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SECRETS REVEALED. The Chewing Gum Rebellion in the Barony of Cant provides the setting for K.P. Bath’s young readers’ novels, The Secret of Castle Cant and the new Escape from Castle Cant.

From The Asian Reporter, V17, #1 (January 2, 2007), page 20.

The Secret of Castle Cant
By K.P. Bath
Little, Brown, 2004
Hardcover, 304 pages, $16.99
 

Escape from Castle Cant
By K.P. Bath
Little, Brown, 2006
Hardcover, 287 pages, $16.99

By Josephine Bridges

A voice you’re likely to hear when you call The Asian Reporter is that of a man with a secret identity. Kevin Bath is not only the newspaper’s Calendar Editor, he is also the author of two novels for young readers. It’s no surprise that Lucy and Pauline, the plucky protagonists of The Secret of Castle Cant and the new Escape from Castle Cant, also have secret identities. You’ll have to read the former to find out Lucy’s and the latter to find out Pauline’s, but there’s no better way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon, even if you’re a grownup.

There are so many wonderful aspects to these two novels, it’s hard to know where to begin. The plots are enlightening without being preachy, and that’s no small feat, especially since the author’s purpose was not to teach, but to entertain readers. "I didn’t set out to write a novel with a message," he confides. "I share with Lewis Carroll a great disdain for children’s literature that tries to edify children."

The characters are believable; the good guys have quibbles and foibles and the bad guys have redeeming features. The settings are so skillfully realized, it’s hard to believe K.P. Bath hasn’t actually been to Tenesmus or Dragonfly-on-Bog, that these are in fact figments of the author’s fervid imagination.

But it’s the language that makes this reviewer turn verbal cartwheels, and as you can tell from words like "quibbles" and "fervid" sneaking in here, it’s catching.

A few of the words the author just couldn’t resist include "ostler," "hennin," "decretal," "fletched," "nocks," and "kirtle." These are all presented in explanatory contexts, so you don’t need a dictionary at your elbow to keep up to speed, but you might get a kick out of looking up some of your favorites.

The author also has a soft spot for footnotes, and he makes it worth your while to read them. Here are "the twelve Barons Cant," for example: "Roland, Gullet, Leopold, Ambrose, Gustaf I (‘the Fey’), Honoré, Lubin, Pius, Gustaf II (‘the Lame’), Elvio, Urbano, and the present Baron, Adolphus." And you don’t have to be a baron to have just the right name, all the way from Sir Plinth Paget-Plinth to Apryl Poke.

Bath has a great deal of admiration for poetry, and he therefore skewers its practitioners at every possible opportunity. Near the beginning of The Secret of Castle Cant, Pauline suggests, "Say, let’s play at being poets! One of us will name a thing, and the other has to say what fruit it’s like." Lucy, who just wants to finish her dinner in peace, thinks of something "very un-fruitlike" — a dog — hoping this will keep Pauline busy for a while.

"That’s easy," Pauline replies. "A dog is like a cocoanut — it’s brown and hairy on the outside and not good to eat." When Lucy objects that a cocoanut is good to eat, Pauline replies with perfect logic: "It is not. I hate cocoanut." (I’ll leave you to ponder how "a nose is like a crabapple.")

Not far into Escape from Castle Cant, Bath outdoes himself, and that isn’t easy. In a throwaway line delivered by an insurgent after the reading of a tedious document burgeoning with legalese, we learn that, "You’re only a rebel until you win. After that you’re the government."

It’s that ability to say in such a surprising way something we thought we already knew that makes a writer extraordinary.

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