The Book Gargoyle

Alchemy and Meggy Swann, by Karen Cushman

2011-08-12T08:40:00.000-07:00

Karen Cushman is a delight, and I could stop my review right there. The integrity and authority with which she embroiders unsentimentalized and yet hopeful, trimphant narratives of Elizabethan England -- about powerless girls, no less -- leaves me in awe and commits me to working harder at my own craft. Meggy Swann, unwanted by both her parents, is a cripple by birth foisted off upon her self-absorbed father, an amoral alchemist toiling to convert elements into gold. He barely takes notice of her existence. Her only friend is Louise, a crippled goose. But Meggy makes others in time, despite those who view her handicap as proof of an alliance with the devil. Roger Oldham, in particular, an apprentice to an actor, becomes her friend. Here's an exchange between them, trimmed a bit:

Meggy: "I am not your Mistress Swann, you tottering wretch."

Roger: "Fortunate that is for me, you mewling, flap-mouthed flax wench."

Meggy: "Gleeking swag-bellied maggot."

Roger: "Knoddy-pated whey face."

...

Meggy: "You bloviating windbag."

Roger: "You, Mistress Margret, are passing skilled at this matter of insults, you milk-livered minnow."

Meggy: "I grew up in an alehouse, you wart-necked mammering clap dish."

Much more was left out in the interests of space, but ... pure Hepburn and Tracy, that is! I don't remember when a book has transported and delighted me so well. Even if historical fiction isn't your young reader's mug of ale, urge Alchemy and Meggy Swann upon them. This gleeking swag-bellied maggot insists upon it.

Marvelous Middle Grade Summer Reads, mid-July edition

2011-07-16T12:30:00.000-07:00

I’ve read some wonderful middle grade novels so far this summer, and there’s a tall stack still waiting for me. My Son Number Two, who is my great reader, has confirmed all these endorsements. Kid tested, mother approved.

The Shadows: The Book of Elsewhere, volume 1, by Jacqueline West, 2010.
Olive is certain something’s moving inside the paintings on the wall of the rambling old house her parents just bought. Cats can talk, and mysterious glasses let Olive enter the paintings and talk to the sad and trapped paint people inside. A fun and frightful new series beginner.

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, book one: The Mysterious Howling, 2010, and book two, The Hidden Gallery, 2011, by Maryrose Wood.
These first two titles in a new series employ an original premise that successfully uses oh-so-familiar story elements in a whimsical Victorian setting and voice. Mystery, humor, and satire mix happily with sinister (yet unidentified) villains, high-minded governesses, frivolous society brides, and children actually raised by wolves. We gobbled these. In fact, my son and I squabbled over who got to read them first. The alpha wolf in our house won, naturally.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, 1986.
How did I miss this book? The first page was so scrumptiously brilliant I groaned with envy and squealed with delight, both together. When the Witch of the Waste casts a spell upon Sophie, an eldest daughter whose only talent seems to be making stylish hats, she turns into a ninety year old woman, and hobbles off to seek her fortune. The only place willing to give shelter to an old hag is the moving castle belonging to the notorious Wizard Howl, who is said to devour young girls. Newly old Sophie feels safe enough, and signs on as Howl’s cleaning lady. Classic Wynne Jones; this provocative collision-of-worlds tale rests solidly on fairy-tale bedrock but offers satisfying complexity, and irresistible, unforgettable characters. I’m reading a sequel now.

The Iron Ring by Lloyd Alexander

2011-05-25T22:36:00.000-07:00

In 1998 my second son was born. He was a lazy nurser and didn't gain weight as fast as doctors would have liked. I settled on a plan to nurse that boy for as long as I could, feeding after feeding. Eventually he thrived, but the long hours, day and night while still raising a toddler made me loopy. I stumbled into the Bloomfield, NY public library and saw a shiny new children's book on display: The Iron Ring by Lloyd Alexander. Somehow I'd made it through my childhood never hearing of him. The cover intrigued me so I checked out the book, and started reading it during that night's wee-hour feedings. It was the first children's book I'd read in probably six or eight years.

It so completely enthralled and enchanted me that when I finished I looked up Lloyd Alexander's home address in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, and wrote him a gushing letter, telling him how his book had reminded me of my childhood dream of writing children's books someday. He very kindly wrote back and encouraged me. I began devouring all the other Lloyd Alexander titles I could find, and wrote to him again. Again, he responded with friendly warmth. I won't ever forget that thrill I felt. Most readers get this phase out of their systems at age 11, but I had never written a letter to an author before.

I just finished reading The Iron Ring again tonight. I am a children's author now. Perhaps I wanted to revisit that place where the dream first reawakened. I wish I still had a little baby to hold. Instead, I was up till midnight with a fifth grader finishing a project that was assigned a month ago, and is due tomorrow. Motherhood still demands its late nights. And I can't read the novel like I did the first time. I've read enough Lloyd Alexander to recognize his trademark formula: the hapless youth with grand dreams sets out on a wild adventure with a wise, clever, beautiful (but lower-rank) female, and acquires a motley crew of wise-cracking eccentrics, talking creatures, with maybe a mystic and a heavy thrown in. Hapless youth loses all, learns humility, defeats bad guy w/o bloodying his hands, gets girl. An appealing formula, to be sure, and yet in this second reading of the novel, I find myself flinching a bit at how readily the characters (based on Indian folklore) chuck their caste system by the end. And I've received enough criticism for love-at-first-sight in my own first novel not to cringe at it now.

But for all that, I still enjoyed the book this time around, even if not in the same wide-eyed, rapturous way. I am older. I read differently. I never wanted that to happen. But if I gush less, it doesn't mean I feel less. I can feel Alexander's commitment to compassion, even if he may not see all the risks inherent in appropriating another culture's folklore. I remember the compassion with which he wrote back promptly twice to a desperate house-bound young twenty-something lactating looney and said, "I'm sure you can be a writer someday!" And I remember that bringing books into the world is a generous act on behalf of the hungry readers who'll devour them. This is the part I sometimes forget, now that I'm more in the kitchen and less in the dining room. Dreams may lose sparkle over time, but they don't have to lose their meaning.

Lloyd Alexander, 1924-2007

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

2011-02-20T16:36:00.001-08:00

How shall I read Ethan Frome? It's my first Edith Wharton novel. My studies in early 20^th Century American literature are grossly lacking, so I fear I lack the proper reader's tools to appreciate all that I should. I'm left mystified, and wishing for enlightenment. I can only unravel my questions by spoiling the plot thoroughly, so be warned.

Ethan Frome tries to be a distinctively New England story, albeit with a decidedly particular slant on what it meant to be a New Englander. Wharton's own preface states: "…I had an uneasy sense that the New England of fiction bore little—except a vague botanical and dialectical—resemblance to the harsh and beautiful land as I had seen it. Even the abundant enumeration of sweet-fern, asters and mountain-laurel, and the conscientious reproduction of the vernacular, left me with the feeling that the outcropping granite had in both cases been overlooked." As an upstate New Yorker who now makes Massachusetts her home, I always know I've left my old home state for my new one when granite cliffs greet me just over the state line on I-90. New England has a stony spine underneath. I wonder what Wharton would think of our suburbs and strip plazas and central air today. Her "Starkfield" is a cold, stoic, frozen New England town. The landscape and the weather are a powerful presence, almost a character in their own right. The story's central problems directly relate to winter – snowstorms, blocked roads, even sledding. Starkfield seems always to be under the iron grip of snow. The entire novel, though it spans decades, all takes place in winter, as though winter was all that New England ever knew. Even the recollections voiced by townspeople almost never seem to acknowledge the existence of summer, or spring.

Ethan Frome is the subject of the story, and the unnamed narrator proclaims him to be "the most striking figure in Starkfield" on page one. I spent the remainder of my read waiting impatiently for that claim to be justified – for Ethan Frome to prove himself a worthy object of sustained interest. I believe we're meant to see him as a strong, silent type – lean and rugged, with deep inner passions – granite made human, as it were. But I couldn't quite sustain that view of him. I read him as someone with a social disorder and a crippling fear of loneliness, something we would now diagnose and treat with social skill therapy. It fits perfectly with his year spent "at the technical college in Worcester." As a graduate of WPI's rival technical college, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, I've known plenty of people whose moody reticence is not caused by a fascinating inner greatness, but by paralyzing shyness, plain and simple. Not so glamorous, but there it is.

Wharton's writing is as spare and economical as her hero is, punctuated with shafts of great beauty. Her sensibilities may resemble Frome's: "He had always been more sensitive than the people around to the appeal of natural beauty. His unfinished studies had given form to this sensibility and even in his unhappiest moments field and sky spoke to him with a deep and powerful persuasion. But hitherto the emotion had remained in him as a silent ache, veiling with sadness the beauty that evoked it. He did not even know whether any one else in the world felt as he did, or whether he was the sole victim of this mournful privilege." Indeed it is this aesthetic sense that does much to make Ethan Frome sympathetic and interesting.

Frome is a tragic hero, a restless mind trapped into a stultifying marriage he entered into in a rash and vulnerable moment in very young adulthood. By the end of the story the outward details of what happened are plain enough. But even after re-reading the ending twice, I still wonder, what happened? What did Miss Mattie say to Ruth Varnum? Why could Ethan have lived, if Mattie had died? What's the real state of Zenobia's soul, then and now? The author acknowledges, as does the narrator, that this is a story where you wonder right throughout whom one should believe. Every perspective on the narrative can be ignorant, or biased. Even the principal chunk of the narrative, written in third person, and supposedly pieced together and deduced by the narrator (which makes little sense, really), can perhaps be doubted. Except I'm not sure what Mrs. Wharton had in mind there, and while I understand there's a whole school of critical thought that says, in effect, "Phooey on what the author meant, the text is all we have," I still can't help feeling that Mrs. Wharton took confusion too far, or else I missed something. If it's meant to be a "YOU figure out what really happened" kind of story, then I want to chuck it out a window.

The back jacket flap of my 1986 paperback (first publication, 1911) calls it a "story of great love shadowed by tragedy." I don't call it a great love. It's infantile, and a bit embarrassing. Ethan seems wholly susceptible throughout. Not a man of heroic passions, but pitiably weak and indecisive, suggestible. He has my sympathy most in how he shoulders up under his poverty. Am I applying a moralistic judgment to his choices? I hope not. I can empathize with his plight, but it's of his own weak-willed creation. The final outcome would seem to support that sense of embarrassment. He's not even allowed a tragic hero's glorious death. Even that gets botched. Does that not perhaps make him all the more tragic?

And yet, and yet, the very fact that I'm scowling and fussing over this story means that Wharton has done something interesting. She's challenged me, she's vexed me, and every argument that I mount against the story can itself be a reason to take another look at it. I'm reminded of the aggravation I felt at reading and critiquing The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. I didn't love the book when I read it in college, but I couldn't dismiss the superb control that created it.

For all that it bothered me, I couldn't put it down until I was done. It's a short book and a swift read. I may not race out to buy another Wharton novel (tell me if I should, please) but I often find that I learn as much, or more, from books that I don't love as I learn from books I gobble like candy. I'd love to hear thoughts from others who've read and studied the novel. Enlighten me.

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens: Tracing Roots in Wodehouse & Tolkien

2011-02-18T19:59:00.002-08:00

As a child, I reread my sister’s copy of Little Women until my mother bought me my own, which I then lovingly destroyed. But I never made much sense of Chapter 10, “The P.C. and P.O.,” where the four March sisters conduct a meeting of their own Pickwick Club and induct Laurie as a member. Each sister goes by the name of a Pickwickian.

I could only scratch my head.

I recently read Jane Smiley’s biography of Dickens, in which she describes how The Pickwick Papers, first appearing in serialized form in March of 1836, made the young Charles Dickens an almost overnight literary sensation. I had never read the novel, so I set out to do so, despite Smiley’s warning that modern readers find the novel largely inaccessible. I can’t fully dispute that charge, but it ought not to be the case. Though long, rambling, episodic, and at times seemingly unfocused, The Pickwick Papers is still hilarious, snarky, rich, ridiculous, and enormously worth reading.

But more on that to come.

The Pickwick Papers is an early farce, and the first flexings of the literary muscle that would dominate (and partially create) the 19th Century novel, and indeed, all English prose fiction since. Even if modern readers may overlook Pickwick, it’s clear to me that generations of authors have known and loved the Pickwick Club, and it has sent tendrils of influence into modern works. Below are just two I noticed.

The first is a clear line connecting Pickwick to the huge catalog of farces by the comic master, P.G. Wodehouse. Wodehouse’s genius is undiminished in my eyes by the discovery that his formula for success had a precedent in Pickwick. His most successful Bertie and Jeeves novels provide the best illustration.
Both Pickwick and Wodehouse follow a band of bungling gentleman bachelors around the English countryside. The characters are useless but endearing, bickering but loyal when tested. They roam from house to country house, falling in love and spreading havoc. The main character, always aloof from matters of love, is nevertheless far from immune to getting into embarrassing and compromising scrapes with women, including prompting a breach of marriage contract suit (something perennially threatened in Wodehouse’s comedies). The main character is wholly dependent on his loyal, streetwise, practical commoner servant. Sam Weller and Jeeves are quite different personalities, but both are memorable originals, and both, in fact, make their series. Both Jeeves and Sam Weller provide needed cohesion for their respective episodic adventures. The Pickwick Papers’s serial sales began to soar when Sam Weller entered the narrative.

Both Dickens and Wodehouse employ a superabundant cast of memorable characters and recognizable types. Both authors display an affectionate regard for their (anti-) heroes’ follies. The Pickwick Club is a roaming pack of innocents, led by Mr. Pickwick, whose genteel manners may be more polished and mature than his companions’, but whose wisdom isn’t much greater than that of his younger charges. They’d all be lost in the woods still were it not for Sam Weller. The same could be said for Bertie Wooster and Jeeves.

Let’s look at another pair that I can’t help thinking traces its roots to Mr. Pickwick and Sam – Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee. I still have Tolkien on my mind from my January rereading of Lord of the Rings, but in Frodo and Sam I couldn’t help noticing the replayed dynamic of a master who is painted as noble of character yet greatly in need of the practical, worldly-wise, common sense service of his loyal Sam in order to survive, that I saw in The Pickwick Papers. The bond between Frodo and Sam caught my attention more on this recent read, and puzzled me. I had nothing more than Tolkien’s word and Bilbo’s money to persuade me why Frodo deserved to be “Master,” and Sam his loyal subservient, yet that loyalty and that gulf of rank and superiority between them was acknowledged, understood, and even revered (by Sam) throughout. By contrast, the deep affection between Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller rang much more believably to me, and yet I wonder to what extent all such master-servant relationships in British fiction are idealized, perhaps, as a means of attempting to reconcile a fundamentally unequal social structure?

Be that as it may, Sam Weller is endlessly endearing, his spontaneous similes are delicious, and I wish I had Mr. Pickwick for a friend. This is one way Dickens shines for me, especially in his comic novels. His affection for his characters is ever-apparent, no less so for his allowing them to make convivial nincompoops of themselves. And the wit that pervades his narrative voice is a fountain that never stops bubbling and spilling over the sides. No wonder the book made 24-year old Dickens a star.

All this said, The Pickwick Papers isn’t a perfect read for time-pressed readers in 2011. It’s LONG. It’s episodic. It meanders at first, and ramps up slowly. It takes a bit of time to hit its full comic stride and confidence (cue Sam Weller). Before long the affectionate irony of the colorful narrative voice is in full bloom, a source for constant laugh-out-loud delight, but for me at least, it took some chapters to get my bearings. Again, thank heaven for talented audiobook actors. Mine was narrated by Patrick Tull, and published by Recorded Books, and I cannot imagine a greater talent to bring all the characters to life and to add so much humor and nuance to the production.

So if you’ve got 36 hours of drive time to spare, find The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens and narrated by Patrick Tull. Give yourself time. It’s okay if your mind wanders now and then. Sam Weller will get you where you need to be, on time, well dressed and fed, with a pint in your fist and a guinea in your pocket. I grieved when it ended, and smiled for a long time after.

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

2011-01-29T12:41:00.000-08:00

For three days I’ve been the hopeless prisoner of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South (1855), presented in audiobook format by BBC and superbly narrated by Juliet Stevenson. It’s 18.3 hours long. Now that it’s done I’m pining. I feel adrift, severed from scenes where my imagination belongs.

North and South is a romance set during the Second Industrial Revolution in Victorian England, and “north” and “south” refer to regions of England which interpreted England’s changing society and economy quite differently. I wonder how Elizabeth Gaskell escaped my knowledge all these years when she and I could have been such friends.

I presume Mrs. Gaskell knew her Jane Austen novels intimately. Comparison with Pride and Prejudice is inevitable. Both Pride and Prejudice and North and South bring two proud, stubborn, unlikely lovers with starkly different backgrounds into each other’s orbits. Paragons of manhood and irresistible women meet, sparks fly, what’s not to like? The female protagonists are not beautiful at first, but ultimately revealed to be utterly bewitching. Good, good, a well-known convention; every romance reader’s inner fantasies are thus far stroked. Both heroines are notably braver, cleverer, and more sensible than their flighty, shallow female contemporaries. Better still. In both stories, strong aversion and strong attraction do battle; impetuous proposals are prematurely made and indignantly refused, ushering in agonizing prolonged periods of awkwardness, introspection, re-examination, stiffness, self-doubt, and finally … whatever outcome the author had in mind. Relinquishing pride and changing one’s mind are fundamental to character arcs in both books. The outer shape of both romances is obviously similar.

But Pride and Prejudice is more comical, with a sharp satirical wit, and it concerns itself mainly with manners, money, and marriage among turn of the 18th Century aristocracy and gentry. North and South is a more earnest book, with obvious social reform sensibilities. If Elizabeth Bennett’s charms are chiefly her quick wit and her fine teeth, Margaret Hale’s are her lofty ideals and her limpid eyes.
North and South invites its readers to scrutinize shifting class boundaries in the changing economy of Industrial Britain. The novel acquaints itself with labor unions, strikes, riots, the volatile markets for raw and finished goods, squalor, suicide, industrial pollution, public education, and employee relations--scarcely subjects for Austenian salon novels that only concern themselves with laces, the social season, and who’s wintering at Bath. From our modern vantage point, with our experience of evolved labor laws and social services, as well as the dangers of reckless capitalism and pollution, Gaskell’s dinner party discussions of industrial ethics seem quaint and rustic, and at times misguided, but for her time, the debates reveal both an idealistic embracing of the new economy (why can’t a merchant be a gentleman?) and a nuanced, cautionary treatment of unrestrained industry and pollution. Gaskell’s answer to the master-laborer conundrum seems to be a genteel sort of master who listens to workers, respects them, and considers their quality of life – an image redolent of idealized manorial feudalism, with its reciprocal responsibilities, and everyone content whilst the system hums smoothly. At the same time, she argues in favor of a more inclusive and upwardly mobile model of British society than manorial feudalism ever allowed.

Morality and faith can’t be overlooked in the workings of the novel. The book’s significant events are set in motion when Margaret’s father, a country parson, admits to a crisis of personal doubt and leaves the Church of England, thereby assuaging his conscience but thrusting his family into poverty. A major turning point in Margaret’s own story is her moral crisis surrounding a lie she told in order to protect someone’s life. The extent of her guilt and anguish might mystify modern readers who might weigh a life against a lie in the moral scales and see no problem with Margaret’s choice, but we need to remember the absolutism of Victorian morality to fully understand Margaret. Mr. Thornton’s integrity becomes the deciding argument in his favor as both a potential lover and a gentleman, and Margaret is only ready to embrace (ahem) him once she has performed an inner penance for her sin. Gaskell’s character study of pride brings both her lordly main characters to a place of humility more morally and religiously colored than the humility Mr. Darcy and Miss Bennett acquired, which was essentially social. Denominational faith matters in this novel as well, and we observe characters expressing dismay at others’ non-orthodoxy, yet the text seems to me fairly liberal and tolerant in its acceptance of religious Otherness, from Mr. Hale’s lapsed Anglican non-belief to Frederick’s newfound Catholicism to Bessie’s impassioned Methodism.

Modern readers may face a few hurdles in appreciating this novel. For my part, I’m extremely glad I heard Juliet Stevenson’s audiobook performance before reading the novel. Her talent with dialects, and her thoughtful creation of each character made them more sympathetic than I might otherwise have found them. 21st Century readers may share some of my impatience with Margaret initial passionlessness, and her passivity in the second half of the novel, though I remind myself that a series of devastating losses may indeed have thrust her into a paralyzing depression, and in any case, inertness was a culturally familiar role for gentlewomen to play. At least Margaret does look inward and rebuild herself (and start to blush now and then). Early in the novel she was a stronger, more decisive (if unromantic) character. Modern readers may also feel some frustration that Margaret relies so much on men to make needed arrangements and communications for her, and that she lingers on for months under clouds of unresolved misery that a single written letter could have cleared up. But letters do not romantic scenes enable, and perhaps we can be generous and attribute her reticence to dignified reserve. I’m glad that Margaret asserts her independence (economic and spiritual) by the end and is free to act as her own woman in finally rejecting old class distinctions and choosing her own entrepreneurial and matrimonial happiness.

If I’ve analyzed and chopped the novel to death, thereby stripping it of its joys, let me make myself quite clear: I was entirely captivated by this story. I forfeited significant sleep for it. I fretted until I knew the ending. I’ve reheated and re-eaten the ending and other significant scenes many times since. I’m somewhat fearful of renting the recent miniseries, though I’ve heard good things about it, lest I destroy my own image of the people and places. (Tell me if I should relent and watch it anyway, please!) I can’t wait to spend more time with Mrs. Gaskell’s works. And my crush on a certain figure in the novel will be a guilty pleasure for many rereads to come.

Tolkien: It’s About the Journey. Setting, language, society, and race in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

2011-01-14T05:52:00.000-08:00

My cat, by instinct, knows when she needs to gnaw on my houseplants to soothe her troubled belly, and sometimes I, in much the same way, know instinctively what I need to read to soothe a troubled soul. Over the holidays I needed rest, and a good story to take my heart on vacation. My hand reached for The Hobbit, despite a tall bedside stack of new books waiting to be read, and I plowed straight onward through the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I’m a different traveler each time I pass through Middle-earth. I pay less attention now to landscape and geography – I’ve already paid my dues to the maps of Mordor and Gondor.
It’s a travel story. The geography is a character, and by golly, to Tolkien at any rate, place details matter. I wonder what percentage of detail of every crag and bluff and outcrop would have been struck by the red pen of modern editors, not to mention the seven different names in three different dialects for each leaf, mound, tower, or Numenorean. But lest we criticize, where would modern fantasy be today without Tolkien in the first place? The landscape, and the language that arises from it, mattered to Tolkien, and not merely intellectually. (He was a noted philologist and linguist.) Desecration of the natural world to feed the maw of progress was one of his chief concerns, as he states clearly in his prologue, and as he illustrates plainly in the penultimate chapter, “The Scouring of the Shire.”

The “high” fantasy language, the over-embroidered speech, is both one of the great nostalgic comforts of reading Tolkien, and at times one of its barriers. My older attention span is more fractured, so the language can chafe at times, like a granule in my sock, but not enough to justify removing favorite socks. (That analogy is so reekingly bad, I just have to leave it in.) Language, just like scepters, crowns, and garments of rank, are outward signs and tokens of inner nobility and greatness in Tolkien’s well-ordered world. The series is a love song to a dying hierarchical notion of English society, as reckless industry and unlearned democracy threatened to topple all that was ever sweet and comforting about traditional English life. Or so, I think, did Tolkien feel. And he wasn’t alone. C.S. Lewis, T.H. White, and Kenneth Grahame, and countless other British fantasists sang the same love song in their own tune.

It’s harder now to reconcile myself to Tolkien’s treatment of race/color and gender. Thank heaven for Galadriel and Eowyn who raise the Girl Power Quotient from zero to, er, not-quite-zero. Skin color and purity of bloodline as tokens of greatness … the obvious slant against “swarthy” and even “Black” minions of the Dark Lord must be at least a partial product of Tolkien’s times. Perhaps this is merely the mythology of Middle-earth, with no reference to our world, but I think not; the allusions are too many and too obvious. The racial purity that places Aragorn on the throne feels much like the creed of Voldemort’s Death Eaters now. But it wasn’t meant to be, and Tolkien’s heroes didn’t feed on death nor practice genocide. Mercy, rightful governance, and freedom to live and let live mattered to him. Some of his heroes, hobbits for one, and Wild Men of the woods for another, seem absolute mongrels in contrast to the Elfstone, but they get their moment of heroism too.

Tolkien wrote a story of high heroism, of sacrifice and miracles, of an age when despite desperate odds, hopelessness and terror, a generation mounted up its courage and fought on through dark night to the tide-turning at the dawn. Again and again this happens – at Helm’s Deep, on the fields of Pelennor, in the mines of Moria, even in Bilbo’s encounter with the trolls. Stay defiant in the face of destruction, and hold on until the morning. It’s a tale of triumph, yet also it’s the tale of the dying of the Third Age, when all that was holy and magical in Middle-earth passed away, the good and the bad mingled. To rid the world of Sauron, Gandalf had to leave.

Tolkien’s generation, rightly called The Greatest Generation, has all but passed away, and if a man who fought in WWI and lived through WWII is not entitled to weave such a story as this one, I’d like to know who is. But his age, with its courage, and its fatal misconceptions, is fading away. The Greatest Generation helped stop The Third Reich and interred Japanese Americans. They are our fathers, grandfathers, uncles; our mothers, grandmothers, and aunts. They deserve our forgiveness for their sins and errors, just as we will one day need our children’s forgiveness for our blindness and waste and greed. But forgiving does not require us to adopt their prejudices.

I reached for Tolkien because I needed a zap of idealism along with the comfort of a high adventure. I needed to borrow his belief in inner nobility, greatness, and courage, even as I set aside his notions of how such greatness is bred and fostered. And mostly, I think, I needed to be carried away to another world for a good long stretch, such as only Tolkien, with his thousand characters, geological micro-detail, and songs in Elvish could promise.

Going Public

2010-11-13T19:12:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, October 12, my latest hardcover, Secondhand Charm, hit the shelves, published by Bloomsbury Children's Books. So began a whirlwind of activity which I will try to document below. But it didn't actually begin there. Earlier this season, the first two books in my new Splurch Academy for Disruptive Boys series hit the shelves, and my sister Sally and I celebrated with a large launch party at the Pittsford Barnes & Noble. Here's a picture of just the relatives who were there.

And here are Sally and me, signing books together for the first time. Aren't our mom's gladiolus pretty, there in the window? It was wonderful to see so many family and friends, and the Pittsford B&N hosted us delightfully.

On October 2, Sally and I visited Books of Wonder, the magnificent children's bookstore in Manhattan famous for its Oz obsession, its rare art, and its cupcakes, as well as its wonderful titles. We sat on a panel with Jon Scieszka, Michael Buckley, and Nick Bruel and talked about humor and creating silly books. Here we are signing and talking.

Not sure why these pictures insist on being itty-bitty. I mooched them from Sally's friend Alan. Moving on. Next came the launch parties for Secondhand Charm. Part one, hosted by The Friends of the Maynard Public Library, took place Tuesday, October 12. Tragically, my husband and I forgot to take pictures. If anyone else took any, please send them along and I'll update this post. We had a great turnout, and fantastic octopus-shaped decorations, along with other creepy crawly fun stuff in a culinary tribute to the cuisine at Splurch Academy. We repeated the fun two nights later at The Wellesley Booksmith, that pearl among indie bookstores, where again we had a fantastic turnout. Here I am, signing books afterwards.

During that same week I visited Greenhalge Elementary School in Lowell, MA; Fowler Middle School in Maynard, MA; and The Paper Store in Sudbury, MA. The following Monday I (barely) caught a plane for Salt Lake City, where I stayed with dear friends and visited four schools, two bookstores, and a library for author visits & signings. I didn't do as good of a job taking pictures in Salt Lake, so I'm mooching off friends' blogs. I visited the Orem Library, The Waterford School in Sandy, Beacon Heights Elementary School, Settlement Canyon Elementary School in Tooele, and Northlake Elementary School, also in Tooele. I also had my first television appearance on Park City TV, and if I can put my hands on the DVD I brought back with me, I'll post the clip on YouTube. Utah was breathtakingly beautiful, and it seems I got in and out right before winter snow began to strike. I had the chance to catch up with many old friends while I was there. The Orem Library treated me to a goody bag that included a dragon pin. Fun! One of the high points of the trip was meeting my author pen pal, Jessica Day George. We'd corresponded and talked on the phone for ages, and she was just as fun in person, and then some. We did evening signings together at The King's English in Salt Lake City and The Purple Cow in Tooele. Pictorial proof below.

Jessica is an obsessive knitter, and while we took questions she worked on a sleeve for her son's Ron Weasley Halloween costume. Envy! I wish I were that cool of a mom, and that good of a knitter. My kids had to fish from last year's box this year, or make their own costumes.

The pictures above were taken at the art gallery next door to The King's English by my dear friend and superblogger, Stacey Ratliff (pictured with Jessica and me at our signing at The King's English, below).

Isa Ventura of The Purple Cow treated us like royalty and fed me my very own purple cow at a spiffy little bistro in Tooele. Fun town! The Purple Cow and me, we're bonded for life. But the fun didn't stop in Utah. I returned home for a breathless week tried to dig out from under all the mess. While there I paid a visit to the Peabody Barnes & Noble, as well as another visit to the Fowler Middle School. On the Thursday before Halloween, we had a wonderful event at the Belmont Public Library with a full crowd of young readers and their parents. Here's a picture of three adorable reader gals.

Then, on Halloween afternoon, I got in my car and drove to my homeland of Western New York for a solid week of events there. On Monday I visited DeSales School in Lockport, NY, followed by a signing at Monkey See, Monkey Do bookstore in Clarence. I saw many dear friends, and made some new ones, including an inspiring family with an ambitious goal to visit and chronicle all 37 library branches in the Erie County Library System. Their blog is a terrific piece of advocacy for the role libraries play in keeping communities vibrant. Here I am with Anna and MaryGrace in a picture I'm borrowing from their blog.

On Tuesday, November 2, I visited my old alma mater, Clifford H. Wise Middle School, in the morning, and another alma mater, Oak Orchard Elementary School, in the afternoon. In the evening I signed books at Lee-Whedon Library in Medina. I had a lovely lunch with the fifth-grade teachers at Oak Orchard. I saw many dear and familiar faces in Medina, who haven't changed a bit and still look fabulous. The Book Shoppe of Medina and the Lee-Whedon library hosted me in style.

On Wednesday I visited St. Joseph's Catholic School in Batavia, as well as John Kennedy Elementary School. In the afternoon I visited Present Tense Books in Batavia, another indie store that I adore, and not only because it's owned by my cousin, Erica Caldwell. While I was there, I lost my voice! I suppose the back-to-back events, travel, and lack of sleep were a bit more than I could handle. Erica's peach of a husband, Darrick, trotted right out and got me steamed milk from the local coffee shop, which wetted my whistle just right.

So it was cough drops and bottled water at the ready, and whispering into microphones for the next two days of school events, but miraculously I was able to croak out enough. I visited The Norman Howard School in Rochester, NY on Thursday the 4th, where they treated me to a tour, a signing, authentic WNY cider, and donuts! Ian, Sam, and Zoe were the best tour guides an author could hope for. What a great school. From there I trotted over to School 12 for three back-to-back sessions with 4th and 5th graders. I drove straight back to my mom's that night and collapsed, mute as a sponge, and let my mother and sister dote on my like only the gals in my family can. Next morning I was up and off to Geneva Middle School (as well as two elementary schools) for five straight presentations. My good friend, Jonathan Porschet, is the librarian in Geneva, and he fed me his personal hummus, a kindness I shall not forget. (I'm noticing a disturbing trend of reporting what people fed me everywhere I went ... does it show that I really like to eat? And be waited on? It's plain to me as I look at these pictures that I like to eat. Oof.)

My week in New York ended with a bang at the Rochester Children's Book Festival, organized by the extraordinary Sibby Falk and Katherine Blasi. There were over 40 children's book authors there, and my only regret is that I didn't have more opportunities to hobnob with them all. The night before, they got together for dinner, but I skipped re: dead vocal chords, and the night of the event, they also supped from a common table, but after seven days away from my family, I was anxious to get back. What an outstanding turnout they had! It was enough to revive my faith in families encouraging their children to be readers. I was lucky that I got to sit next to Kate Messner, also from Medina, NY, the entire day. Kate was best friends with my older sister in junior high, and our paths crossed again a few years ago at an SCBWI conference. Now we both publish with Bloomsbury/Walker, among other houses. Her Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z. was an E.B. White Read Aloud award winner, and I'm already hearing good buzz about her upcoming Sugar and Ice. We promoted each other's books as easily as we could talk up our own, and that was tons of fun.

I dressed in a prison suit as Cody Mack, the hero of the Splurch Academy for Disruptive Boys, which was pretty weird, but Kate brought an actual beaver along, so I don't feel very self-conscious about my sartorial oddities. Here's a short video of the festival. These photos, BTW, above and below, were mooched from Kate's blog.

I got to see many wonderful author friends there, including Peggy Thomas, Elizabeth Bluemle, and Michelle Knudsen. Next year, if I'm lucky enough to come back, I'll make sure to eat more food with more authors. That's my new resolve. But my resolve du jour is to do less eating altogether ... ugh.

Now I'm back home, and the V.I.P. treatment has dwindled a notch, but there's no place I'd rather be. I visited the Russell Street School in Littleton and Merriam Elementary School in Acton, both yesterday, and there will be more events to come, though not with same machine-gun rapidity of the last few weeks. I'm happy not to live out of a suitcase. I keep thinking back, though, on how lucky I am that books give me an excuse to visit nearly all the places where I have dear ones, and reconnect with them in ways that otherwise might not be possible. I couldn't name you all by name on this blog, but if I got to see you this fall, I'm the lucky one. Please keep in touch.

And for all you bookstores who hosted me, and for hundreds of others who keep books alive in towns large and small, this one's for you. Here's today's humor column in the Metrowest Daily News. It's my small, inadequate way of saying thanks.

Stuck in Oz

2010-09-22T18:59:00.000-07:00

Last night I saw Wicked at the Boston Opera House with my husband and my sons. I’ve been useless all day today, stuck in Oz, picturing the story, singing the songs, loving Elphaba. I’m scheming ways to get back, even though ticket prices make that a foolish notion, even though I’m a grownup who should know better. I want to go back to that place, that time, that immersion in the story.

This, I recognize, is the disease that made me want to be a writer.

What’s going on here? As Martine Leavitt said in a lecture I heard her give this summer at Vermont College of the Fine Arts, the older I get, the harder it is for me to suspend my disbelief in a story. Samuel Taylor Coleridge considered this the touchstone for success in the reader’s engagement with fantasy. Perhaps I’m a sucker for musicals, but Wicked’s Oz shattered my disbelief. It was the Oz I recognize from Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and from the 1939 MGM film with Judy Garland, so I entered this world of wonder with wide open eyes and fresh expectations, but I was already comfortable with the conventions of Oz. Its rules and denizens required no explanation, and the skillful twists with which the new invoked the old were a frequent pleasure.

But it takes more than just a world to make this mother and cubicle dweller spend her day composing emails and browning pot roast with her heart over the rainbow, romantically imagining herself completely green. It takes characters I can love intensely to snare me into another world and make me want to stay there. Perhaps “love” is too generic. Wicked’s chief players were complex, conflicted, immoral, amoral, passionate, self-absorbed, indifferent, casually cruel, idealistic, betrayed. In short, the stuff of family theater. They hooked me. I keep thinking about them. I want another invitation to their party. I’m like the wizard who dallied (wink) indulgently when he ought to have gotten back to Kansas and on with his snake-oil selling business.

This is why series have such power in our culture. Even at the risk of wearing out worlds and characters we adore, the consuming public would rather go back, and back, and back again to our favorite stories, served up in new episodes like warmed-up leftovers smothered in canned gravy. I’m no different. I clamor for sequels just like everyone else. At least now, if I want to get stuck in a world, I can create one.

In this instance I’m fortunate. If the textured landscape of Broadway’s Oz pleased me, I have Gregory Maguire’s novel to look forward to, and a signed copy on my bedside table to boot. And, what luck! It’s the first of a series. I can dally, stuck in Oz, for as long as I like. Wonderful.

The True Meaning of Smekday, & St. Patrick of Ireland

2010-08-12T19:34:00.000-07:00

The True Meaning of Smekday, by Adam Rex (Hyperion 2007).

A marvelous middle-grade mashup, irreverent and smart and funny. Equal parts Doomsday, alien adventure, road trip tale, biting satire, and, er, girl meets Boov. Begins with a mole and ends with a cat, and I won't say much more, other than that Gratuity Tucci, our protagonist, is as feisty and funny an unlikely heroine as you'll find this side of the galaxy. As for Adam Rex, the author, as if it weren't bad enough to be that clever and funny, also illustrated the graphic novel excerpts throughout. A bit of swearing if anyone's concerned about that, though Gratuity always apologizes, and anyway, she's being shot at by an army of poomps, pardon my language.

And now, in a complete reversal of genre:

St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography, by Philip Freeman, Simon and Schuster, 2004
In keeping with my fascination with early Catholics (tardy Catholics intrigue me far less), I recommend for your delectation this slim little volume. If you can get past the bestial Druid rites of kingship, you'll love this. (Perhaps the bestial Druid rites of kingship will be an attraction for you.) A profitable read, accessible and interesting. A close look at the remarkable life and faith of St. Patrick of Ireland as revealed through his only surviving writings, with all the shamrock nonsense stripped away. Provides a thorough context of his life and times -- the social, political, adn religious backdrop of Britain and Ireland during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, loosely contiguous with the life of St. Augustine of Hippo. Well worth reading.

Reading Roundup

2010-07-19T10:36:00.000-07:00

Books I've enjoyed recently:

CATCHING FIRE by Suzanne Collins (sequel to Hunger Games)
I started reading this the same night that I finished HUNGER GAMES, even though it was 3 a.m., and anyone who's read HG will understand exactly why. The suspense doesn't stop, and Catniss's victory quickly turns to more dire peril. Discussion question: how long, YA readers, do we remain patient with the female hub of a love triangle who toys with two hearts and delays making up her mind? At one point does she lose sympathy for not playing fair? Make no mistake: I'll be waiting in line for my copy of MOCKINGJAY.

ORACLES OF DELPHI KEEP by Victoria Laurie (Delacourte 2009)
This debut novel impressed me for its ambitious interweaving of ancient oracles, elemental demons, treasure hunting, exotic adventure, ghastly beasts, historical fiction (pre-WWII Britain), and middle grade orphan friendship story. The beasts in particular stand out in my memory. Hats off to Ms. Laurie for her greasy-hair-by-slavering-fang depiction of her sinister hellhounds. Somehow a beast scene that in audio format lasted about half an hour had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. Note: a sequel, THE CURSE OF DEADMAN'S FOREST, releases August 24, 2010.

What I'm reading now:

ST. PATRICK OF IRELAND by Philip Freeman (Simon and Schuster 2005)
Technically, I'm reading this as research, but I'm enjoying it immensely. My appetite for historical study, particularly through the lens of the lives and times of literary and religious figures, is ever-increasing. This is highly readable.

In other news:
I've had two columns come out in the MetroWest Daily News lately. They are:
The failure I'm most proud of, and Weighing in on running.

My next two books release to stores in 24 days! THE RAT BRAIN FIASCO and CURSE OF THE BIZARRO BEETLE, both titles in the SPLURCH ACADEMY FOR DISRUPTIVE BOYS series, release August 12. Check out www.splurchacademy.com for more info. The pictures you see here are being made into washable tattoos, which we'll have available at every signing & event. Don't miss yours!

My goal for the summer: if I must waste time, waste it reading! (Which, of course, is never a waste. But I need to trick myself sometimes.) May you have wasteful summers full of books, too.

Snippets from "Sabbaths" by Wendell Berry

2010-06-22T21:05:00.000-07:00

At my bridal shower, fifteen years ago, I received an unusual gift: a slim volume of poetry entitled "Sabbaths" by Wendell Berry. I had never heard of him. The friend who gave it to me wrote, simply, "Good luck" on the title page, and I don't blame her. I was 20 years old. I assumed she chose the book because I was about to become a Berry.

The dishes are broken, the towels long frayed and cut into rags, but this shower gift remains, and at certain moments through the years I've returned to this volume to immerse myself in Wendell Berry's sabbatical meditations. I have no experience critiquing poetry -- I fear I lack the vocabulary, and the breadth of exposure to do it credibly -- but I love these poems, and through them, this man, Wendell Berry.

Fast forward fourteen years to the publication of my first novel. I bought a plane ticket and flew to Salt Lake City for my first-ever out of town book tour event. I contacted the instructor of a distance writing class I'd taken, years back, and invited him to come to my event. He had said nice things about my writing nearly a decade prior, and I wanted him to know his student had made good. He politely declined, saying Wendell Berry was also in town that night. I didn't blame him a bit.

It startles me to learn, with a little research, that Berry has written a handful of novels and dozens of essays, critiques, volumes of poetry. I only know this one collection. For me he remains a Sabbath voice, someone I hold secret, as though these poems connect us privately.

I am a Sabbath-keeper, in my imperfect way, and as my writing life has gotten more hectic, I've felt the need all the more to guard this day of worshipful rest zealousy -- this cathedral in time instead of in space. However pressing the Monday morning deadline, I still won't work that day. It's reckless and wrong to attribute one's blessings to any worthiness on their part, but I have felt this hallowed time to be a lifeline for me, and a conduit for heaven's help through the frantic balance of my week.

I'll share below three moments from this volume that resonate for me. All selections are from Sabbaths by Wendell Berry, North Point Press, San Francisco, 1987.

From poem IV:

Projects, plans unfulfilled

Waylay and snatch at me like briars,

For there is no rest here

Where ceaseless effort seems to be required,

Yet fails, and spirit tires

With flesh, because failure

And weariness are sure

In all that mortal wishing has inspired.

Poem X (in its entirety):

Whatever is foreseen in joy

Must be lived out from day to day.

Vision held open in the dark

By our ten thousand days of work.

Harvest will fill the barn; for that

The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled

By work of ours; the field is tilled

And left to grace. That we may reap,

Great work is done while we're asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood

Rests on our day, and finds it good.

From poem II:

The mind that comes to rest is tended

In ways that it cannot intend:

Is borne, preserved, and comprehended

By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by

Your will, not ours. And it is fit

Our only choice should be to die

Into that rest, or out of it.

---

So thank you, Jeannie T., for this gift that keeps on giving. Used editions of this collection can still be bought, I believe.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

2010-06-14T19:59:00.000-07:00

It's laughable for me to blog about The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins since I'm clearly the last person on the planet to read it, so nothing I can add will benefit humankind. I have a pernicious stubborn streak, and the more I heard THG praised, the more I procrastinated reading it. I even had an advance reader copy before the book came out -- I could have scooped you all. But I held off. There hasn't been much time to read anyway this spring. Finally this week I found some time and knew I needed a compelling read. Yikes! I just finished, and I may not sleep tonight. At a book launch party this evening at The Wellesley Booksmith for my friend Jess Leader's new book, Nice and Mean, I couldn't resist buying Catching Fire. And those of you who've read THG will know exactly why. Those of you who haven't, should. Gut-churning suspense, anguished and confused love, a dazzlingly corrupt and convincing post-apocalyptic society, and a heroine we all wish we were. YA dystopian adventure; Strongly recommended. But you already knew that.

Anything but Typical, by Nora Raleigh Baskin

2010-02-16T20:56:00.000-08:00

I'm working hard to catch up on my reading after long months in Deadline Land. Tonight I had the good fortune to read Anything but Typical, by Nora Raleigh Baskin, winner of the 2010 ALA Schneider Family Award for Middle Grade. The Schneider Family Award recognizes "a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences." 12-year old Jason Blake, a student with Autism, or ASD (for Autism Spectrum Disorder), has more to manage and remember in a given day than NT (Neurotypical) peers will deal with in a month. His feelings are poignant, even if he doesn't express them typically, or appear to express them at all. On a website where he posts stories he's written, he forms a new friendship, but when the opportunity to meet this friend at a story writing convention surfaces, Jason's terribly afraid Rebecca will respond to him the way other girls do, and that's far too much risk to face, however eager his parents are to go. A perceptive, non-patronizing middle grade realistic novel; most strongly recommended.

Autism intersects with my life in several significant ways, and for that reason, among others, I have tended to avoid novels addressing autism. I'm extremely glad I overcame my own hesitation (Jason and I have a few things in common) and read this graceful novel. The author has my heartiest congratulations.

Book Gargoyle's Advice for Young Writers (including To Outline or Not To Outline)

2010-02-15T18:55:00.000-08:00

An eighth-grader wrote to ask me for some writing advice this past week, and I thought I'd share my response to her request here. ***

There are many books, classes, websites, etc., that teach about fiction writing, but I think that all the best advice boils down to these things:

1. Read a lot, and
2. Write a lot.

Those are the basics, and without that, any other advice is pointless. "Write a lot" can mean writing a lot of fiction, but it can also include poetry, essays, journals, articles, etc. Any writing that you do develops your facility with words, sentences, expressions, description, metaphor -- the building blocks of language. And writing develops your ability to think, reason, argue (a point), teach, explain, and inspire.

Read for enjoyment and write for enjoyment. Find books you love, and read them over and over. Savor them. Write what makes you smile, makes you laugh, or makes you swoon, but write something that moves you in some way. Maybe it's dark and gloomy and macabre, but if you enjoy that, you'll write it well.

Once you've gotten into a groove of reading a lot and writing a lot, the final step I would add to my list is this:

3. Begin to think seriously about how to improve your writing. Study what makes great writing great. When you read a book that seems fantastic to you, try to articulate why. (This is the benefit you can gain from school essays and book reports. If you can explain what you like, and what is working, as well as what is not working, in a book you read, then you have learned something.) When you receive critical feedback from a teacher on something you've written, analyze the feedback and see what it can teach you. The best teachers of writing are good readers who know how to spot what's working and not working in a text. There aren't clear-cut right or wrong answers about how to write well, but we do have some good solid fundamentals. Your use of grammar and language should be solidly correct. (There are many great resources that can help you master these; the golden bible of language and grammar is THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE by Strunk and White.) Your writing shouldn't be confusing. Read over what you've written and make sure you didn't leave out details that help us understand who shot the sheriff or where the magician was standing when the lights went out. Love your characters, even the bad ones, and make them interesting. Your story needs a beginning (where characters and the problem are established), a middle (where characters wallow through their problems and things get worse and worse), and an end (where all heck breaks loose, until things are finally resolved, for good or ill). Don’t be afraid to let your writing sparkle. Use breathtaking words and outrageous comparisons. Pour on the descriptions, the excitement, the suspense, the jokes. (If need be, you can always trim them later.)

You asked about outlines. Do I think it's best to use them, or not? I don't have a definitive answer to this. The first few books I wrote, I did not use an outline. I have begun to use them more, especially as I write books in series. When plotting really matters, as with mysteries, they can be very useful, to make sure you don't forget to reveal important clues and tie up all your loose ends. With almost every novel I write, I end up using a single-subject spiral-bound notebook that I use to jot down important details like timelines, character names, problems I stumble upon and must fix before I can proceed, maps, etc. But while a bit of planning may ultimately be necessary for any writing project before it's done, I'm inclined to think that for writers who are starting out, it's more liberating not to use an outline. Start with a glorious beginning that excites you, create some characters, and see where they lead. If you reach a blocked tunnel and you think you might need to outline your way out of it, fine, do so, but know that often an outline kills the fun. Particularly if you feel like your outline must be very formal and proper with correct margins and Roman numerals. Just say no to outlines like that. In this, as with most kinds of writing advice, let your own instincts be your guide. If you feel like an outline would help you, give you a roadmap and a plan, then outline away, but if it sounds like as much fun as taking standardized tests at school, skip it.

"In The Heights," "The Magician's Elephant," "Curse of the Bane"

2010-01-21T04:12:00.000-08:00

We were lucky enough last night to go see "In the Heights," the Broadway musical, at the Boston Opera House with my niece. What a great show! Kyle Beltran as Usnavi was fantabulous. I can't imagine anyone doing the role any better. *Loved* his voice, his persona. Great sets, lighting, score, big music numbers, a terrific cast. Runs through the weekend; definitely go!

Just finished reading The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo today. The gorgeous cover illustrated by Yoko Tanaka made me grab it; the name Kate DiCamillo sure didn't hurt any. Sweet, elegant, brimful with affection for all its characters. It made me cry. Strongly recommended.

I'm working my way through Joseph Delaney's Last Apprentice series, and read Curse of the Bane a few days ago. If you enjoy tales of the macabre, or if you have a middle-school boy who does, these are worth their price.

Catching up

2010-01-09T20:02:00.000-08:00

2010 is nine days old and I still haven't jotted in my journal the list of goals and plans for the year that I'd intended to record. Off to a great start! The second half of 2009 was a whirlwind of travel, book events, and crazy writing deadlines, and my blogging wasn't the only thing to suffer neglect because of it. Now that the holidays are behind me I'm digging, sifting, dusting, and sorting my way through the chaos. There were so many wonderful visits to schools, libraries, and bookstores that I should have recorded, and perhaps I'll be able to catch up on that a bit. For now I'll lead in with the present.

I just finished reading The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch today and enjoyed it thoroughly. A great read for fans of spooky stories. Boys and girls should enjoy it equally. I especially love the artwork.

Got a package from UPS yesterday from Bloomsbury, always a happy thing. This contained an editorial letter and marked up manuscript for my upcoming hardcover teen novel, slated for October 2010 release. The current title is SECONDHAND CHARM, which may or may not remain the final title. I'd say there's about a 70% chance it will stick. Must turn around some revisions quickly. I'm looking forward to diving back into that manuscript.

Over the holidays I cleaned out my office, with the help of my friend Diane. This was a monumental achievement. Prior to the great purge, I could barely walk across the floor to reach my desk. I had to leap and hope. But now the bare surfaces sparkle and pretty little houseplants catch the light from the south-facing bay windows. My thought was that with an orderly office I'd have a less cluttered mind with which to envision new book projects in 2010. But I still seem to spend all my writing time tucked under the blankets in bed with my laptop resting on my thighs. So I'm not sure I deserve such a pretty office.

My newspaper column with The MetroWest Daily News is another thing I neglected in 2009, so I was happy to squeak out a column for them that appeared last Sunday. Here's a link to "You can always count on Mom." I hope to submit more soon.

Everyone's healthy and happy here at Camp Berry. Hope the same is true for you.

Thief of Time, or, Why I Idolize Terry Pratchett and Why I Am Unlikely to Write a Time Paradox Novel

2009-07-12T19:14:00.000-07:00

It never fails. I crack open a new Terry Pratchett novel, and before I've turned page one I'm writhing on the floor (figuratively, at my age), groaning, "I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy!" I'm scorpion-zapped by the knowledge that I'm in the company of one so vastly my superior, in wit, wisdom, and wordplay, that it's almost enough to make me hang up my word processor. But here ecstasy and torture overlap, and I happily plow onward. Someday I may need to write an essay, for my own education, on all that Terry Pratchett does so well, but that sounds suspciously like an Auditor thing to do.

But back to my unworthiness. The first Pratchett novel I read that was not written for children was Wyrd Sisters, and before I'd gotten five pages in I ran for my college paperback of Macbeth, not wanting to be deprived of a single allusion. Thus Pratchett is both delicious and nutritious. I don't know if all his novels are a direct parody of a cultural touchstone, or not. Thief of Time, as near as I can tell, wreaks happy havoc upon snips of the book of Revelation. Any attempt at plot summary would be futile. I'm going to need to read it again myself. Time paradox stories always make my eyes glaze over. Sooner or later, every fantasy series inevitably wanders into that sand trap and loses its credibility somewhat thereby. Do they ever work? I would scarcely know. I'm in it for the yarn. Smoke and mirrors don't bother me much, unless the failure is so obvious, so lame, so hastily contrived by Hollywood committee, that even a metaphysical dumbhead like me can spot it plain as the zit on your nose. Oh, but I'm dithering off topic. The thesis of this post is that Terry Pratchett makes me swoon, and snort out loud with glee, and those are two things I like a man to make me do. I mean, a book. If there are any time wrinkles in Thief of Time, Pratchett greases his machinery so well with yak butter-whimsy that it doesn't matter anyway. All roads lead to Ankh-Morpork, The Death of Rats and Quoth the Raven are never far away, Nanny Ogg has a cameo and Igor gets featured billing, the Schoolteacher from Hell finds a soulmate, War finds relief from intermittent flatulence, much weight is attached to a bottle of strawberry yogurt, the murderous properties of chocolate creams are laid bare, and proper stress is laid upon Rule One: "Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man!"

Good rule, Rule One. But if you've never read a Discworld novel, Rule One for you is, Do So.

The Princess Bride's Perfections

2009-07-07T18:53:00.000-07:00

Our family watched The Princess Bride tonight. It was the first time any of our boys had seen it, the first time I'd seen it in probably twelve years. We'd purchased the Blu-Ray disc from a bargain bin, and the quality was fantastic. I loved seeing how much my boys enjoyed it. The Fred Savage & grandpa dynamic was perfect for them.

As I watched, I was struck by all the elements that were so successfully packed into this story. I confess, I haven't read the book, but using the movie as a source, I jotted down a list of The Princess Bride's assets, just as Westley would have liked. Character types. Plot devices. Props. Motivations. Defining qualities. Here's my brain dump. I'd love to hear any additions I missed.

Romance, right off the bat
Thrown within minutes into huge problems: Westley dead, Buttercup betrothed to froglike prince, and wham, she’s kidnapped.
Pastoral beauty, magnificent geologic variety, creating evocative settings
- opening farmland
- festive city settings
- eel-infested waters
- Cliffs of Insanity
- mountains, ravine
- Fire Swamp
- Thieves Forest
- Royal castle w/ chapel, dining hall, kitchens, honeymoon chamber, corridors

Impossible or improbable settings: fire traps, sand pits, sheer cliffs
Florin & Gilder, rival kingdoms
An artificial plot to start a war
Kidnapping
Attempted murder
Chases, rescues
Swordfights
Rescues
Impossible feats of strength
Poisons
A flaming holocaust cloak
Contest of wits, daring
Play-acting
Long-brewing revenge
An evil prince
A sinister advisor
A pirate with a pen-name
A giant
An alcoholic swordsman
An egotistical mercenary
A mutant with a recognizable mark: the six-fingered man
A beautiful princess (least interesting part, oddly, titular character and focus of exciting male activity)
A senile king
An underworld descent where hero must die: The Pit of Despair
Hidden entries (into the pit)
A resentful miracle worker and his nagging crone wife
Other hideous crone: the “Boo” lady who castigates Buttercup
An albino stooge
Mad science: Count Rogin doubles as evil advisor and evil Faustian/Nazi sicko scientist/inventor
Freak monsters (Rodents of Unusual Size, Shrieking Eels)
Storming a castle
Blocking a wedding
Reviving a dead man
Miraculously locating “the man in black”
Miracle cure via chocolate coated pill
Dead, and yet …

For each character, a defining attribute

Buttercup: brainless beauty
Westley: indestructible confidence
Inigo Montoya: passionate sense of honor
Vezzini: unscrupulous greed, ego
Fezzik: unflappable, benign
Humperdinck: arrogance
Rogin: perverse sadism, sycophant
Miracle Max: wisecracking
Wife: calls it like she sees it

Thoughts on THE ILIAD

2009-06-06T18:02:00.000-07:00

Tonight I finished listening to THE ILIAD of Homer on audiobook. First I listened to a great audio course from The Teaching Company, taught by Elizabeth Vandiver, on The Iliad, then I listened to the poem itself. So the Trojan War has occupied my commute and my walks for weeks now. I wish I was studying the poem in a classroom setting and could discuss it with other interested students. For a poem purportedly written some 2800 years ago about events thought to take place 3400 years ago, so much of it feels startlingly contemporary. To put myself in a place where I could appreciate it best, I tried in my limited way to set aside whatever cultural biases were incongruous with Homer's (if there was a Homer. I know.) and let myself be led by the values manifest in the text. I tried to understand Achilles as a hero and as a wrathful figure, whose first wrath was for bruised honor and whose later wrath was caused by inconsolable grief. I wondered why he remained heroic, though his inaction cost the Greeks so much. I tried to see his actions through the lens of a different code of ethics, one valuing devotion to a panoply of gods at war with each other; one where Fate could be blamed for all things; one prizing retribution and conquest. I tried to understand the motivation for the war. Was it really Helen? All the jargon from the Greeks in the beginning about avenging her cries of pain when she was raped by Paris don't seem to gel at all with the relationship between Helen and Paris. In the Odyssey she refers to herself as a whore for her adulterous union with him. So which was it? Does it matter? Was it about woman as property? Or was that simply a justification for land and wealth conquest? The scope of the war was baffling -- so much time, so much cost, so much death. How does any of it make sense?

Things I loved: the sumptuous language. The richness of metaphor. The gruesomeness of battle details. The vividly memorable and wholly human characters. The many moments of deep pathos. Laugh out loud moment: Zeuss's praise for Hera's sex appeal. Unforgettable images: Achilles' battle yell in the ditch with a cap of fire, his chasing Hector around the city, his battle with the river. Priam's grief, Hector's valor, Patroclus's courage, Aegamemnon's waffling, Hecuba's pleading, Odysseus's arrogance, Hera's cunning, Athene's ruthlessness. The starkness of specific details which carry the ring of truth. The deep complexity of Achilles -- a contemplative musician, a devoted friend, an arrogant boaster, an invincible warrior, a citizen of his community and an exception to the rules of community, a servant of the gods and an impious slaughterer, one who honors and desecrates, one unable to forgive, yet one who fully forgives and empathizes.

American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang

2009-06-06T14:35:00.000-07:00

I realize I may be the last person on the planet to read American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, but even so, here I am posting my thoughts.

Superior storytelling on countless levels, including but certainly not only the graphical. Skillful and convincing weaving of comedy, legend, satire, and contemporary school story. A sophisticated and unsentimental look at race, culture, and identity, and, simultaneously, an impressively candid tribute to the author's faith. Funny and poignant and painful, a hopeful, many-layered narrative, and a watertight comic. Strongly recommended for approximately grades 7 and up.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

2009-06-05T17:35:00.000-07:00

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

A reverent tribute to The Jungle Book which moved me as much for its devotion to the beloved classic as for its affection for its characters. There's a boundless, ungovernable quality to the universe Gaiman conjures. It combines life, afterlife, other realms, and ancient legend, and while I imagine this aspect of the novel could incur criticism, it felt appropriate to me. Gaiman's universe is as brooding, savage, and ungovernable as Kipling's jungle. A novel filled with deep compassion; strongly praised and recommended. Reading The Jungle Book first is encouraged.

Gargoyle's week in review

2009-05-31T18:16:00.000-07:00

The week in review, in no special order:

1. Happily gobbled The Last Olympian. It was just what I needed. Now I'm onto Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. I may be the last kidlit person in America who hasn't read it.

2. Got the downstairs squalor (I'm not kidding) cleaned, mopped, dusted, scrubbed, disinfected, baked a cake, shopped for baloonscandlesfavorschipsdipveggiesfruitgoodiebagsicecreametc and threw a 5-year old birthday party, start to finish, all in eight hours. The only thing I didn't get done before the guests arrived: shower. The first guest arrived, wrinkled his nose, and said, "This house stinks!" Grr.

3. Saw Star Trek. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Time travel logic flaws don't bother me much because I never even bother trying to figure them out. Terrific casting, juicy effects, and huzzah for the new James T. Kirk! I never expected someone could make his character so appealing. But what's with Ohura and Spock??? "I'm so sorry. What do you need?" (Breathless smooches.) Spare me! And I'm wondering if I'd have more allure if my skin was green. Still, great Saturday night movie fun.

4. Thanks to my dear friend Gladys, discovered these articles in Deseret News. A review of The Amaranth Enchantment, and an interview I'd done earlier this spring.

5. Had a wonderful author visit at a Boston elementary school, which I will blog more about later as soon as I get the pictures.

The Chosen One, The Last Olympian

2009-05-22T06:59:00.000-07:00

This picture is courtesy of Willow Books in Acton, MA, my nearest indie bookstore. This is the New Releases shelf. The Amaranth Enchantment sits right next to The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams, which made me wriggly with happy joy. Carol is my dear, dear friend from the Cliffhangers class group at the Vermont College of the Fine Arts MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. We met there in July of 2006, when I was just starting the project that would eventually become Amaranth, and she was working on a draft of her polygamy project. She's been a lifeline of friendship, encouragement, and support throughout my writing journey. When we first met, she told me, "You will publish, and you should think about Bloomsbury." I read The Chosen One this week, and I was unfit for human consumption until I'd finished it. Most strongly recommended. Needed blood pressure medication afterward. I could hear her voice on every page. Her courage, talent, and kindness are boundless. Award committees, take notice!

Oh, and by the way, Amaranth also sits next to The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan. He's an okay guy, too. :) Heard him speak last week at the Wellesley Booksmith event. A star, perfectly at ease and natural in front of ~800 middle schoolers and their parents. Thanks, Rick, for giving us Percy Jackson! And thanks, Bob @ Willow Books, for humoring a lunatic local author and snapping this picture on your cell phone.

PS -- I'm kidding about the blood pressure meds.

A huge thank you to the Fusion Group, and to the Orchard House

2009-05-16T22:28:00.000-07:00

To the members of the Fusion Group who made me feel so welcome Friday night at The School of Philosophy, many thanks, and blessings on you. I enjoyed our evening together tremendously. I was so honored by both the invitation and your warm reception. I'm so thrilled that so many people were so eager to hear my thoughts "in defense of fantasy." Also, thank you for the generous gift certificate. Phil and I trotted right out Friday Night to Cast Iron Kitchen and celebrated your generosity. Yum!

A few things:

1. Several people have asked me for copies of the speech. It will take me a little time to clean it up and edit it properly (finish the bibliography, remove any incriminating details about people who might sue me, etc.). When I do, I would love to send anyone who was present a copy. Here's the hitch: I'll need to mail it to you. I don't want to put the speech online in any kind of electronic format, since that will squash any potential for me to give a version of this address again to another group. But if you'll email me your name and postal address, I will put a copy in the mail to you within a couple of weeks. Send it to julie at julieberrybooks dot com.

2. The books I talked about during and after my presentation were:

A Door Near Here by Heather Quarles, The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams (just out), Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt, The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Pope, Beauty by Robin McKinley, and Skellig by David Almond. A Door Near Here is the book I read from. When it's announced, within the next year, that The Chosen One has won gobs of awards, remember that I told you so. :)

3. If anyone took photos that came out at all, please send them to me and I'll post them here.

4. Can I join Fusion? I love what you're about!

Thanks again for such a rewarding evening. Please, keep in touch.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young, er, Man?

2009-05-15T09:35:00.000-07:00

The miracle of Facebook has brought me this incriminating flash from my past (courtesy Laura Berry Cooke, no relation despite the name. I'll get you back, dearie.). This is me at, oh, thirteen or so, at a summer Girls' Camp near Buffalo, NY. Note the jaunty thrust of the chin, the cool, haughty sneer from underneath the mascara'd eyebrow. I ooze machismo, if an Anglo-Saxon like me possibly can. I made a hot Latin as a thirteen year old girl.

People were always telling me how much I looked like my brother, a hot ticket himself. I never saw it then, but I see it now.

This is the author as a child, thinking her deep, inspired, creative, authory thoughts. Like how many frogs might crawl into her underpants if she jumped into the pond at camp.

(And incidentally, I really enjoyed Joyce's Portrait Of ... . Does that make me weird? Then again, with photo evidence like this, does that point need further establishment?)

"In Defense of Wonderland" speech, 5/15 at Louisa May Alcott house

2009-05-11T18:50:00.000-07:00

I'll be speaking this Friday, May 15, at 7 p.m. at the School of Philosophy at the Orchard House, 399 Lexington Road, Concord, MA (Louisa May Alcott's home). My subject is, "In Defense of Wonderland (and how one frazzled mother clawed her way in)." I'll discuss children's fantasy, its relevance and significance to me, the importance of creativity, and the imperative for humility. All in 45 minutes or so! Books will be available for purchase and signing. This is sponsored by The Fusion Group (http://www.fusionspeaks.blogspot.com/) and is open to the public. RSVP is appreciated, though, for seating purposes. Contact me at julie@julieberrybooks.com for more information.

A pox upon me!

2009-05-11T18:13:00.000-07:00

I intended, when The Amaranth Enchantment released, to chronicle the adventures of a first-time author on this blog. But it's been Swampsville! Nutty crazy travel, book events, and lots of crazy fun. It's been a two-month whirlwind. So I'm going to gradually attempt to fill in the blanks and turn over a new blogger leaf.

Book travels have taken me to Massachusetts, Utah, New York, and New Hampshire. I've presented to thousands of school children, hundreds of library and bookstore patrons, answered dozens of letters and emails and interview requests. I had no idea that this was what happened when a gal sets out to write stories. Much as the housework and yardwork and minutae of life are flagging, I love love love meeting readers. So it's all good.

Here's a happy-making review I saw today on CurledUpKids.com:

http://www.curledupkids.com/amaranth.html

More to come! Incidentally, the photo is courtesy of http://MyFavoriteAuthor.blogspot.com.

The countdown: one month till release day

2009-02-03T18:30:00.000-08:00

The Amaranth Enchantment hits the stores one month from today -- and a short month at that. Four weeks precisely, and not a penny more. That means I have only twenty-eight days to accomplish all the items on my "Authors Oughtta" list.

Authors Oughtta, if they're me,

1. Get a haircut, get some decent clothes, get to the gym now and again, and, in general, try to look more like the girl on the cover of my book.

2. Reread the book so I'll have coherent answers to questions people ask me about it.

3. Stock up on breathmints so I don't fumigate any would-be customers.

4. Practice writing my name over and over in a firm, decisive, legible hand, chock-full of personality, and above all, spelled correctly.

5. Order a backup stash of books, so that when I do misspell my name in someone's newly-purchased copy, I can make good.

6. Memorize the list of people I need to thank, including the book store owner, the publisher, the agent, the editor, the book designer, the Founding Fathers, my second-grade teacher, and especially, don't forget this one, my husband.

If you're anywhere near one of the book events I'll be doing this spring, stop by and tell me how well I did on my Authors Oughtta list. And just in case, please, bring me a breath mint.

The Dream Incarnate

2009-01-24T15:30:00.000-08:00

The book arrived yesterday. Mr. U.P.S. and I pulled up to my driveway at the same serendipitous moment, and I had to wait until he'd dropped his offering on my porch and driven off before I could pull in. I wasn't expecting a package, but packages have a way of showing up unannounced these days.

It was my book. Shiny jacket, hard red cover, and pages of beautifully formatted story that I'd written.

In hallucinations I'd imagined this would be an ecsatatic moment, where I'd weep, suck in an enraptured breath, and, in an instant, all my life's woes and inadequacies would be swallowed up and disintegrate. Voila! Fulfillment and bliss. There's my name on a book.

It was nothing like that. More of a "Hm. Whaddya know."

This dream, like most, unfolded in so many gradual stages, there were dozens of incremental steps toward it. Before I saw the book, I saw the cover. Before the cover, the final art. Before the final art, the mockup. Before the cover, the formatted pages, in several rounds. Before that, manuscript after manuscript. The contract. Draft upon draft upon draft. The agent, the pitch. It wasn't one moment of explosive creation, a Big Bang Birth of Julie Berry's dreams. I arrived there before I knew it, and the transformation, if there was one, was quiet.

I still have all my weird hangups. I double-checked. They're alive and kicking.

The pleasure, I discover, comes not from realizing the hope of holding my book in my hands, but from the hope that someday, you will hold it in yours.

Welcome to The Book Gargoyle, blogger home of Julie Berry, children's book author

2009-01-19T21:09:00.000-08:00

Welcome to The Book Gargoyle, the official blog of Julie Berry, children's book author. My debut novel, The Amaranth Enchantment, releases March 3, 2009 from Bloomsbury Children's Books, with much fanfare and frivolity -- at least in the Berry home.

In the meantime, meet Priscilla, the gargoyle for whom this blog is named. She's the one with the book.

She's illustrated by my inimitable sister, Sally Faye. She lives on a bookmark, of which I've just ordered a squijillion copies, and as soon as I get my P.O. box figured out, anyone in the universe may have one for the asking -- autographed, even! -- if they'll send me a S.A.S.E. (That's a self-addressed stamped envelope, for anyone who's forgotten what stamps are for...)