Vanessa Robertson chats away about out-of-print children’s books with all the happy passion of an enthusiastic amateur, cheerfully frank with her opinions on modern children’s fiction. But there is nothing amateurish about Fidra Books, the Edinburgh publishing house she set up just a year ago. Designed to put older, sought-after children’s fiction back into the market place, Robertson is single-handedly bringing a succession of nearly forgotten children’s authors out of moth-balls, like so many Christmas decorations, each smartly packaged in sturdy, collectable paperbacks. With eight volumes already under its belt, sales exceeding original estimates, and plans to put out a book a month in 2007, Fidra is on a roll.

Many of the books, replete with illustrations of the Just William and Enid Blyton variety, have Scottish settings and titles that exude fresh air and healthy excursions – books like Elinor Lyon’s We Daren’t Go A’Hunting and M. Pardoe’s Orkney-based The Far Island. As it happens, they are all by women, some of whom are nowadays still familiar for their adult novels. (K.M. Peyton of Flambards fame joins the Fidra list in January). Most wrote from a position of financial and social security that is reflected in their fictional families.

An exception was the determinedly bohemian Victoria Walker, whose influential 1969 fantasy, The Winter of Enchantment, Robertson puts in my hand, confidently predicting that my pre-teen daughter will love it. I can’t say that I’m convinced. Currently enjoying a diet of social issue fiction as delivered by Malory Blackman, Jacqueline Wilson and Benjamin Zephaniah, surely she won’t engage with Walker’s mix of Victorian children, magic mirrors and winking teapots. But I have to report that I’m wrong. The slightly plummy tones of the children raise the occasional snigger but this, like the other titles in Fidra’s catalogue, is a good yarn and my daughter is quickly absorbed. We also agree that the cover sports the most richly colourful artwork we’ve seen in a long time – an enticing package for any Christmas stocking. Clearly I should have greater faith in Robertson’s judgement.

“I think sometimes because we’re older [the books] seem more dated to us whereas to children they just seem old. If you’re my son’s age and you read a Famous Five book, it’s just about how things were fifty years ago. (Though I sometimes think he wonders why we don’t have a housekeeper!)”

Reproducing its covers from original dust jackets and including detailed biographical introductions aimed more at the adult collector, Fidra doesn’t attempt to disguise the age of its publications, most of which are re-prints from the 1930s, 40s and 50s. All are set firmly in their period and feature the same breed of child that populates the more familiar books of Arthur Ransome and C.S. Lewis – active, self-reliant and inquisitive. Robertson does feel that her re-prints express a distinctive approach towards childhood. “I think these days possibly children are more passive, waiting to be entertained, whereas these children go out and look for adventure”

If unfettered adventure-seeking and mystery-solving is almost an article of faith in the Fidra stories, so is the privileged background of many of the protagonists, who are quite likely to exclaim “This is a queer show!” or be of a “poor family” that sends its boys to Eton and its daughters to the London season. Undoubtedly disconcerting for some modern readers, nevertheless Robertson believes that the stories offer a balance to the lack of variety she perceives in the children’s sections of many bookshops. “I just think if you’re going to have gritty realism and children from broken homes living in children’s homes, and if you’re going to have all these witches and wizards and things, that’s fine but it gets a bit samey.” She cites “too many sub-Harry Potter novels” and has the temerity to suggest that even Jacqueline Wilson is “possibly putting out too many now”.

In fact the Fidra re-prints have more in common with Ms Wilson’s output than one might initially suppose, particularly in the preponderance of orphaned children and single parents. There are also details in the stories that lend them a surprisingly modern twist – a recurring suggestion of radical free-thinking in the education establishments, for example, and an often stated desire to broaden horizons. “It isn’t at all splendid to be contemptuous of the very great qualities of other nations,” writes Margo Pardoe in The Far Island: a warning word, perhaps, to the book’s first readers in 1936 and still with the power to resonate intriguingly today.

© Laurence Wareing, used by permission The Herald