Crooked Sixpence

Quote of the Day

Their faces were scrubbed to a shining cleanliness, their hair was plastered down with water. None of their clothes quite fitted them - you could see the faint outline of its former owner behind each clean but well-worn and patched garment, Penny thought, and she suddenly found them almost unbearably pathetic. At the moment, however, her sympathy was misplaced, for they were all beaming so broadly that they looked as if their cheeks would burst. 

From CROOKED SIXPENCE, Chapter 1, Tudor Boy.

Quote of the Day

"Oh, but we can't wait till Tuesday! We only have a week before Mr Gauntlett has to make up his mind!"

"Then," said Jill, "Cam and Ricky must watch tonight and tomorrow, and we'll all watch on Tuesday."

"Is that all right then, Ricky?" Richard nodded. "Good," said John. "Then you two must watch for the boy and-"

"We've seen him, I think," said Cam. "Just a glimpse, disappearing behind the yews on the top terrace."

"Well, you must watch again," said John, "and follow him."

"Follow him?" said Cam in rather a wavering voice.

From CROOKED SIXPENCE, Chapter 2, Doing Good. 

Crooked Sixpence illustration

The local orphans enjoy a car ride.

Crooked Sixpence Blurb

Quote of the Day

Mrs. Mallory was sorry about Penny's collar-bone, but she quite obviously thought that it had been broken in a good cause. "Traces of a Roman villa right there at St. Ursula's Court," she said. "It's wonderful! Of course, there are amazing excavations at Silchester, and I've seen the Roman villa at Lullingstone, in Kent, but to have one of our own!"

From CROOKED SIXPENCE, Chapter 16, Happy Ending.

Buried Teasures 8

The frontispiece from Crooked Sixpence, a scene from Chapter 3, Fair Waved the Golden Corn. The children offer to help Mrs. Greenwood with her household chores and harvesting. Penny is pleased that there is no combine harvester because she prefers "the old ways best". However, when she begins gathering the stooks of corn and sees that it is actually very hard work, she is forced to "eat her words". But her corn gathering career is short lived and she is later sent to help Mrs. Greenwood in her home.

Penny and Sid

An illustration from Chapter 11 of Crooked Sixpence. Penny returns his lost photo to a grateful Sid.

Crooked Sixpence illustration

A scene from Chapter 3, Fair Waved the Golden Corn: Penny and Laura help Mrs. Greenwood.

Tudor Boy

From Crooked Sixpence. Penny catches a glimpse of the Tudor Boy.

Quote of the Day

Penny was to eat her words before the day was out. She had often, in Cornwall and on small farms in remote places, seen people stooking corn, standing the sheaves in triangular stooks, and she had thought that it looked very pretty and quite easy. It was a big shock to her when she first tried it for herself. To begin with, each sheaf weighed about a ton and, she discovered, to hold one while propping another couple or so against it really needed three hands, for as soon as she got one sheaf upright two others fell down.

From CROOKED SIXPENCE, Chapter 3, Fair Waved the Golden Corn.

Crooked Sixpence (illustration)

From Chapter 3 of Crooked Sixpence, Fair Waved the Golden Corn. Penny and Laura help Mrs. Greenwood, who has hurt her leg.

Sid

Working class characters in Jane Shaw's books are rare, and especially in No Trouble for Susan Timmy the Terror's gang of stereotyped Cockney street urchins gives the impression that the "lower" classes are all good-for-nothing trouble makers. However, in contrast, one of her most sympathetic characters, in the Penny books, is Sid the orphan. He is a quiet little boy with a stammer, who tries to avoid using rhyming slang. He recognized that calling a hat a "titfer" (titfer tat, i.e. tit for tat) won't get him far in life. In Susan and Friends, JS's son Ian Evans explains why Sid comes across so well. It was because he was based on a close friend of his: "the orphan Sid (Crooked Sixpence) was based on one of my school mates Johnny Orpen, whose hyperactivity when visiting our house for parties totally amazed my parents". Sid also played a key role in Fourpenny Fair.

Again, this is a facet of the changes that took place in Britain in the late fifties and especially in the 1960s. Michael Caine, for example, has often stated that one of his goals as an actor throughout his long career has been to improve the image of Cockneys. When he first entered the film industries, his class were limited to tipping their hats to the squire and saying "Aw right, guvn'r". In this he was successful. Britain moved away from the Eliza Doolittle model, where a working class person could only hope for recognition by "moving up" to a posh accent. With the arrival of The Beatles and the success of Glasgow Celtic and Manchester Utd. on the football field, the upper classes were no longer the idea role model. It was possible for working class people to make a name for themselves without aspiring to be socially upwardly mobile. In fact, being working class became fashionable. By the late 1970s, the children's TV show Grange Hill showed that the lives and problems of working class children could be just as interesting as those of the upper classes; more so, in fact. Ratings for Grange Hill were far higher than those of the TV dramatization of The Famous Five, who came to be seen as outdated. This was a factor in the decline of the works of Jane Shaw and other writers who lived in the secluded world of the upper and middle classes.

Crooked Sixpence cover

Crooked Sixpence illustration

An illustration from Tudor Boy, the first chapter of Crooked Sixpence. This is the book I'm currently reading.

Crooked Sixpence (blurb)

The blurb from Crooked Sixpence, the last of the Penny books. It is a slightly expanded version of the ad on the inside cover of New House at Northmead.