series of reviews could be subtitled Copperfyre Defends Rats.
Back to the story!
No, what worried the mice was the Grille.
I love how ominous this very short sentence is, though admittedly it's probably less ominous upon first reading. We get introduced to the murderous rats, told they mostly stay in the sewers they love, and then, the dramatic catch!
The Grille, with its leaf pattern of iron, was all that divided them from the bitter cruelty of the ratfolk and their dark gods. All the mice in the Skirtings knew of the Grille. It was the gateway to the underworld, the barrier between life and death.
I also love mundane objects made terrifying by circumstance and perception, and this is a great example of that. The Grille is both literally and figuratively the gateway to the underworld, separating the mice house from the underground sewers, and separating the mice from death at the hands of rats, separating them from the dark power that no one dared to name. Okay, this is not wildly subtle symbolism or anything, but I like it. Sometimes anvils are good.
And yet the Grille seemed to draw mice to it. In one corner there was even a tiny hole edged with jagged risty iron into which a mouse could just squeeze through, if he was foolish enough to want to do so.
Of course, all underworlds have to be penetrable for any story to happen, and here both the underworld and the gateway to it are so literal that the way to get there is also very literal. And in that literal space the rest of the story, literal and metaphorical, can unfold.
One such mouse was Albert Brown.
Hello, our unlucky hero! Hopefully you remember Albert Brown from the list of characters, our sensible, family-orientated mouse who has just decided to go take a walk on the wild, murdery side of life.
He had never been brave or overtly curious, so why did the Grille call to him that spring morning, and what was the urge to explore that gripped him so?
Why indeed? And that’s the end of the prologue. Which is only three pages long, yet I seem to have found plenty to talk about. This book review could take a while.
This is not a particularly complicated prologue, but I think it’s a good one. It sets up the scenario for the story quickly and fairly simply, but upon a reread (even one where my memories of what comes next are fuzzy) it actually alludes to a lot of things that become important later. Magic, prophecy, and destiny are three things that become increasingly blatant throughout this series, and the last line of the prologue suggests that there are more things happening than Alfred Brown, and the reader, are initially aware of. And while the language isn’t complicated, it’s also not boring, either, this may be a book aimed at children, but clearly Robin Jarvis isn’t going to talk down to his readers, which I appreciate, both when I was a child and now as an adult.
So I think it serves its purpose! Introduces us to the setting, sets up the conflict, and then leaves us a good hook: here goes a nice mouse chap into a place we’ve just had described as the underworld, for reasons none of us understand.
kalinara who is so excellently perusing fantasy and science fiction, and went for that oddly big genre of Children’s Books About Anthropomorphic Animals, Often Rodents. Quite why this is such a popular genre I’m not sure (though I think it is a less popular genre today than it was, nobody seems to be writing the 2010s version of Redwall, though if anyone is, point me in their direction, I am interested to see where this genre is going) but I read a lot of it as a child.And, to start off with, I am not in fact doing Brian Jacques’s Redwall, possibly the most famous example, but Robin Jarvis’s The Deptford Mice, a book series that I loved as a child, but also which profoundly terrified me to the point where I hid the books at the back of my bookshelf so that things couldn’t escape from them. (I don’t actually remember how old I was at the time, or to what extent I thought this was a possibility.) I like to think that adult me will be less terrified, but I am also interested to see how they hold up to a reread and, at that, an adult reread.
Of course, when reviewing a children's book I think the question 'but does it matter what an adult thinks of it?' should probably be asked. I don't think I have a good answer to it, to be honest, but I do think a lot of children's books are in fact very readable and enjoyable by adults, so I don't think the entire genre should be filed away under 'For children, therefore adults don't need to concern themselves with it', and that by doing so, by making the assumption that a book for children is less complex and doesn't need to be good, a huge disservice is done both to the genre and to children. In some ways I think that books we read as children possibly have a more fundamental affect on us than books we read as adults; as children we're absorbing so much about the world around us, and the right book at the right time can profoundly change your perspective upon the world (not that this doesn't happen as an adult, but I think it happens more, and probably with us realising it less, as a child).
Maybe rereading a bunch of children's books as an adult will help me to come up with a better answer to this question, but I don't think there is any simple or right answer to it, and probably fundamentally if a children's book means something to children, then it is doing something right.
The first book of this series, The Dark Portal, was published in 1989, and was a runner up for the Smarties Book Prize for that year. This award no longer exists, but winners include a lot of familiar titles like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Double Act, We're Going On A Bear Hunt, and Journey To The River Sea.
I have an ebook version of this series (thanks
kalinara !) so the first difference I notice is that this version doesn’t have the black and white ink drawings that I remember from my childhood copy. These drawings probably contributed a lot to my ‘Hide at the back of the bookshelf!’ actions, because even looking at them as an adult they are definite nightmare fuel. They are gorgeous, however, and packed full of symbolism that I don’t think I recognised as a child, distracted by all the terrifying facial expressions. Despite my current copy lacking these, I will crib a few from the internet through these reviews, because I remember a lot of these drawings so vividly that I think they’re a very important part of reading this book.Anyway, to begin, this is the cover of this version of The Dark Portal. It’s not actually completely traumatising!
The version I had as a child had the following cover, which is actually a much better example of Robin Jarvis’s art style, though both covers look like his own work.
The former cover probably gives a better idea of where the story is going: dark things looming in dark places is the main thrust of the book, and the mouse being tempted into the dark is recognisably one of the main characters of the book. But beyond nostalgia, I do like the terrified mouse cover, as it too portrays one of the crucial features of the book: terrified mice. I also like the detail of the little metal charm the mouse is wearing, as mouse brasses (as they are called in-story) are a really important part of the plot. I also just really like Robin Jarvis’s art style, and his almost total disregard of mouse anatomy (just look at those prehensile thumbs!), and I like the limited colour palette of this cover. But both covers are good, suitably ominous, indicating mice are involved in the story, not revealing any important spoilers.
This copy starts off with a little forward from Robin Jarvis, which I have no memory of, where he talks about his story ideas.
They generally all start as a sketch or drawing and then take shape as a character is developed around them…. I started making sketches of mice because they were the smallest things I could think of to draw…. I had envisaged it as a picture book, but it became a 70,000 word manuscript.
Thanks Robin Jarvis for validating my feelings that your drawings are important to your story! This little intro also reveals that these are apparently his first books, which I didn’t know before.
After this we have a Dramatis Personae of the main characters. This introduces us to the fact that our main characters are going to be mice and rats. Unsurprisingly for this genre, the mice are the good guys, and the rats are the bad guys. I really don’t think this counts as a spoiler, because for some reason the rats are (almost) always the bad guys and the mice are the good guys. I’m not sure if this is from some collective British (most of these rodent books are by British authors, in my experience) trauma about the Bubonic Plague, or something (…actually, let’s come back to this thought in a few chapters), or because mice are smaller and cuter. I suspect the latter, but to be honest most people I know can’t reliably distinguish between mice and rats anyway, so I’m not sure that the distinction really matters to a lot of people.
Anyway, I digress, a lot, but I am beginning to suspect that adult me has a lot more feelings about this vilification of rats than child me did, who was a lot less concerned about fair representations of rodents.
The good and bad nature of the characters is not only demonstrated to us by the names (the mice get to be called things like Arthur Brown and Arabel Chitter, while the rats get to be called One-Eyed Jake and Skinner), but by the little descriptions we get of them. The aforementioned Arthur Brown is a Loving father and devoted husband. Albert is a commonsensical mouse, not usually given to rash actions while One-Eyed Jake is A popular rat who is threatening to oust Morgan from office. (And as we soon discover, Skinner’s name is very literal.)
Look, the morality in these books is not super complicated. Mice, good guys, tormented by rats, bad guys.
Okay, now for the prologue, entitled, ‘The Grille’.
The prologue is written in a distant narrator fashion, from the point of view of a human, and doesn’t waste any time in making sure the readers are prepared for upcoming gruesome events, with the very first paragraph telling us how everything wants to kill mice.
When a mouse is born he has to fight to survive. There are many enemies - owls, foxes and course, cats; but mice suffer far more at our hands. I have heard of a whole family of kind, gentle mice, wiped out by eating poison - four generations gone and only the baby left because it was too small to eat solids.
Thanks Robin Jarvis, this book sounds like it’s going to be super cheery. Interestingly enough, I’m not sure if humans actually do pose a big threat to mice in this series. I think they’re too busy being tormented by all the other things in that list of enemies, plus rats. (Mostly rats.)
Mice are all descended from rural families and they remember their traditions wherever they live. They honour the green spirits of the land as Man once did and every spring they hold a celebration for the awakening year, calling to the Green Mouse to ripen the wheat and see them safe.
I hadn’t thought before about what species of mouse these mice are supposed to be, but I’m guessing house mice (Mus musculus), given that they’re the commonest and most adaptable British mouse species, and the one that has (as the name suggests) taken very well to living commensally with humans. These days commensal populations living around human habitation are more common than truly wild populations.
I’m digressing again, the actual important bit of this paragraph is the mouse religion and beliefs bit, where the Green Mouse is a not-subtle take on the Green Man. This is very relevant to the following story, where the Green Mouse, spiritual beliefs, and magic play increasingly large parts.
We next learn that the mice our story is concerned with live in Deptford, London, in an old empty house without people, and they survive on cakes and chocolates from the blind lady who lives next door, and berries from the garden. I am really concerned about the nutritional content of this diet, but I think as a child the concept of solely eating cake, chocolate, and berries was probably an amazing one.
The only blight on their carefree existence was the sewers - or rather the rats that lived in them.
Dun dun duuuun!
Cut-throats and pirates the lot, of them. Thin and ugly, a rat would smack his lips at the thought of Mouse for dinner. He would kill, peel and, if he was a fussy eater, roast it.
Peculiar comma usage aside, the scene is now being set for our conflict in this story. Also, like I said, Skinner the rat’s name is very literal. And the anthropomorphic nature of our rodents becomes very clear: in reality, rats are not known for skinning their food, or for their mastery of fire (sorry if this is disabusing anyone’s ideas about rats). Also, in defence of rats, the two rat species Britain has (the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus, and the black rat, Rattus rattus, the former being the common one) are probably not as bloodthirsty for the flesh of mice as this book is suggesting. They’re both omnivores, and will eat anything they come across, but while black rats do hammer insect and bird populations, both species mostly eat less mobile food, focusing on fruits, nuts, and cereals.
And, ironically, the one character we meet who is closest to a literal pirate is actually a mouse, but there you go.
Life lesson: don’t learn about rodent behaviour from children’s books about anthropomorphic rodents.
Apparently this series of reviews could be subtitled Copperfyre Defends Rats.
Back to the story!
No, what worried the mice was the Grille.
I love how ominous this very short sentence is, though admittedly it's probably less ominous upon first reading. We get introduced to the murderous rats, told they mostly stay in the sewers they love, and then, the dramatic catch!
The Grille, with its leaf pattern of iron, was all that divided them from the bitter cruelty of the ratfolk and their dark gods. All the mice in the Skirtings knew of the Grille. It was the gateway to the underworld, the barrier between life and death.
I also love mundane objects made terrifying by circumstance and perception, and this is a great example of that. The Grille is both literally and figuratively the gateway to the underworld, separating the mice house from the underground sewers, and separating the mice from death at the hands of rats, separating them from the dark power that no one dared to name. Okay, this is not wildly subtle symbolism or anything, but I like it. Sometimes anvils are good.
And yet the Grille seemed to draw mice to it. In one corner there was even a tiny hole edged with jagged risty iron into which a mouse could just squeeze through, if he was foolish enough to want to do so.
Of course, all underworlds have to be penetrable for any story to happen, and here both the underworld and the gateway to it are so literal that the way to get there is also very literal. And in that literal space the rest of the story, literal and metaphorical, can unfold.
One such mouse was Albert Brown.
Hello, our unlucky hero! Hopefully you remember Albert Brown from the list of characters, our sensible, family-orientated mouse who has just decided to go take a walk on the wild, murdery side of life.
He had never been brave or overtly curious, so why did the Grille call to him that spring morning, and what was the urge to explore that gripped him so?
Why indeed? And that’s the end of the prologue. Which is only three pages long, yet I seem to have found plenty to talk about. This book review could take a while.
This is not a particularly complicated prologue, but I think it’s a good one. It sets up the scenario for the story quickly and fairly simply, but upon a reread (even one where my memories of what comes next are fuzzy) it actually alludes to a lot of things that become important later. Magic, prophecy, and destiny are three things that become increasingly blatant throughout this series, and the last line of the prologue suggests that there are more things happening than Alfred Brown, and the reader, are initially aware of. And while the language isn’t complicated, it’s also not boring, either, this may be a book aimed at children, but clearly Robin Jarvis isn’t going to talk down to his readers, which I appreciate, both when I was a child and now as an adult.
So I think it serves its purpose! Introduces us to the setting, sets up the conflict, and then leaves us a good hook: here goes a nice mouse chap into a place we’ve just had described as the underworld, for reasons none of us understand.