Some Halloween pictures from Malcolm Bird

Some of cartoonist and illustrator Malcolm Bird's amusing witch pictures were featured earlier.

This post contains a few more examples of his work in the form of pictures with a Halloween theme.

This witch is proud of her pumpkins:

These pictures are from The Witch's Handbook:

Information about Malcolm Bird and his works can be found on his website:

www.malcolm-bird.co.uk

A little more about being prevented from reading

A previous article has something to say about the pain of being interrupted while reading. It contains an extract from Frances Hodgson Burnett's Little Princess that describes very well how annoying such intrusions can be.

Being interrupted while immersed in a book is bad enough; being discouraged or even prevented from reading it in the first place is even worse! 

Acting out of concern for the reader
Just as some of the people who interrupt readers are well intentioned, so are some of the people who try to discourage others from reading. As this further extract from A Little Princess shows, they may be trying to enhance the reader's life:

"I am not in the least anxious about her education," Captain Crewe said, with his gay laugh, as he held Sara's hand and patted it. "The difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much. She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books. She doesn't read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a little wolf instead of a little girl. She is always starving for new books to gobble, and she wants grown-up books—great, big, fat ones—French and German as well as English—history and biography and poets, and all sorts of things. Drag her away from her books when she reads too much. Make her ride her pony in the Row or go out and buy a new doll. She ought to play more with dolls." 

Captain Crewe buys a doll for his daughter Sara:

The head of the girls' school in Charlotte Brontë's Villette is concerned about the detrimental effect that the amount of reading Lucy Snowe does might have on her health:

“Madame Beck...often and solemnly used to warn me not to study too much, lest “the blood should all go to my head.”"

Defence Against the Dark Arts Part XXX: Richard Barham's Ingoldsby Legends

My first encounter with Richard Barham's Ingoldsby Legends was in the pages of Rider Haggard's exciting adventure story King Solomon's Mines. 

The hero Allan Quatermain says that while he is not a literary man, he is very devoted to the Old Testament and the Ingoldsby Legends. He reads these two books for the comfort of the familiar and the wisdom that they contain. 

He refers to and quotes from the Legends several times, and in the sequel Allan Quatermain says that he often reads them when awake at night.

Intrigued by these references and hoping to find a new source of good reading material, I decided to get the book so that I could experience its attractions for myself. I found a very old copy in a second-hand bookshop and opened it eagerly when I got home. 

There was much more material in the book than I was expecting, and I wasn't disappointed in the stories either. I found many of the Legends very amusing and enjoyable to read. I could now understand why this book always accompanied Allan Quatermain in his wanderings.

An overvew of the Ingoldsby Legends
The Ingoldsby Legends, or Mirth and Marvels, to give the book its full and very appropriate title, is a collection of around 65 miscellaneous stories and poems, many with a supernatural element. 

The Legends are attributed to 'Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor', but they were actually written by the Reverend Richard Harris Barham. 

Much of the material in the Legends is based on traditional Kentish myths, legends and folklore. 

There are many references to ghosts, witches and demons, and Old Nick i.e. the devil makes many appearances. However, as the Legends are intended to entertain the readers they are just as funny as they are frightening.