Cart and Cwidder (Dalemark Quartet, Book 1) by Diana Wynne Jones

Title: Cart and Cwidder, Dalemark Quartet, Book 1
Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Publication: Greenwillow, hardcover, 1975
Genre: Children’s Fantasy

Plot: Clennen, his wife Lenina, and their three children are traveling musicians, and among the few who move between the North and South regions of Dalemark. His parents deliver messages and gossipy news as they travel and sometimes take passengers with them. There are political overtones: the South is more restrictive and “[y]ou dared not put a good, or a word, out of place for fear of being clapped in jail.”