Z is for Zahler: Classic Retold Fairytales

Zahler writes retold fairy tales. I chose Princess of the Wild Swans because it was one of my favorite fairy tales growing up.

My mother told me the story first. Although I can't remember her version exactly, the basics are always the same: a princess's brothers are changed into swans by an evil enchantress. The princess escapes into the wild where she learns that she can turn her brothers back if she weaves shirts out of nettles--only she must not speak at all during the months of weaving. 

In the Grimm-like ending, a prince finds and weds her. While he is out of town, his (evil) mother decides that the nettle-collecting princess is a witch and tries to burn her alive. The princess continues working on the shirts as she is being hauled to the stake. Her brothers fly over the town, and she throws the shirts over them. Since the last shirt isn't finished, that brother ends up with one wing instead of an arm.  

I was utterly enamored of this tale, which I first heard when I was five or six. When our family journeyed out West and stopped in the Redwood National Park, I was captivated by the "walk-in" trees. That was where the princess lived!

When I got older and started collecting books off Amazon, Nicholas Stuart Gray's The Seventh Swan was one of the first ones I hunted down (I also own Nicholas Stuart Gray's impressive short story collection, A Wind from Nowhere).  

Zahler's coming-of-age story, although a tad slow in parts, is an excellent adventure yarn and actually makes more sense than the original. For one, the princess still mustn't speak, but she can telephathically share her thoughts with her helpers. So the last 2/3rds of the book is not devoid of dialog.

I also never understood how nettles could be made into shirts and assumed that the nettles were sewn together. Zahler makes clear that the nettles go through a process that eventually results in yarn: nettle yarn is a real thing. Consequently, however, this means the princess needs help, which again makes more sense than some starving girl hanging out in the woods by herself. She is helped by one of her brother's sweethearts, that woman's brother, their witch mother, some of the guards, and the townspeople.

The evil enchantress-stepmother poses a problem, and the final chapters are quite exciting!

In the wrap-up, Zahler thankfully retains the prince with one wing: it's a great pay-off for a story. So often, fairy tales end rather like Star Trek episodes: How did the ship get fixed so fast? But the swan story leaves a hint that a problem can resolve but not always exactly as expected.

This completes the third A-Z list. Coming next . . . non-fiction!

Y is for Yolen: Dragons Belong to Sci-Fi, Not Just Fantasy

For Y, I went back to an oldie but goodie: Jane Yolen's Dragon's Blood, the first in her Pit Dragon Series.

Yolen is an extraordinarily prolific writer for YAs and kids. She is also the editor of multiple fantasy anthologies. And I'm not even going to try to list her awards.

I chose Dragon's Blood because I remembered reading it years ago. This is not always the case with writers whose works I haven't collected. I remember The Narnia Chronicles because I've read them so often (I had to put myself on a 10-year recess after I collected the 1970 paperbacks through Goodwill and Amazon). But Yolen, while not a writer I read much of, is a writer I am always aware of. And Dragon's Blood evidently made enough of an impact that I remembered not the plot, which I had entirely forgotten, but the experience of reading it.

It holds up remarkably well. In fact, if one wants to make a movie about dragons . . . I guess Dreamworks came along and made the decent How to Train Your Dragon, yet for dragon lovers (see comments on G is for Gannett), Dragon's Blood should have been a no-brainer as a film. Not only does it have a sympathetic hero and non-stop action, it has sociological and character complexity as well.

Of course, lovers of McCaffreys' Dragonriders of Pern would likely say the same. What interests me is that Yolen--possibly inspired by McCaffrey but certainly not possessed by her--both set their series on other worlds. How to Train Your Dragon doesn't, though it might as well be another world, bearing absolutely no resemblance to the Viking world I had to research for "Grave's Bride."

Pern illustration

Dragons seem so imminently  earthly, so much a part of human folklore, creating another world seems unnecessary. 

Except McCaffrey's and Yolen's other-worlds-with-dragons don't jar. Dragons may belong here, but they thrive better elsewhere. They also seem, rather like Patrick Stewart, to cross without discord between genres. Unlike other supernatural legendary beings, dragons do belong to space, not only to sword & sorcery.

X is for Xu (Ru Xu)

Yes, I found an "X" children's author!

Ru Xu wrote NewsPrints, a graphic novel published by Scholastic that takes place in a steampunk universe. The plot revolves around the boy Crow (Blue, the girl-dressed-as-a-boy, is the protagonist) and what exactly he is.

The art is not my favorite type of graphic art but not my least favorite either. My least favorite graphic novel art is overblow, rounded characters: it's like looking at chibii ALL THE TIME (it's a fine line: the art of Identity Crisis by Meltzer and Morales I like; the art of The New 52: Earth 2 I kinda can't stand).

NewsPrint reminds me of Superman: All Seasons, an Art Deco-like style reminiscent of classic comics; it shows up in the work of other contemporary illustrators, such as Brett Helquist (whose work on the Lemony Snicket novels is beyond perfect).

The plot of NewsPrint is unsurprising sci-fi* but well-rendered, and I checked at least twice while reading to see if a second volume has come out. Unlike so much of my reading, this book was published this year! So I assume another volume is in the works. 

*It falls into sci-fi rather than fantasy since it relies on scientific/machine explanations. More Verne than Wells but still within the genre.

W is for Wrightson, Book Collecting, and Australian Fantasy

Patricia Wrightson's An Older Kind of Magic is one of those books that I read as a kid, then couldn't find again for years. I remembered it with great fondness, rather like The Great and Terrible Quest. Unfortunately but not atypically, I couldn't remember the author.

I scoured published book lists (fantasy and science-fiction for teenagers, etc.) and then Amazon. (Googling is far less wieldy a research tool than often imagined--it is a search engine par excellence, but it can only produce what it can produce; in addition, it takes effort and imagination to whittle down a search--ohmygosh, 248,000 hits!--to manageable proportions.) At some point, I learned Wrightson's name, then forget it again.

Lo and behold, to my delight, I rediscovered the book in a local library!

The story is magical realism at its best--honest fantasy mixed almost seamlessly into everyday life. It is droll and even slightly (very slightly) dark (fantasy noir).

Its Australian setting was utterly unique for me as a kid--and still stands out. Not only does Wrightson explore downtown Sydney and its Botanical Gardens with non-heavy exposition, she utilizes Australia-specific fantasy creatures.

Wrightson makes a fascinating point in her final notes--a point echoed in New England folklore. When the English arrived in Australia, they attempted to bring with them the sprites and fairies and imps of English folklore. These beings didn't take. Likewise, when the English arrived in

New England, they weren't able to fully transfer over the trooping fairies of the English countryside. Apparently, "fairies" (using the term generically) are location-centered.

Consequently, Wrightson went to Aboriginal folklore to produce her Pot-Koorok, Nyol, and Bitarrs. They are kin to their British cousins--as well as  Native American serpents, giants, and little people--but unique to those shores.

Other Australasia teenage/children authors who produce this type of seamless magical realism:

• Margaret Mahy (New Zealand): The Tricksters, The Changeover
• Joan Phipson (Australia): The Watcher in the Garden 

  

  New Zealanders still pay tribute to their European ties.

  
  

 

V is for Vivian Vande Velde and Rumplestiltskin

Vivian Vande Velde writes mostly YA literature, mostly of the fantasy variety. One of my favorite stories is her Rumplestiltskin tale, "Straw Into Gold" which I originally read in Tales from the Brothers Grimm and Sisters Weird.  Vande Velde later compiled this and other stories all based around Rumplestiltskin into The Rumplestiltskin Problem (she created a similar collection around the tale of Little Red Riding Hood: Cloaked in Red). When I wrote Tales of a Quest, I based it loosely on Vande Velde's approach.

Although Tales of the Quest includes linking character commentary and Vande Velde's short story collection does not, she does begin the slim tome with an explanation of all that is wrong with the original tale: Why didn't the miller use his daughter to produce gold for him? Why would the daughter want to marry a king who threatened to kill her? Okay, maybe she had no choice. But why not ask Rumplestiltskin for some other type of help?

When I went to write my own Rumplestiltskin tale, originally published in Space & Time magazine, republished in Tales of the Quest, I made Rumplestiltskin a threat--it's one of my few horror stories. I also tried to bring up the economic problem of throwing too much gold at a problem (see below): inflation, anyone?

We lovers of fantasy love to play around with fantasy--I think writers are always drawn, to an extent, to world and stories that could, possibly, be manipulated for their own ends: I'll sit here and carefully unravel and reweave my little bit of the tale: no, no, I'm not in the way; keep doing your thing.

U is for Updale

For U, I read Johnny Swanson by Eleanor Updale, the author of the Montmorency novels.

Updale has the remarkable ability to create characters--in this case Johnny and Montmorency--who are not entirely sympathetic yet engage the empathy of the reader. The first 1/2 of Johnny Swanson presents the background of a possible grifter. Understandable if not entirely likable.

*Spoilers*

With the mother's arrest, however, the novel changes considerably in tone and purpose. It's a fast read, and Updale does a fantastic job capturing the time period (England between the two World Wars). She also is quite willing to showcase the seamy, unpleasant side of human nature. Unfortunately, this makes the sudden and considerable niceness of the characters in the conclusion a tad unrealistic. My experience--and my reading of cognitive dissonance--is that people tend to stick more closely to their opinions when disproved, not less.

Cardiff Police 1930

It seems far more likely to me that the police in Johnny's hometown would continue to insist on the rightness of their arrest than to instantly accept the version propounded by Johnny and the Welsh police, no matter how accurate. They might even be a tad irritated with Johnny for showing them up and respond by accusing him of hiding information (even though they were the ones that wouldn't listen--hey, human beings aren't consistent!).

Consequently, I felt a little uncomfortable with the resolution. It seemed so entirely unlikely based on the prior half of Updale's novel.

I do highly recommend Updale in general, especially the Montmorency novels.

T is for Taylor and 1950s Literature

For a T author, I read All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor nee Sarah Brenner. I may have read this book--or had it read to me--when I was younger. If so, I didn't remember, so the experience was fresh.

Overall, I recommend it despite the beginning and the end.

The first two chapters reminded me of those "wholesome" books which revolve around a child's bad behaviors; each naughty behavior is  successfully corrected by the end of a chapter ("And then Ruthie learned to be kind to others!"). These types of books were likely not as prevalent in the 1950s as we tend to think they were.  Nevertheless, their existence explains the post-1950 explosion of darker children's books, such as the Goosebumps series and ultimately the Lemony Snicket volumes (in which the narrator matter-of-factly informs us that "all those nice things that happen to those children in those other books are not going to happen here").

The last chapter of All-of-a-Kind Family, a family of five daughters, wraps up with the birth of the family's first son.

I have nothing against the event itself, and if it had happened halfway through the book, I would have welcomed it as a delightful next chapter in this slice-of-life narrative. One of my favorite children's series is about the Melendys, a family comprised of two girls and, eventually, three boys. And I get a huge kick out of the Anastasia books, which include the birth of Anastasia's baby brother Sam.

But All-of-a-Kind Family resolves with the birth of the baby boy: the reader experiences pages of  adventures and day-to-day activities in a family of girls. Hmmm, thank goodness it's paid off with the birth of a male heir.

Not exactly the most elevating message for young female readers in 1951.

The middle of the book is what makes All-of-a-Kind Family a decent and worthwhile read. A family of children doing childhood stuff is mildly interesting (The Betsy-Tacy books are oddly engaging for being so entirely about nothing--my first writing experiments at 7/8 were Betsy-Tacy wannabes). A family of little girls in early twentieth century New York City is quite interesting. A family of little Jewish girls in early twentieth century New York City is fascinating.

Aside from the first two chapters and the last, the book revolves around Jewish holidays. It definitely falls into the slice-of-life genre (there's an unobtrusive subplot of Charlie and the library lady). It is similar to those pinnacles of day-to-day youthfulness, The Betsy-Tacy series and the Katy series (which latter was voted one of the most popular for young teen girls in 1995; it's hard to find now). Readers enjoy each holiday not through lecture, as a history lesson, but through the thoughts and behavior and enjoyment of the family.

Sometimes a little bit of drama ensues, as when the girls get scarlet fever. Overall, the book reminded me of the street sequences in The Jazz Singer (some of the most remarkably filmed sequences in any movie). Welcome to 1912 in Jewish New York City: enjoy!

S is for Slote: Cloning for Kids

Speare, Stoltz, Seredy, Keatley Snyder, Streitfeild, Sutcliff: S was a difficult author to choose.

I settled on Alfred Slote who wrote one of my favorite (and first) sci-fi reads, Clone Catcher.

Told from the point of view of a clone catcher, the slim novel narrates the investigation of Arthur Dunn, who is commissioned to chase down the clone of a wealthy businessman. Dunn is portrayed as a Bogart-type P.I. with slightly less angst and no bad addictions. But he is wry and skeptical with a detective's instincts (my favorite books, even as a youngster, always circled back to mysteries!).

The future--which takes place in 2019--involves the creation of clones as walking, talking, breathing, thinking extra body parts for their originals. And yes, it is totally unlikely. Should cloning reach such a stage (amazing how all these scientific advancements have occurred without our noticing!), there would be zero need to produce sentient people who would then need to be fed and housed, protected and guarded. The organs could be stored in containers. Or the cloning material could be stored until the organs needed to be produced.

What interests me more is how contemporary attitudes changed to reflect the end of the book: clones deserve rights. When Star Trek: TNG tackled clones in the 1989 episode "Up the Long Ladder," the clones were treated as, well, a collection of body parts. Riker is offended that his genetic material might be used and everyone assumes that another "him" would be destroyed if he so wished it.

Bashir watching the clone grow.

Only 4 years later in real time (1993), a man who kills his own clone on Deep Space Nine is accused of the legal crime of murder while the remaining clone is treated as a fully independent being with rights.

In other words, as the science progressed--cloning becoming more and more of a possibility--the ethical treatment of hypothetical human clones advanced.

Slote should be given credit: he tackled these issues for kids in 1982.

Ethics aside, Clone Catcher is a good story with well-dropped hints/clues and a riveting climax. It isn't always easy to track down; it is worth the effort.  

Slote should be applauded for producing

three strong female characters, any one

of which could have been played

by Lauren Bacall.

R is for Raskin

Ellen Raskin wrote the Newbery Award Winner, The Westing Game. The Westing Game is a great book and one that carries a special place in my heart.

As a youngster, I had difficulty reading on my own. The Westing Game was the second book I ever read to myself (the first was about a cat) where I got so lost in the narrative, I forgot about whether or not I was reading slowly.

That was the beginning of the beginning: the ability to read in lines at the post office, at the DMV, during traffic jams . . . and also during math class, while working as a receptionist, during church . . .

Again, The Westing Game is a great book. However, it isn't necessarily the most memorable Ellen Raskin book for me. I quite like two of her lesser known works:  

• The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) 
• The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues.

The latter is an art-related mystery with Encyclopedia Brown-like anecdotes (can you guess the answer to this problem?) threaded through with gentle pathos. Her female and male protagonists are similar to Turtle and hmmm-hmmm from The Westing Game (I'm not going to give him away!).

The Westing Game has been made into a television movie, Get a Clue! (which grasps the idea and sells a lesson but misses the complicated human relationships, the irony, and the essential characters of Turtle and hmmm-hmmm). The Tattooed Potato should be made into a television series.

Great illustration from The Mysterious

Disappearance by the author

Q is for Quiller-Couch: the Virtues and Problems of Beauty & the Beast

I originally reviewed this book in connection to another A-Z list. 

* * *

Arthur Quiller-Couch was a nineteenth-to-twentieth century British writer/collector of verse who belongs to the same tradition as Andrew Lang. He concentrated more on verse than folklore, yet he did create a number of fairy tale re-tellings, among them Beauty & the Beast.

Beauty & the Beast is unlike many other fairy tales since it was originally crafted as a literary piece in its own right. Although the history is too long to go into here, the original version was written by a woman for the French salons, seventeenth century bohemian get-togethers which focused on the arts. It was later abridged by another French woman.

Quiller-Couch's version lies somewhere between Marianna Mayer and Mercer Mayer's picture book (see the dying Beast below) and Robin McKinley's more extended (and more altered) YA version.

Quiller-Couch attempts to address some of the ongoing issues, such as the sisters' jealousy. (McKinley disposes of this by having all the sisters gets along, a refreshing change; Disney, of course, disposed of it by making Beauty an only child.) Quiller-Couch's text provides the motivations and thought processes found in de Beamont's version. While Beauty accepts the family's new poverty with good grace, the sisters resist. They snarkily criticize Beauty: "You have low tastes and were born to this kind of life." When Beauty's father returns with her rose and the story of the Beast, the sisters chastise Beauty for asking for the rose in the first place; didn't she know that pearls and dresses are easier to come by?

Quiller-Couch's Beauty is naturally--*sigh*--absolutely sweet and perfect, a problem that McKinley disposes of by making her a normal, bookish teen-going-on-twenty-year old, utterly relatable to the young fantasy lovers who read the book.

Quiller-Couch relies on the device of the dream (used in some versions, not in others) whereby Beauty sees her human prince when she's asleep and believes him, at least initially, to be a captive of the Beast. The problem with this device is naturally the problem of many fairy tale tropes. When the dream prince begs Beauty to rescue him by "not relying on appearance," you'd think she'd say, "By gum! I bet the Beast is the prince in disguise!"

Hasn't she read any fairy tales and myths?

An interesting retelling would be if Beauty did tumble to the Beast's real identity early on but wasn't able to free him because she didn't really mean her protestations of affection.

Generally speaking, despite some problems (one more to go--see below), the tale flows well with few of the extreme oddities that attend tales like Hansel & Gretel (in which the parents must either be exonerated or vilified) or Jack in the Beanstalk (why hasn't his mother sent him to live with some relatives by now?) or Puss in Boots (why doesn't Puss simply take over the kingdom himself?).

Beauty & the Beast was constructed as a written story and the bones of the original construction show. The father has a good reason to return to the city (to see if his fortunes have revived). Beauty has a good reason to take her father's place at the Beast's table (the Beast insists on certain terms being kept). The protagonists are allowed time to get to know each other. And few writers, or Disney, can pass up the opportunity to detail Beauty's entertainments in the Beast's castle--ranging from a library filled with all the books ever written to a window that looks out on the world, allowing Beauty to pass her time watching the equivalent of television (Quiller-Couch's interesting invention), to activities, such as feeding the birds and having a snowball fight.

And the well-crafted final scenes deliver that moment of ultimate satisfaction--no, not the appearance of the prince but Beauty's rush to return to the castle and confess her love to the dying Beast.

And then he turns into the prince and everything falls apart.

This problem is so endemic to the story that writers continue to struggle with it. McKinley's Beauty is alarmed by the prince's appearance but then recognizes aspects of her Beast in the prince. Quiller-Couch relies on the assumption that any woman would prefer a prince to the Beast--it doesn't work, especially since his Beauty has already argued with the dream prince about her preference for the Beast. The psychological problem of Beauty settling for dream boy instead of insisting on reality lends credence to serious doubts about the marriage's long-term success.

The transformation works better

with a snake!

And Disney uses the Beast, not the prince, in its parks' parades.

The astonishing aspect of Beauty & the Beast is that like all good show-don't-tell narratives, it encourages the reader to fall in love with the Beast as much as Beauty does. In many ways, Tanith Lee's version--in which Beauty is so overwhelmed by the alien Beast's handsomeness that she returns home in stunning disbelief--is most accurate. She needs time to adjust. Eventually, she returns.

My review of Beauty & the Beast (2017) will be re-posted next.

P is for Peck

Richard Peck has written numerous YA books from funny to very, very serious. My favorite series by him, however, is usually found in the kid's section: the Blossom Culp books.

The Blossom Culp books, narrated in first-person by Blossom Culp, take place (mostly) in the early 20th century in a small town that has one automobile and still relies on outhouses for its sewer system. The setting and aura are reminiscent of Fitzgerald's Great Brain series.  There are four books total and one is a time travel story.

Blossom Culp is a young teen who discovers she has second sight. The first major book in the series is Ghosts I Have Been (preceded by a smaller book The Ghost Belonged to Me) which centers around the Titanic. Which goes to show that my interest in the Titanic preceded the movie--I read Ghosts I Have Been years earlier.

Blossom Culp is a great heroine because she is smart and sassy without being SMAAAAART and SASSSSSSSSY. Sometimes, teen female heroines make me feel the way I do when people kept pushing me to watch Veronica Mars because "you'll totally love it." I didn't. I much prefer the self-effacing and ironic Buffy to the in-your-face, look-at-me-being-smart-and sassy Veronica Mars.

Blossom is smart and funny and normal. She feels self-conscious and tells herself not to. She sometimes feels sad. She sometimes reflects on the oddities of life. She's relatable. She's a character, not a teen girl playing a part.

O is for O'Brien and Outlandish Science

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh is the type of book I usually don't read--I prefer people, even tiny people like the Borrowers or the Littles.

Anthropomorphized animals don't catch my interest. My apologies to all the Jacques fans in the universe but I never got into the Redwall series (I kept thinking, "Why can't these characters just all be human?").

Having said that, Mrs. Fribsy and the Rats of Nimh is a good book and a good movie (The Secret of Nimh).

The comparison is odd because although the movie makers used sizable chuck from the book, including the entire opening plot sequence, it is also HUGELY different. The book rests on the proposition that the rats are scientifically advanced and wish to become self-sufficient. The movie rests on the idea that scientific advancement comes with mystical advancement--the kind of idea that makes U.F.O. and Bigfoot nuts* happy but drives Sherlock Holmes and Sheldon Copper mad with irritation.

Justin meets Mrs. Brisby

And yet, it works in The Secret of Nimh. I'm not sure why although it could be that I never really bought into the whole Flowers of Algernon idea where the rats became smart due to injections. I mostly hated Flowers of Algernon (although I like its movie version, the Bourne Legacy). So the addition of a mystical element in Nimh didn't bother me even though I tend to side with Holmes and Copper when it come to real science.

Besides which, the movie ends on a more positive note than the book: namely, Justin doesn't die (his death is implied at the end of the book). Interestingly enough, O'Brien's daughter, who wrote a couple of sequels, keeps Justin alive; Justin is totally lovable in the book and when I saw the movie years later, I considered his image/voice a perfect match for his book character.

*U.F.O. and Bigfoot nuts didn't start out that way. In the early 20th century, hunting for the unknown was still a legitimate science; there were unexplored parts of the world (explorations that have now moved into the oceans and into space). Anything could be out there!

There are still explorers of this type among the U.F.O. and Bigfoot crowd although the authors of Abominable Science point out that they may be explorers; they are not trustworthy scientists.

Unfortunately, for the explorer-types, U.F.O. and Bigfoot believers expanded in the 1970s and 1980s to include mystics, fortune-tellers, astrologer-promoters, and crystal-gazers--basically, all the people in Independence Day who get destroyed by the alien spaceships while they are dancing on the roof and holding signs saying, "Welcome!" Belief in E.T. and Bigfoot moved inward, becoming a matter of self-indulgent naval-gazing and the use of hypnosis (as opposed to radio signals) to ponder the possibility of alien contact.

As you might imagined, these new-age believers are enemies of the original believers. Every sect has its fault lines.

N is for Nesbit

This cover captures the aura of

Nesbit's book. I dislike covers

or children that imply, "These

books are about kids;

they must be silly."

E. Nesbit was one of the most-read authors of my childhood. My family owned nearly all her children's books of which the Psammead Series is possibly her best known--Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, The Story of the Amulet--while The Railway Children is the most filmed/performed of all her books (and ends with one of the most dramatic scenes in all children's literature).

She uses a technique common in nineteenth century children's literature--that of the amused, outside narrator commenting occasionally on the characters' foibles. This approach can get a tad coy. (C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, both products of English narration, use this approach to a limited extent; Tolkien is far more disciplined in its use and Lewis is far less coy.) Despite the occasional "now, let's see what the boys and girls are up to" style, Nesbit survives because (1) the children are allowed to behave like children; (2) her yarns are darn good fun.

Nesbit did not only imagine outlandish adventures, she created narrative arcs that hold together throughout those outlandish adventures--and also expose the reader to worlds that are fascinating without being skin-crawling (see Frank L. Baum).

The Railway Children (2000)

She also has the remarkable ability to create an aura of sweet nostalgia or romantic, tender yearning. She is possibly the most slice-of-life children's author I've encountered. It's amazing that Hayao Miyazaki hasn't picked up any of her material! (Yet.)

Perhaps, indirectly, he did. Nesbit is one of the greats of children's fantasy, and she influenced/paved the way for an entire generation of like-minded British authors from Lewis and Tolkien to Diana Wynne Jones, Mary Norton (of Borrowers fame) and (even) J.K. Rowlings.

M is for McGraw

When I was younger, I became enamored with Ancient Egypt. I adored Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (I knew all the songs and could sing them, tunelessly, as I wandered about the house) plus Joseph and His Brothers, the video put out by the Genesis Project. At one point, I think I even tried to read Joseph Mann's Joseph in Egypt (I gave up).

Regarding books, I naturally read Zilpha Keatly Snyder's The Egypt Game. Like the girls in the story, I researched hieroglyphs and wrote out a kind of Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. During this time period, for Christmas, my sister Ann gave me a cosmetic kit of Ancient Egypt--I still own the perfume.

I also read and very much enjoyed a book that is difficult to find now:  Lost Queen of Egypt by Lucille Morrison, a book I must have read two or three times. It tells the story of Ankhesenamen, the daughter of Akhetaten and Nefertiti, who married Tutankhamun and may or may not have vanished after his death (which, according to current investigations, was likely not a murder but still could have been).

Another influence was Mary Stoltz's Cat in the Mirror in which a modern teen experiences her past life as an Egyptian maiden. Like with many of Stoltz's protagonists, the experience allows her to tackle a teenage problem in her personal, contemporary life. When I was in sixth grade, a fellow student reported on this book for an assignment. She created a diorama in a box--one side of the box was the girl's modern bedroom; the other side was the girl's Ancient Egyptian bedroom. I can still see it in my head! 

My biggest literary influence was Mara: Daughter of the Nile by Eloise McGraw. I wish I could say it was McGraw herself--that is, I was captivated by her writing. But this is one of those cases where the subject matter drew me as much as the writing. Mara is the only book of McGraw's that I have read.

Mara is a slave who is recruited to be a spy for a young man who is trying to help Thutmose III oust Hatshephut from the throne (in reality, Hatshephut ruled successfully for 20 years--her reign was prosperous and free from excessive wars; she died of natural causes). The spy/thriller elements of the story are well-told. Mara's growth from understandably self-serving to passionately dedicated is believable. And there's a romance! I have loved reading romances all my life.

My Dungeons & Dragons friends could have the medieval time period, what with the cold and the rats and the diseases and bad plumbing. I'd take Ancient Egypt. It seemed so . . . civilized--despite the spies and angry priests, possible murders and crazy kings . . .

L is for Laughter

Originally, L was the Lowry. I determined early on that I wouldn't discuss The Giver because (1) I only read it once; (2) I don't care for dystopia fiction (yes, I have read Lord of the Flies; yes, it is good; yes, I have no desire to read it again).

I wished instead to praise Lois Lowry's amazing comedies--which I do below:

Well-written comedies remind me of the time I tried to paint abstract art. I can produce fairly respectable representational art. But the one time I tried abstract art, it looked like mud.

It "looks" easy; it isn't--not for self-conscious adults anyway. I won't argue with those who claim, "My five-year old could do that!" Yeah, your five-year-old probably could for the same reason that non-Hollywood child actors often get the leads in movies like Glory and The Black Stallion. They bring a freshness and naturalness to the roles that adult actors can only reproduce through sheer willpower or luck.

Likewise, not everyone can be a comic, no matter how effortless it appears (and good comedy should appear effortless). Anyone can be a tragedian. Let's face it: it is EASY to be depressed and angsty and down on life. It's EASY to claim profundity by talking about BIG TOPICS. Twain hilariously spoofs this easy profundity in Huckleberry Finn when Finn learns about the young woman who produced death poetry--and people took her seriously:

O no. Then list with tearful eye,
   Whilst I his fate do tell.
His soul did from this cold world fly
   By falling down a well.

They got him out and emptied him;
   Alas it was too late;
His spirit was gone for to sport aloft
   In the realms of the good and great. 

Comedy is hard. Good comedy with banter and strong pay-offs is even harder. You think Romeo & Juliet is difficult to teach? (It isn't.) Try Much Ado About Nothing!

Lowry's comedic works are hilarious with strong characterizations, excellent banter, and a deceptively light tone. May they never be forgotten:

Anastasia series (9 books)
Taking Care of Terrific

If you are dead-set on seriousness and don't care for dystopia fiction, check out these books by Lowry:

A Summer for Die
Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye

Following my tribute to Lowry's fiction is the extra "laughter" part:

Since I'm discussing hilarious children's fiction, and I've reached the "L"s, I have to mention Astrid Lindgren. She's best known for writing Pippi Longstocking, but she also wrote a hilarious series about a young boy named Emil: Emil and the Soup Tureen, Emil and Piggy Beast . . .

Basically, Lindgren created Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) before Watterson did. The individual tales, vignettes, are not only clever and funny but helped by the equally funny drawings. 

K is for Konigsburg

Konigsburg illustration

And she's great!

Okay, that's the end of the post.

No, not really. 

Konigsburg wrote many books, among them The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, for which she won the Newbury and the Newbury Honor awards. (She achieved the Newbury again over twenty years later for a View from Saturday.) In anticipation of this post, I read her last book The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World and was surprised at how quickly I sped through it; at seventy-seven, Konigsburg hadn't lost her knack for an unusual premise with interesting characters.

The Mixed-Up Files is one of my favorite children's books. My mother read it to me in my youth before I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. My eventual visit there was highly influenced by me trying to spot all the places the brother and sister visited from the fountain to the restaurant to the four-poster bed.

Konigsburg also wrote a lesser known book of which I am quite fond: (George). It is the story of a young teen, Ben, who has an imaginary friend--George--who says all the sarcastic things that he never says. George is also quite witty and insightful, Hobbes to an introverted Calvin.

The marvelous thing about this book is that although the young man worries that he might be a bit strange and/or sent in for counseling, the author's solution is not to get him "fixed" (sticking with the big cat theme there). The author's solution is to have George and Benjamin's personalities mesh as he gets older. After all, George--like Hobbes--lends ballast and confidence to Benjamin's observant nature.

I think that sometimes people forget that although our culture has gotten more tolerant in the past thirty-odd years, it has lost some tolerance too. Nowadays, everybody has to have a label!

Ben and George don't.

As a person who actually considered buying a Bluetooth, so she wouldn't look crazy working out character dialog out loud in her car, I totally approve.

J is for Jones, Diana Wynne

Diana Wynne Jones (1934-2011) was a magnificent fantasy novelist. A number of her books fall into shaggy dog territory--Howl's Moving Castle the novel is surprisingly less cohesive than Hayao Miyazaki's interpretation (though just as much fun).

What sets Jones on high as a master storyteller is her use of character alongside fantastical developments. I am especially fond of her Chrestomanci series; my favorite of that series is Cat Chant's book, Charmed Life.

I am particularly fond of Charmed Life because I first heard it read by Tony Robinson, an audiobook version that is difficult to find now (Robinson has narrated a number of children's books, including several by Terry Pratchett). His reading of Charmed Life is wonderful: deadpan, funny, captivating--all delivered in Tony Robinson's singular voice (you can hear his voice on his Wikipedia page and below).

I also highly recommend Witch Week and the "prequel" to the series, The Lives of Christopher Chant (each book in the Chrestomanci series can be read separately).

Among other roles, Tony Robinson plays Baldrick on Black Adder:

I is for Ibbotson and Irritating Arguments about Fantasy

Eva Ibbotson is a fun writer. She is also a helpful rebuttal to the argument that a famous author eliminates other authors' chances.

During the Harry Potter years, Ibbotson (and other children fantasy authors) received MORE notice, not less; in fact, in some cases--like with Ibbotson--their books were reprinted. The reason? Kids enthralled by Harry Potter went looking for more fantasy authors, especially in the lagging months between each of Rowlings' books (remember being a kid waiting for a holiday to arrive? that's how Potter fans felt!).

A variation on the "famous author eliminates others" argument is fairy tale aficionados who accuse Disney of corrupting the field. I find this argument bizarre in the extreme. I was brought up on Disney--and Perrault--and Lang--and Cricket magazine. (I wasn't brought up on Grimm, despite my mom receiving a Maurice Sendak-illustrated copy of Grimm volumes as a birthday present. I was prone to nightmares, and Grimm would not have helped. Occasionally, I would walk by the volumes--they stood on a desk in the living room--and experience a shiver down the spine. Scary books!! And that would be enough horror for that week.)

Scary books!!

The problem with the anti-Disney argument is that the arguers assume that without the presence of Disney, kids would be exposed to all the authors/collectors I referenced above. Which is utter nonsense.

It is possible that a kid without Disney would go searching for other fairy tales--but that same child is just as likely to do what I did. Similar to Harry Potter fans, I wasn't satisfied with a Disney movie (or record album) here and there. I wouldn't have been satisfied with Disney picture books either--any more than I was with Dr. Seuss. I went looking for more because one type of tale was never going to be enough.

I rather like Sleeping Beauty: the prince

has a job: he isn't simply a prop, as in Cinderella.

(Sidenote: Several years ago, I witnessed a mother in a library fiercely informing her child, "You can pick out only TWO books." My thought: "Ohmygosh, only TWO? It's child abuse!")

The truth is, without Disney, it is likely that some kids (and many parents) would never be exposed to fairy tales at all.

And that would be very, very, very sad.