Saturday, December 20, 2014

Top 10 fictional feasts in children's books

From Harry Potter’s first meal at Hogwarts to the picnics of the Famous Five, Christopher William Hill slavers over fictional food in literature.

You can win your own chocolate feast plus a complete set of Christopher’s Schwartzgarten books so far by emailing childrens.books@theguardian.com by 28 December 2014 telling us why you should win. More details at the end of this top 10!
Christmas feast
From lashings of ginger beer to Harry Potter’s first Hogwarts meal, children’s books can really make your mouth water! Photograph: foodfolio / Alamy/Alamy
My grandfather was a baker and as a boy I grew up surrounded by more good food than you could shake a stick at (though why you’d be shaking sticks at good food I really don’t know). It was hardly surprising that I grew up obsessed by food. I’d spend hours at a time reading through recipe books or cutting out pictures of delicious-looking puddings from magazines and sticking them to the walls of my bedroom. In short, I was a peculiar boy. I liked to be fed by books. Quite frankly, a book without a decent nosh up or two held little interest for me. Nowadays, as an ancient adult and author, I have to work out what my characters like (or don’t like) to eat before I can write a single word. If I can understand the food I can understand the world. My list of ten fictional feasts in children’s literature comes in no particular order – a pick-and-mix, if you like, without the peanut brittle.

More

No comments: