posted on 03 Nov 2022

Journey Outside by Mary Q. Steele

U.S. born author, Mary Q. Steele (1922 - 1992) was primarily a children’s author but also wrote for adults around issues of nature and the natural world. Journey Outside was by some distance her most famous book and won her the prestigious Newbury Honour when it was published in 1969. It was released in the UK in 1970 and found its way into Puffin in 1973 - which is the copy I have and which is show here with a cover design by Paul Bowden.

The book usually gets described as ‘fantasy’ or ‘science fiction’ but actually it’s closer to an allegorical quest in the manner of something like John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress or even Swift’s Gulliver. Dilar is a teenage boy who has spent his whole life living as member of the ‘raft’ community - a group of adults and children floating on a caravansarai of log rafts that glides on endlessly on an underground river. They never see the outside world and depend exclusively on the multitudinous fish that fill the river for all their needs as they search for a sort of mythical promised land.

But Dilar is dissatisfied with this narrow existence and is convinced that this community of raft dwellers are simply going round in huge circles and that there must be more to life than that. So one day he decides to leap off the raft onto a ledge and wait to see if he can prove his belief that they are going nowhere by waiting for the flotilla to return to pick him back up again. 

But when he’s attacked by some kind of mutant rats, he’s forced upwards and eventually finds his way into the outside world. Suddenly confronted by open sky, green grass, trees and sun, he is overwhelmed and finds himself horribly sunburnt - his face swells and he falls into a fever from which he is saved by the friendly and generous People Against the Tigers,  a community that has cut itself off from the rest of the world by building huge barricades to prevent tigers coming into their land and terrorising people and animals. Dilar is grateful for their help but soon grows impatient with them because while they are generous they have no concept of forward planning and lurch from plenty to crisis on a regular basis.

Frustrated by his hosts, Dilar decides to climb the barricades and head for the mountains, hoping that there is a promised land on the other side. But he hasn’t expected the cold and snow he encounters and is soon in trouble. He’s saved by the hermit-like Wingo, who keeps him in luxury but essentially imprisons him in the mountain hide-away. Soon he must move on again.

He next finds himself in a featureless desert where the people treat him courteously but without interest - feeding him and letting him drink from the one plant they all rely on. This is a barren life that he also hurries through until he eventually reaches the shores of a sea and on the beach he encounters the enigmatic Vigan who seems to have heard of Dilar’s raft people and may have the answers the boy is seeking. But Vigan makes nothing easy and sets him tests and trials that exhaust Dilar’s patience. It turns out, however, that there’s a kindly purpose behind Vigan’s antics and the story ends with the boy finding out not just how to return to his own people but understanding that it’s a noble thing to want to expand the knowledge and understanding of his own people.

The book isn’t, I think, entirely successful as an allegorical journey and not quite exciting enough to be an adventure but it really does deserve praise for trying to do something a bit different. This is trying to raise some knotty philosophical issues for children to turn over in their minds and I’m all for that - there are no easy answers to Dilar’s quest for knowledge and experience and thinking about how best to respond to the inevitable challenges of existence is something children’s literature at its best can help with.

I don't think that the book is currently in print but second hand paperback copies can be found quite easily for under £10.

 

Terry Potter

November 2022