The Snow Spider

Jenny Nimmo’s Snow Spider trilogy has always enchanted me, for some reason. Yet even though I’ve read them numerous times in the past, most recently only five or six years ago, I always forget their plots, and remember only the enchanting cover illustration of the first book, showing a beautiful little girl with shining hair and pale skin, aglow as if lit from within. It’s clearly based on the television series, which I’ve tracked down and may watch later on tonight. Since I laid eyes on the books before going to France and couldn’t remember anything about them except that they’re set in Wales, and since I’m going to be writing a book set in Wales very soon, I thought it might be a good idea to re-read them as something light and relaxing. They’re children’s books in a pleasantly old-fashioned style, brisk and innocent, with obvious characters and a plot stuffed with every shortcut and cliché magic can give.

It’s rather a clunky plot – Gwyn discovers he’s a magician on his ninth birthday when his grandmother gives him magical items that he can ‘give to the wind’. He uses them to try to bring back his sister, who disappeared years ago. This, he believes, will make his father happy again; the ogre of a man seems to blame Gwyn for her disappearance. The wind gives him a strange spider that allows him to see another world, and a girl appears in the village who bears more than a passing resemblance to his sister, except for her light skin and hair. Then the plot lurches away wildly: Gwyn gives the wrong item to the wind, and must right his wrong. It’s all rather sloppy, and Nimmo seems to have no idea how to use punctuation, but there’s a certain innocence and whimsy to her storytelling that’s very charming. No children’s classic, but a traditional tale with some delightful imagery: and while I felt somewhat unsatisfied upon reading it, I had to read the two sequels before I could really judge the story. As it turned out, the following books were quite different, and rather better.