HANNA

Title: Miri and the Magic Door

Author: Juliet Barclay Illustrations:Xiomara Sera

Publishers: Oxford: Macmillan Education, 2007

Pages: 55 Reviewed by: Mary Hanna

A British national who lives in Cuba, Juliet Barclay has written for children a sumptuous text of the Then and Now couched in gorgeous illustrations by Xiomara Sera. The story of little Miri who helps a frightened pirate escape the Spanish in Havana harbour and find his way to the open sea is told in clever rhyme, the kind beloved by youngsters who this book is for. The story begins:

Miri gets up

and brushes her hair

and goes down a curly

wooden stair

past a cockerel,

raucously squawking,

who watches as Miri

goes cautiously

walking.

The little girl quickly finds a blue door that was never there before and goes through it to discover that she is in the same scene bu to reflect a previous time: Miri has stepped into the time of the buccaneers and the harbour is full of sailing ships in the sea and horses on the land.

Miri is approached by a confused pirate who asks her help. It seems he came ashore to find fruit to feed his pet parrot in order to stop him squawking and cursing, but now he is unable to get away from the Spanish. What is he to do? First, they must find fruit for Bilioso, for 'without fruit,/Bilioso's a brute'. Miri shows the pirate the way to the market and helps him buy mountains of fruit which he pays for with his last piece of eight.

The pirate buys pineapples, guavas, a pear,

twelve oranges, mangoes, bananas, a lime,

melons and plums. It all takes some time.

Then Miri must turn her mind to how to escape the Spanish. The pirate promises he will let her sail his ship if she succeeds.

Miri racks her brains and finally comes up with the idea of making a fabulous fruit salad out of the huge pile of Bilioso's fruit. So, while the parrot screeches and curses, Miri and the crew get to chopping fruit. They leave it outside the castle gate where it is found by the Spaniards, who are so diverted by this feast they do not notice the ship sailing past, heading for the open sea. Miri has saved the day:

'Laughing, jubilant and free, Miri's reached the open sea'.

In a beautiful illustration that derives much from Japanese woodcuts, we see Miri sailing the pirate ship across Havana Bay. She sails all day until the waves are 'dark as ink/and the stars begin to glitter/and the bats begin to flitter'.

Glowing green jewel

The pirate rows Miri safely to land. In parting, he gives her a glowing green jewel in a locket and thanks her graciously for her help. Miri runs through the moonlight-drenched streets and finds the magical door:

and opens it and in she goes

and straight away she knows,

though she couldn't tell you how,

that she's travelled back to Now.

In the Havana of Now, tourist boats are hooting in the harbour and radios are blaring the baseball scores. There is a delicious smell of black beans, pork and rice. Havana port is revealed in a wonderful double-paged illustration and Miri runs fast through it and up the curly stairs to be greeted by her mother. The mother and daughter lie together on the living room rug and Miri tells her mother 'all the things she's done and seen/while in her hand her emerald/is cool and smooth and green'. A final wonderful illustration shows the pirate ship under full sail in the night sea with the stars twinkling above and a quarter moon reflected on the water.

Xiomara Sera's illustrations are rich in detail and magnificently coloured. They will please young and old alike and make the reading of the text a pleasure for parents, since the design allows time for the young listener /reader to absorb what is happening. This is a great show-and-tell book with roots in the youngster's daily life and touching on the buccaneers that have become so popular since Johnny Depp's Pirates of the Caribbean. Miri's pirate captain has much of Depp's Captain Jack, and children who have seen the movies will get a kick out of Miri's adventure and the raucous parrot Bilioso.

Gentle tale of adventure

Drawing on the architecture and colours of Havana, Sera's illustrations fill the pages with wonder, while Juliet Barclay's rhymes unfold a gentle tale of adventure in two time frames. I believe this beautiful book will find many happy young readers and be appreciated also by the youngster's parents and caregivers. The only caution is that some words are outside the understanding of four-to-10-year-olds: words like 'raucous', 'snaggle-toothed', 'cogitates', 'corrugates', and 'imprecations'.

Juliet Barclay is a writer, photographer and graphic design manager who has worked on both sides of the Atlantic since the early '80s. She has worked for the Office of the City Historian of Havana, and most recently as head of design for the Directorate of Cultural Heritage. She has written an architectural and social history of Havana, Havana, Portrait of a City, which was published by Cassell.