Fantasy Kipling, Rudyard: Puck of Pook's Hill. v1. 10 Mar 2011

[carmenchu]

Kipling can hardly be matched as a story-teller, and this is a collection of related stories that, although written for (rather advanced) children, make capital reading for everybody. In the words of the author, on the introduction to the sequel 'Rewards and Fairies':

Dan and Una, brother and sister, living in the English country, had the good fortune to meet with Puck, alias Robin Goodfellow, alias Nick o’ Lincoln, alias Lob-lie-by-the-Fire, the last survivor in England of those whom mortals call Fairies. Their proper name, of course, is ‘The People of the Hills’. This Puck, by means of the magic of Oak, Ash, and Thorn, gave the children power

To see what they should see and hear what they should hear,
Though it should have happened three thousand year.

The result was that from time to time, and in different places on the farm and in the fields and in the country about, they saw and talked to some rather interesting people. One of these, for instance, was a Knight of the Norman Conquest, another a young Centurion of a Roman Legion stationed in England, another a builder and decorator of King Henry VII’s time; and so on and so forth...

This text (from PG) I have illustrated with TWO different sets of pictures, both from the Internet Archive, besides some correcting, restoring of italics, and so forth.

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[Jellby]

Thank you for these two books. I hope you don't mind my telling you about a couple of little things that I just noticed from the metadata:

1. You've used curly quotes and apostrophes in the text, that's great. But in the title (in the .opf, not the filename) you have a straight apostrophe.

2. You list the two illustrators in a single tag: <dc:contributor opf:role="ill">Arthur Rackham and H. R. Millar</dc:contributor>. Please use one <dc:contributor> element (and with the "file-as" attribute) per person. The other book (Rewards and Fairies) has no illustrator in the metadata.

[carmenchu]

I don't mind in the very least: thanks indeed for the tips.
How is one to learn and correct mistakes if same are not pointed out?
Trouble is, I know nothing about acceptable metadata for epub - I use Sigil for 'finishing touches' after converting through Calibre, and present version doesn't give direct access to the .opf, and so far I find both it and some of your comments thereof slightly above my head ... time and practice should teach.
I will remember not to put several illustrators in a single entry - does it go for sources and so forth?
For the rest, I am afraid Sigil shall manage for me a little longer.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by carmenchu

I will remember not to put several illustrators in a single entry - does it go for sources and so forth?

Yes, in general you can put multiple instance of all metadata, including title, language, etc. (and I believe Sigil does allow it too). Oh, and by the way, since you can have multiple "creators", I think it's better to include the illustrators as "creator" instead of "contributor".

For the rest, I am afraid Sigil shall manage for me a little longer.

The rest is just copypasting the curly apostrophe from anywhere in the book to the title. I've seen commercial ebooks with this same "problem": curly quotes in the text, but not in the title, title page and copyright page.

[Teorist]

Thanks for posting this. I have been looking for this book.