The 13th Is Magic

The number of books I read as a child was monumental. And I remember a surprising number of them -- not the plot, not even necessarily the characters, but whether I liked them or not.

If they spoke to me then they were my friends. I remembered where they were shelved (and God help me if they ever re-shelved because I didn't cotton onto the Dewey Decimal System until my second year of high school. "Oh, that's what those little numbers are for!" Besides, in fiction there weren't little numbers, only letters. Bad system.)

One book I went back to over and over and over was called The 13th is Magic. I must have checked it out and read it a dozen times while I was in elementary school. It was written by Joan Howard who, as far as I knew then, had written no other books (I checked the library catalogue). In fact she had, both as Joan Howard and as Patricia Gordon. But as far as I knew The 13th is Magic was a one-off.

And what a one-off it was. . .

Later I tried to remember why I was so enamored of it. So I tracked it down on inter-library loan. You can imagine the librarian's surprise at that request. But she ordered it and a few weeks later, it appeared. And I held it in my hands again after nearly half a century (yes, I'm that old). I was almost afraid to open it for fear of being disappointed.

I needn't have worried. It was every bit as wonderful as I remembered.

The blurb for it says: 'New York is a magic city where almost anything can happen - especially if you live on the 13th floor of an apartment house on Central Park West. Now of course, since most people are superstitious there is no real 13th floor in hotels or apartment houses, and the one where Ronnie and Gillian live, although it is right above the 12th, is called the 14th. It is not until the day they find the black cat Merlin that they discover the magical 13th floor...''

And that's exactly what it's about -- a world full of promise, of possibilities, of potential for wonderful things to happen.

Just exactly what the wonderful things were escaped me at the time -- and they escape me now -- though I could go downstairs and look as I found a copy in a used bookshop in Wales a couple of years ago and gave it to myself for Christmas.

What was important about it was 1) that Miss Howard didn't write down just because she was writing for children. In fact the book was witty, charming and literate, every bit as readable by an adult as by a child, and 2) it promised adventure. It was a book about what might be, what could be . . . what if . . .

It excited my child's imagination. It tantalized and intrigued. It delighted. It still does.

And it had a cat.

Sid would say, 'Of course it had a cat. All wonderful books have cats.'

And while I'm not sure I would go that far, The 13th is Magic had a wonderful cat. Merlin was a cat of promise. He was the cat-alyst of the story, after all. Without Merlin none of it would ever have happened.

I'm thinking I need to give the fictional Sid a bigger part in Flynn and Sara. Maybe things will move faster if I do.

Got any favorite books you'd like to share? Kids books or otherwise? C'mon, Kate, I know you do.