John Masefield perfectly combines fantasy, suspense, piracy, thievery, witchcraft, talking animals, and a little boy who does not enjoy conjugating Latin verbs into one of the most delightful children's books I have ever read. Some editions include a very nice afterward by Madeleine L'Engle. The main character is a young boy who is aided by Nibbins, the cat, in finding a treasure that was entrusted to an ancestor and lost. One of the great charms of the story is the boy pitting himself against a group of witches who want to find the treasure for themselves. Young Kay Harker wants to find the treasure and return it to the church that entrusted it to his ancestor. Anyway, it is a book worth finding and reading as an adult or a child.
John Masefield (1878–1967) lived a life as varied as his work. At the age of fifteen he went to sea as an apprentice in a windjammer and made the voyage round Cape Horn. The next three years he spent in New York, in a bakery, a livery stable, a saloon and a carpet factory. Back in England, he wrote for the Guardian and in the First World War served with the Red Cross. Throughout these years he had been writing poetry, and when in 1923 his Collected Poems appeared they sold over 200,000 copies. In 1930 he succeeded Robert Bridges as Poet Laureate.
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