One Thing You Might Have Missed About Howl's Moving Castle: Once Sophie Becomes An Old Woman She Never Eats Anything But Bacon Ever Again

Speaking of food, if you happen to be in Brooklyn on 11/1, I’ll be reading an essay about running-away food in children’s literature for the launch of Zosia Mamet’s Popsicles at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity at 6:45! Tickets are $11; the other readers are Katie Holmes and Rosie Perez. I can’t imagine anyone needing more inducement than that.

Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones, is about that eternal girlish fantasy of suddenly becoming very elderly and eating nothing but bacon and tea for the rest of your life, all while sponging off of your extremely beautiful fashion-plate boyfriend. Most of the best examples of classic children’s literature (The Boxcar Children, The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler, My Side of the Mountain, etc) prominently feature running-away food – unfussy, portable, relatively non-perishable snacks elevated to the status of meals like bread and cheese, or blueberries and milk, and whatever other tidbits loom large in the culinary imagination when you’re still too short to reach the stove without help.

And in classic fashion, Sophie begins Howl by running away from her mother’s house and taking some bread and cheese with her – but once she steps foot in the titular castle, neither she nor anyone else in the book ever eats anything but bacon again. It’s a relentless all-bacon menu, as unvarying as The Rock’s all-cod diet was ten years ago. Maybe the bacon thing is somehow part of the same curse that turned Sophie old?

The Miyazaki adaptation has a lovely and beloved breakfast scene involving bacon and eggs, but it does no more than merely gesture the inescapability of bacon in the original book.

Some of the old Little House books get into the oppressive logistics of winter provisioning, with only bacon and molasses and a few barrels of flour for the next four months, but that’s nothing compared to Howl’s Moving Castle. After that solitary meal of bread and cheese it’s goodbye, Heidi (I think somewhere towards the end the dog-man tries to eat some bread and honey, but I wouldn’t swear to it).

All that Howl, Sophie, Michael and Calcifer eat for the rest of the book is bacon. Sometimes they have bacon and eggs, and sometimes they have bacon sandwiches, but just as often it’s just rashers of bacon from start to finish.

Fantastic! Sophie can cook. This bacon and egg breakfast sounds terrific. Can’t wait to read about what other meals they enjoy together.

Good and hot bacon! Nothing wrong with that.

Hey speaking of things that make a difference! What about some food that is different from bacon?

Obviously you make do with what you have on hand, but at a certain point, the question of scurvy does enter into it, no?

I guess that’s the end of the eggs and bacon! Shame to waste it, obviously, but there’s always that old standby bread and cheese, or maybe there will be a new third kind of meal they can all eat together.

Oh! Okay. More bacon today.

Maybe if Michael is going to a place called Market Chipping, he will be able to buy some food that is not bacon! Bacon is all well and good — I sure do enjoy bacon myself from time to time — but I’m sure some carrots or potatoes or a slice of cake wouldn’t go amiss at this point.

Sounds rough! But maybe the silver lining of dropping all that bacon is that now you have an excuse to cook something else? Since you’re such a good cook!