Little Chair

by Rumer Godden

This is a collection of stories handed down through five generations of children who have listened to them from a little, old chair.

Genres: Childrens

48 pages, Paperback

First published May 6, 1996

About the author

Margaret Rumer Godden was an English author of more than 60 fiction and non-fiction books. Nine of her works have been made into films, most notably Black Narcissus in 1947 and The River in 1951.
A few of her works were co-written with her elder sister, novelist Jon Godden, including Two Under the Indian Sun, a memoir of the Goddens' childhood in a region of India now part of Bangladesh.

Reviews

[Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This late work (published two years before the author's death) was published by Hodder Children's Books in the Hodder Story Book series, which (according to the back cover) are "short novels by fine writers for younger, confident readers". In fact, this is not a novel or even a work of fiction, which makes it unusual among Godden's books for children. The title refers to a chair which had been in the author's family for five generations; the books recounts the children who had sat in the chair over the years, in a series of brief vignettes.

Oddly, the text is printed in the very large type which one normally finds in books for the visually impaired. There are illustrations by the well-known artist Pauline Baynes; but like the author, she was past her prime. Neither the story nor the pictures are particularly memorable.