Las tipologías de edificios que se encuentran en la ciudad de chicago, desde los viejos donde los materiales crean la apariencia pesada de una masa que se extiende o intenta extenderse al cielo hasta los modernos que parecieran realizar un pequeño esfuerzo para alcanzar tales alturas.

Pauline Clarke, best known for "The Return of the Twelve", her award-winning children's novels about the toy soldiers who once belonged to the four Bronte children, and their adventures with a Twentieth-century child, has also written several non-fantasy books with historical settings. "Torolv the Fatherless" is one, and stands any test of quality alongside "Return of the Twelve", or the historical novels of other outstanding writers as Rosemary Sutcliff, Henry Treece, Cynthia Harnett or Barbara Willard.

Set around 988 A.D., Torolv (later known as Trolf) is a father-less orphan child in the Viking stronghold of Jomsburg. Filled with unhappy daydreams of a hero Viking father, Torolv is lost at sea in his little fishing boat, then rescued by Vikings who taking him raiding the coast of Frisia. Perhaps the dashing Ali, leader of the Viking fleet of longboats, is Torolv's real father, and he can certainly be a substitute father for Torolv, whose hero-worship is warm and spontaneous.

Soon after this, Torolv is stranded by mis-chance on the East Saxon shore of England. Friendless and father-less in Jomsburg, and now bereft of the Viking-hero Torolv would eagerly have served, he is again alone, "fatherless". At this point he is found by the Saxons, and taken to the great hall of Earl Brihtnoth. Torolv, "nine winters old" (p 13), speaks as he knows he must, and should, in a hall of warriors: "I want protection and food, and rings in return for faith: I want a lord" (p 45). Earl Brihtnoth asks where he has come from, and who are his parents, and if he is a run-away slave. Then, satisfied that he will not be doing wrong, he offers charity to Torolv, passing him to the care of his wife, the Lady Alfled, and his granddaughter Leofwaru, "who will make friends with anything, even a hedgehog" (p 47).

Now the story shifts focus, as Torolv, called Trolf in the Saxon tongue, finds his former Viking allegiances turned around by the loving Christian community that gives him the missing family life he has longed for all his life.

Pauline Clarke handles the presenting of history easily, making clear sense of the tangled allegiances and relationships of extended families, and warriors and battle-lords. Torolv is taken to be confimed a Christian by the monks of the fen abbey in Ely. He becomes the godson and fosterling of the Earl. He hears old stories of the Roman days, and the first adventures of the Saxons in Britain, is told the tale of the hostage who serves at the Earl's court, and sees the burial mounds of ancient raiders, now the lairs of dragons, perhaps.

But the dragon that strikes these contented people is not a monster of superstition but the longboats of raiding Vikings. Saxon courtesy leads to disaster -- the Battle of Maldon in 991 -- when the Earl and many of his men are slaughtered. Clarke achieves an epic quality as she tells of the tragic struggle. The book ends with a slow fading quietness as Torolv, amongst the survivors, mourns the loss of his godfather, and sees the ferocity of his once-adored Viking war-lord with the sad eyes of defeat.

A special feature is the way Clarke weaves the making of the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Battle of Maldon" into the description of the fight, and the later mourning of the dead. The cool ending resembles the last chapters of Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" in the way a sadder, calmer aftermath follows the tragic climax in the third quarter of the book.

Making fiction from an existing poem, Rosemary Sutcliff did a similar thing much later in "The Shining Company" (1990) with her retelling of the events of the ancient Welsh poem "Y Gododdin", about a battle at Caterrick, sung by Taliessin, the bard who survived the battle. Fine work, but no better than Clarke's. Similar comparisons may be made with Jill Paton Walsh's "Hengest's Tale", based on an Anglo-Saxon fragment of battle-raid poetry, and Christopher Webb's "Eusebius the Phoenecian" with its tale of a Middle Eastern wanderer encountering the death of Arthur and the arrival of Hengist and Horsa.

Clarke gives her own translation of the poem at the end of the book, including the striking alliterative words of men who have lost their leader, but are still resolute, while staring at the inevitability of their own defeat: "Will shall be harder, heart shall be bolder, Courage shall the more wax as your might wanes." This is the spirit of the men who died at the Alamo.

Fatherless at the end, as he was at the start, having found and lost two substitute fathers, Torolv's tale is a rich and moving one. Though war is the central event, as in Eric Haugaard's "The Untold Tale" there is no glorification of brutality, only a bitter recognition of the contradictions of bravery, loyalty, cruelty and death.

It is lamentable that the book is out of print, and that Faber would not re-issue it in 1991 for the millennium of the famous battle. Clarke's writing is gripping, and ably supported by the line illustrations of Cecil Leslie. It should be noted that Clarke's other historical novels are just as good, such as "The Boy With the Erpingham Hood", which includes the battle of Agincourt.

With "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen", Alan Garner popularised a kind of fantasy novel in which an ancient myth comes alive in modern times. Many writers have subsequently exploited this genre, including Penelope Lively, William Mayne, Penelope Farmer, Susan Cooper, William Rayner, Diana Wynne Jones, and William Corlett. (Of course Garner was not the first to create such a genre, but those who used it before him are not so well known, good though their work often is -- but this is not the place to raise such things).

Pauline Clarke has written many kinds of children's novels -- fantasies, historical novels, family comedies, dolls' stories -- and is best known for her Carnegie Medal winner "Return of the Twelve" (or The Twelve and the Genii"), in which the toy soldiers of the Bronte children are brought to life, again, by a twentieth century boy. (Written in 1962, this is 18 years before Lynne reid banks discovered an Indian in the cupboard!)

Although "Return of the Twelve" resembles aspects of Garner's genre, it is "The Two Faces of Silenus" which takes as its central motif the mythical struggle between the life-forces of Silenus, a nature god, and the death-forces of Medusa, a moon goddess. (Comparisons may be made between Susan Cooper's "Seaward", which provides a Celtic-based version of this conflict, or Patricia Miles "The Gods in Winter" which brings the capture and rape of Persephone into the modern world.)

A modern English family go to a small Italian city. The father is attending a conference of academics. The mother is holidaying, and the two children, in their early teens, are left to enjoy themselves in the sunbaked streets and forested hills. One day they see a strange carved mask-face on a well or water-tank in the street: a huge beaming smile, surrounded by shaggy hair, with two protruding tusks. A local street boy urges them to throw a coin into the gaping mouth, and make a secret wish. Dangerous!

Nearby they also see two huge carved stone lions. Unwittingly their innocent tourist actions bring the carvings to life, and suddenly they find themselves romping with Silenus. (Surely Silenus has not featured in any story, let alone a children's story, since C.S. Lewis's "Prince Caspian", part of the Chronicles of Narnia, where a god-lion also romps, celebrating life and challenging the forces of death and winter.)

Just as unwittingly, they have unleashed the cruel owl-like Medusa, sworn enemy of Silenus. They have also become entangled in the present-day problems of the boy, and his mother and father. The whole landscape becomes involved, as the children are hunted through woods, down narrow streets, around Roman ruins, and an old Roman theatre. Their parents, also, become involved, and each has a significant encounter with Silenus. It would spoil the power of the book to say much more about the narrative events.

Few writers attempt such complex issues -- life versus death, morality versus sensuality, belief and disbelief -- and of those who do, few avoid moralising, at times, or simplifying. Clarke succeeds in shaping a rich story which does not moralise, does not offer simple explanations, and leaves room for readers to work out what seems to be happening, and why.

Why is the book not better known? Perhaps the non-English setting, and the use of Greco-Roman gods lacks the feeling that "this belongs to us" which writers such as Garner and Cooper exploit when they draw on Norse and Celtic mythology and set their adventures in the British countryside. Readers should not be so insular.

Incidentally, the illustrations by Anthony Maitland (perhaps best known for his illustrations of some of Leon Garfield's children's books, and Penelope Lively's "The Ghost of Thomas Kempe") are excellent.

This is a book to savour, especially as the myths it draws on are so well known, yet so poorly understood, except at the level of adventure. Clarke's book shows some of the religious depth of these myths, and deep myth is always worth experiencing!

When 8 year-old Max discovers a box of 12 wooden soldiers
in Napoleonic uniforms, hidden in the attic of their new home,
he is naturally delighted. But is there a link between this old house and the Bronte museum nearby? His find becomes a rare
treasure when he realizes that The Twelves are alive, having
been endowed by their four genii (the literary Bronte children)
with incredible abilities: to think, speak, behave and regenerate their lives at will! Each man has his own name, appearance and identity, reflecting the various aspects of the children's own personalities. But how long can Max keep his precious secret, with two suspicious older siblings nosing about?

This charming tale of miniatures answers the questions posed by Margery Williams: what is real and how do toys come alive? Max must learn to trust first his sister, then even an adult, as he struggles to prevent the unthinkable: crass commercial sale and heartless exportation to America. What devastating deportation to the Young Men, as a result of media curiosity and a mercenary older brother. Is there no way they can be saved for literary England and preserved in safety where they truly belong? Young Max behaves in a surprisingly adult manner, as he insists on permitting the Twelves to chart their own destiny. Keeping their military dignity intact, they attempt and accomplish marvels of logistics with minimal aid. This is a cute, imaginative tale (which might inspire some interest in the original Four Genii), for children of all ages.

Pauline Clarke took the known history of the Bronte children, and created a powerful fantasy around this. Lynne Reid Banks, years later, did the same with a different non-historical toy in "The Indian in the Cupboard", but Clarke did it first. Of course Clarke's story about toys that are brought to life by being played with, in itself, is not original. Nor is the idea of the interaction between human and small people (for "small people" read "toys") original - not since Gulliver went to Lilliput, or, a year or two before Clarke, since Mary Norton invented a race of small "Borrowers" - another outstanding classic of children's literature.

Branwell Bronte, the ne'er-do-well son, would-be painter, and drug addict, had a set of toy soldiers, in the otherwise grim rooms of Haworth vicarage. These were a stimulus for all the children to play and tell stories, often stories about the soldiers, and their exploits in imaginary countries. The toy soldiers were given names, and characters. They were truly loved by Branwell and his sisters. Small wonder then, if the toys were somehow to be lost, and then more than a century later to be discovered by a small boy, who in turn loves them - and they come back to life, full of Bronte spirit and imagination.

The story of their "Return" turns into a quest, both for them to be restored to their rightful home, and for them to be allowed to be themselves, safe from prying humans, from museum dryness, and from interference, however well-meaning. Their "Return" is a quest of growing up, becoming independent, becoming people. Toys imbued with childish characteristics by the children who loved them, created them, and played with them, can only grwo up so much. Max, the twentieth century boy who re-discovers them can grow up far more.

This is a neglected classic - in its time a Carnegie Medal winner - the British equivalent for a children's book of an Academy Award.

It should also be noted that Clarke wrote many other outstanding books for children - sadly, also neglected - fantasies, historical novels, and plain (?) everyday (?) comedies of family life. She ought to be far better known. You could spend a year reading and not find anything as good as "The Return of the Twelve", also known as "The Return of the genii" in Britain.

Very highly recommended.