by Jan Lee

THE LITTLE WHITE HORSE

ELISABETH GOUDGE

(Lion, £3.99)

'Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently". Infused by this idea, The Little White Horse is a lyrical story of the 13-year-old orphan Maria. Sent to the West Country to live with her cousin Sir Benjamin Merryweather in his crumbling manor house, Moonacre, she is befriended by a cluster of queer animals and unusual people.

Written in 1946 and reissued by Oxford publisher Lion to coincide with a film due out next Christmas, this old-fashioned story has been enjoyed by countless young readers, mostly girls, who love the tiny but spirited Maria with her "fine qualities of honour and courage and fastidiousness" like Mary in The Secret Garden and Philip Pullman's resourceful, fearless Lyra.

The white horse with the single silver horn that she glimpses on her arrival at Moonacre will haunt Maria. Small as a fairy's child, with a longing to bring peace to all the creatures in this lovely but cursed valley, she turns for help to the animals, notably the lion-like dog Wroff who, unlike Aslan in Narnia, does not talk.

Sensible and magical, she is determined to bring reconciliation and forgiveness to grown-ups who can no longer reach out and love one another. Like all proud fairy-tale princesses, she must humble herself to love a shepherd. With his help she sets off on the quest to uncover the truth behind the ancient feud of the Merryweather family, which has divided the cruel Men from the Dark Woods and Sir Benjamin. Try as he might, he cannot protect the animals in his valley as he, too, remains under the spell of his wicked ancestors.

Goudge's children's novels have been attacked for being too sentimental, "a queer mixture of legend and fact" and her heroines are a mixture of the down-to-earth and the fairylike.

The mixture of myth and history is rich with detail the meals, the countryside, the flowered gardens, secret tunnels and hidden stone dwellings are all imbued with the symbolism of dark and light which will, one hopes, contribute to the film currently in production, due to appear next Christmas.