On the “About Jane”page, (Click here) Jane has explained that there is a chance that her very first novel for children may be re-published, though since the chance is pretty slim, she would be happy to hear from any potential publisher.

She also gives a little extract to provide a flavour of it, as well as mentioning that it was chosen as one of the Books of the Year by the Federation of Children’s Book Clubs (‘tried and tested by the children’).

Here are what reviewers had to say about the book in what are, perhaps, the two most prestigious publications you can think of: The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) and the Times Educational Supplement (TES).

Peter Dance, in the TLS, recalled that he, as a boy, was interested in underwater life:

The woefully short-sighted Owen, an unlikely hero in any other context, falls into a pond under improbable circumstances and shrinks to animalcule size. (A transparently contrived beginning, perhaps, but even Alice had to enter Wonderland somehow.) From then on Owen’s adventures among the pond people are credible, vivid and exciting.  Befriended by Sedilla the Waterflea he sets out on a journey beset with many dangers and few delights, the kind of journey plotted by Homer, Dante and Bunyan for their heroes and for much the same reason – to prove that mere mortals, for all their shortcomings, may win through against seemingly impossible odds and be chastened or matured by their ordeals. [....]

Predictably the nasties of the pond vastly outnumber the goodies. Owens’ ingenuity is stretched to the limit as he encounters the Giant Transparent Blob, the Hydra Witch, the Copepods, the treacherous Cyclops, and the evil Pond-ghosts – the same blood-thirsty villains I used to stare at wide-eyed through my cheap microscope so many years ago.

I read Below the Green Pond during a transatlantic flight and found it possible to imagine myself again among those animated specks of life I used to bring home in a jam jar from a childhood pond. Thus Jane Waller’s book, whatever her intentions, passes the ultimate test: it is very readable – for every age group.

And this is what Shirley Toulson wrote in the TES:

‘Ever since Alice fell down that rabbit hole, and virtually put an end to the straight-forward telling of a fairy tale, children’s writers have been experimenting with other worlds in which their young protagonists could adventure. Sad to say most of these have been pretty derivative, a reflection on the general paucity of the imagination when confronted with circumstances in which anything is possible.

Jane Waller has got over this predicament in a most original and satisfying way. Her young Owen falls into a completely ordinary pond, where all the laws of biology operate, and in which the food chain is untampered with.  Nature remains green in jaw and bubble even if the creatures have the power to discuss their predicaments; and Owen remains an ordinary boy even if he can breather underwater and has become small enough to live in a jam jar. Like any other boy, he needs friends, and finds one here in Sedilla, the water flea, delicately portrayed by Frank Rodgers.

The little creature has a jolly line in moral discourse, assuring the slightly shocked Owen that living is for fun, and that you can even enjoy the idea of being useful when you’re dead and helping to form the mud that feeds the sphagnum moss. Nevertheless, Jane Waller sees to it that her readers experience a real if tiny grief when the flea is taken for dead after an attack by a hydra”.

Sadly, Below the Green Pond did not survive the disappearance of the great publishers Blackie’s in 1991 (and their off-shoot Abelard, the actual publishers.)   So let’s hope that there’s an exciting young publisher out there looking for what should be a children’s book classic.

(Click here to see some of the pond illustrations which Michael Spark - www michaelspark.com - has painted for Jane).