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Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising was the first novel I ever read that celebrated the darkest days of the year. Cooper's story combined Celtic mythology, Arthurian legend and Christianity in a heart thumping fantasy.
It makes sense to me that all over the Northern Hemisphere, people celebrate at this time - with lights, and fires and revelry. After all, it feels as if the sun is leaving us. Call back the sun with noise and joy, warmth and light, peace and truth.
That's what I wish for you now and in the coming year - Light, and Peace, Warmth and Truth, Joy and Love - oh, and noise, too, of the happiest sort.
Fight the Dark!
By:
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Sherri L. Smith, author of The Toymaker's Apprentice, selected these five holiday book favorites.
As many of you know, the Horn Book at Simmons Colloquium: “Transformations” was this past Saturday. It was interesting, engaging, educational, and fun (it was also exhausting for those of us working it, and even more so for the amazing Katrina Hedeen, who planned the whole durn thing).
But what you don’t know is the most important thing that happened over our BGHB/HBAS weekend.
Was it the Shuster-men speaking eloquently about Challenger Deep and mental illness?
Was it the informative and funny editor panel?
How about getting to see Marla Frazee’s pre-book sketches (including the illustrated thank-you note that became A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever!)?
No!
What was it?
Susan Cooper took a picture of my Dark Is Rising tattoo.
(SQUEE)
For more on the 2015 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards and the following day’s HBAS Colloquium: “Transformations,” click on the tag
BGHB15.
The post Siân Has the Best Weekend Ever! appeared first on The Horn Book.
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By:
Emma Barnes,
on 5/16/2014
Blog:
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I’ve just come back from a visit to Santa Barbara. It was wonderful to revisit old haunts – the Daily Grind coffee shop, Chaucer Books – and to spend time watching the dolphins and pelicans from Arroyo Burro beach, smell the roses near the Mission, and most of all, bask in California sunshine after a long, cold, Yorkshire winter.
It also made me think about the relationship between writing and place.
It was while I was in Santa Barbara I got a message saying that my book Wolfie had won a Fantastic Book Award (voted for by children across Lancashire). This seemed fitting, as it was actually while I was staying in Santa Barbara, five years ago, that I wrote Wolfie. And that made me think how odd it was that a book about wolves and deep winter woods (so atmospherically brought to life in Emma Chichester Clark’s illustrations) should have been created in such a completely different environment.
 |
| cover: Emma Chichester Clark |
I remember the process well. I’d walk my daughter to preschool – passing rows of jacaranda trees, an open air swimming pool and banks of creeping rosemary. Then I’d go home and open my laptop and plunge into a world where a wolf appears in an ordinary British neighbourhood, and takes the heroine into a snow-filled world of adventure. Maybe it was the contrast itself that got my imagination going? I was certainly driven: tapping away intently, working against the clock until pick-up time.  |
| illustration: Emma Chichester Clark |
Of course many writers are inspired by their particular environment and its familiarity. But I wonder how often writers are inspired to write about a setting precisely because it isn’t there? Quite often, I suspect. In some cases, this might be tinged with homesickness, or nostalgia for a place and time lost.
Certainly, one of the most evocative children’s books that I know, in terms of creating a setting, is Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising – part of the famous fantasy series of the same title. This book is set in rural Berkshire near Windsor, and Will’s house, the village, the manor and the surrounding landscape are brilliantly portrayed: so real, so immediate, but also echoing with the years of history that lie behind. When Will sets out into the woods he may meet a Smith from centuries past, or a tramp who has travelled through time, or the mythical Herne the Hunter: somehow the place can contain them all. This capturing of landscape is also a feature of Cooper’s other books – the mountains of Wales in The Grey King, and a Cornish village in Greenwitch.
These books capture perfectly a British place and time (and I say time because I suspect the “present day” Berkshire that Cooper portrays has probably now been lost as totally as her Medieval or Dark Age versions, under the pressures of modern development). Yet they were written when Cooper was far from her original home, living on the East Coast of the US. In interviews, she has described how she was cross country skiing (a thoroughly un-British activity) when the idea of The Dark Is Rising came to her.
I’m certainly grateful for my time in California. Towards the end of my stay I also went to the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference, which was stimulating in a different way. And I enjoyed happy hours running on the beach. But mainly those months were a warm, calm, interlude: a bubble in which I managed to write a book.
Maybe one cold, winteryYorkshire morning I will sit down and find myself writing a tale of sunshine, sand and dolphins…
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Emma's new book,
Wild Thing, about the naughtiest little sister ever (and her bottom-biting ways), is out now from Scholastic. It is the first of a series for readers 8+.
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman
"Charming modern version of My Naughty Little Sister" Armadillo Mag
Wolfie is published by Strident.
Sometimes a Girl’s Best Friend is…a Wolf. Winner of 2014 Fantastic Book Award
"A real cracker of a book"
Armadillo "Funny, clever and satisfying...thoroughly recommended"
Books for Keeps"This delightful story is an ideal mix of love and loyalty, stirred together with a little magic and fantasy"
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By:
C.J.Busby,
on 5/5/2014
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I was thinking the other day about how, in so many children’s books, the hero finds they have hidden powers. I think it’s one of the aspects of children’s books I love the most, and loved especially as a child myself – the sense that, however ordinary you felt you were, there might be this magical ability hidden inside you, or some unexpected aspect of your character, just waiting for the right opportunity, the right trigger, to reveal itself.
In one of my favourite books as a child, Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones, Cat Chant discovers, after many trials and mix-ups, that he’s an enchanter – from being a child who could do absolutely no magic, he becomes one who can make almost anything happen by just telling it to. In Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising, Will discovers he’s an Old One, and learns to use his new powers to fight the Dark. And Harry Potter, ordinary downtrodden child, finds he is really a wizard, and a very special one at that.
But in more mundane ways, many children’s books chart the ways their protagonists learn to draw on hidden strengths or find reserves of bravery, intelligence, compassion, understanding, or determination to overcome obstacles and win through in difficult or challenging circumstances.
In The Lord of the Rings, for example, it is the 'children' of the book, the hobbits, who really save Middle Earth - and they do so by finding in themselves the sort of courage, grit, compassion, confidence and ability to survive that they'd never have dreamed of in sleepy Hobbiton. The change in them is made gloriously manifest in their final return to the Shire and the battle with Sharkey.
In essence, these sorts of stories tell their readers – you can be amazing! It’s a great message for children – indeed, for any reader. It says, nothing about you is fixed, you don’t have to accept that you are only ever going to be this person or that person. Round the corner, an adventure might be waiting that will draw out of you all sorts of things – that will change you into a kind of hero, with new and unexpected powers. No matter that you are not top of the class, or ‘gifted and talented’, no matter that you think of yourself as ‘ordinary’ – there’s always hope.
This kind of transformative possibility in children’s books seems to me to be the very opposite of tragedy. In tragedies, most often, it’s the inherent flaws in the protagonist’s character that lead to the inevitable tragic outcome. Hamlet’s total introspection, his inability to stop dithering; Othello’s insane jealousy; Coriolanus’s pride; or in the classic Greek tragedies, the hero’s hubris, or their rigidity, or the inevitable repercussions of one terrible action. There’s a feeling of watching a slow motion train crash – nothing stops the slide towards mutual destruction because none of the characters are capable of changing who they are. When I was in my twenties, life sometimes felt exactly like this, and when it did, my best friend and I used to wail: ‘Aargh - I’m in an Iris Murdoch novel!’
In much adult literature events unfold in this way – the characters, like Martin Luther, ‘can do no other’, they react to each other and to events in ways that drive the plot forward, and it’s not very often that one of them finds a hidden power that solves the tangle they’ve all got themselves into. For me, then, tragedy is a quintessentially grown-up (‘literary’) form of literature, about people working through the consequences of who they are, who they have become. But children are always becoming, and so children’s literature seems to me in its purest form the very opposite of tragedy – characterised not by comedy, but a kind of positive hopefulness, an expectation of finding some new, positive aspect of yourself which explodes into the plot and turns it on its head.
This seems especially important to me now, when schools – even primary – are riddled with exams and tests and gradings: children, according to Ofsted good practice, should know exactly what National Curriculum Level they are (a 3a, or a 4b) and why they aren’t yet at the next level up. There is only one path allowed: three points of progress in academic work per school year. Ofsted is not interested in whether you might, in the meantime, have fought dragons, or learnt to conjure a whirlwind.
As with all generalisations, I’m sure people will find exceptions and caveats, and I don’t at all mean to be prescriptive. It’s not that I think all children’s books must conform to this model – but for me, the ‘ideal type’, if you like, of a children’s book, is that it has this sort of transformative hope at its centre. And the ideal anti-type is the tragedy.
C.J. Busby writes funny, fast paced fantasy for primary age children.
Her latest book,
Deep Amber, is a multiple worlds adventure for 8-12, published March 2014 by Templar.
'This is an adventure... here are runes and swords and incredibly stupid knights in armour – enjoy!' (ABBA Reviews: Read the rest of the review
here).
Website:
www.cjbusby.co.ukTwitter:
@ceciliabusby
Ghost Hawk
By Susan Cooper
McElderry Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-1-4424-8141-1
Ages 9-12
On shelves now
How do we best honor our literary heroes? Particularly those who not only live but continue to produce works of fiction within our lifetimes. Like whole swaths of women and men my age, I grew up on Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series when I was a child. And while I may not have understood everything the books were doing at the time, I liked them sincerely. Admittedly my maturity level made me a bigger sucker for her Boggart series, which was light and fluffy and lovely. When I grew up and became a children’s librarian I dutifully read books of hers like Victory which I enjoyed (and I reread those Dark Is Rising titles to actually get them this time around). All this is to say that I was always a fan. But as a fan, I don’t feel particularly inclined to coddle my heroes. The respect and, yes, awe that I feel for them should never blind me to the quality of their writings, even as they grow older. And while there is nothing about Ghost Hawk, the latest book by Ms. Cooper, that suggests that she is working in anything but her prime, I can say with certainty that if I had read it without knowing the author’s name I would have called you a dirty liar had you told me its true creator. A mismanaged, ultimately confusing work of historical fiction, this is a well-intentioned piece that suffers at the hands of an otherwise great author.
Little Hawk, member of the Pokanoket tribe of the Wampanoag Nation, is on the cusp of becoming a man. With only a bow and arrows and his own tomahawk, he sets out to survive the cold winter chill for three moons on his own. This he does after much trial and error, only to return to find his tribe felled by disease. After moving to a new tribe he experiences increased interactions with white settlers, and through them begins to befriend a boy by the name of John. When tragedy strikes, Little Hawk is there to guide John and help him learn unfamiliar ways.
Let me say right now that this is a spoilery review. A review so chock full of spoilers that should you wade in, even up to your ankles, you will soon find yourself facing huge discussions of the end of this book and the surprising plot points. I play fair. I warn you. But if you’re looking to read this book and you wish to remain shocked by its structural intricacies (such as they are) read no further.
To be clear, mine is not the first voice of dissent on this title. As it happens Ghost Hawk was a subject of much contention even before it was even published. Debbie Reese is tribally enrolled at Nambe Pueblo in northern New Mexico and currently works as an assistant professor in American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ms. Reese raised a great many concerns with the text, and her point of view has been examined and argued and contested ever since. Now I will confess to you that this is not my own area of expertise. The likelihood of one name being used over another, or the ways in which someone actually goes about creating a tomahawk are unknown to me. This may be a debate that rages for some time, and I’ve no doubt that it shall. That said, I had my very own personal problems with Cooper’s text. Problems that had less to do with customs like when one gives tobacco to another, and more with the broader scope of the book itself. Take, for example, the Pokanoket tribe of the Wampanoag Nation. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them humorless, but Cooper imbues them with a stately majesty best suited to totems or symbols rather than people. Where is their humor? Where is their humanity? They live and die as representations, not humans. When Little Hawk returns to his village, you feel mildly bad for him but hardly crushed. You didn’t know these people, not really. They didn’t feel enough like people to you. So where’s the outrage? Where’s the anger?
Then there’s the fact that in his ghost form (more on that in a second), Little Hawk is capable of seeing the past and the present but not the future. This awfully convenient narrative technique is unworthy of an author of Cooper’s skill. It is a clunky choice. A more elegant method of introducing information that Little Hawk would not otherwise have would have been welcome. As it is, we’re stuck with an amusingly semi-omnipotent narrator.
These have been my problems with the book, certainly. But if we take another step back and simply look at the plot of the book in its roughest form, problems are immediately apparent. Here, then, is the plot. A Wampanoag boy named Little Hawk grows up and undergoes a trial to prove that he is a man. When he returns he finds his village dead. He grows up. He is killed (thus ends the first part of this book). He then is seen in ghost form by a white child settler named John. John learns the Algonquin language and customs through his friendship with Little Hawk’s ghost. At this point the reader is going to start wondering how John will use this knowledge. Will he be a bridge between communities? Will he use his valuable skills to solve problems no one else can?
Nope. He’ll grow up and be killed by a different Native American. Good night, everybody!!
I don’t think I’m the only one who read that passage in the book where John dies and came to the unavoidable conclusion that this book didn’t have much in a way of a point. Under normal circumstances, when a character acquires knowledge after a long period of time (not to mention a deeper understanding of another culture) they use it later in the story to the benefit of others. One could argue that John does use the knowledge when he saves Metacom from certain death, but this is not the case. John grabs the child and then is able to communicate with the parents later, but no real outcome is derived from this. Well, then maybe Cooper’s point is that there is no point. Maybe history is just a series of unfortunate events without rhyme or reason. Could be. But why even bother to take the time to build this friendship between a boy and a ghost if you’re just going to throw it away later? I cannot for the life of me figure out what Cooper was doing with this story.
Which brings us to the very end of the book. The moment when Susan Cooper herself decides to walk onto the page. We know from her Author’s Note that Ms. Cooper “built a house on Little Hawk’s island” seven years ago or so. This act served as one of the impetuses for writing this book in the first place. Lots of authors have found similar fonts of inspiration in their adopted homes. What they do not usually do is put themselves into the books as the ultimate Deus Ex Machina. In the case of “Ghost Hawk”, Ms. Cooper introduces Little Hawk to Rachel. She is “a woman, in her middle years. She has dark eyes and hair, and her name is Rachel. She is a painter. She appears to live alone.” Rachel’s purpose in this story is to free Little Hawk from his imprisonment. It is she that figures out what John and Little Hawk himself could not. She solves the mystery of his existence, he goes free, and that’s the end of the book. Above and beyond whether or not it’s kosher to end a book with a white woman swooping in to save the day one has to assume it’s a bit odd when the author places such a clear cut stand-in for themselves on the page. Again, the appearance of Rachel is clunky. I keep using that word but no other fits quite as well. It disrupts the book without need or reason.
Now here’s the kicker. For all that I moan and groan and rend my garments, you never once forget that Cooper is a great author. She knows how to construct a tale. Maybe a bit of judicious editing would not have been out of place (clocking in at 336 pages the removal of 50 or so could only have been to the good) but you’re never in doubt of the fact that the woman knows how to write. Amusingly, I’ve just gone back to my own dog-eared copy to find that I even highlighted some passages. One was a rather interesting description of how the wars with Spain ate up all the trees in England thanks to the efforts of the shipyards. It’s a fun moment, but then it’s a moment when we’ve returned to Cooper’s native land. Moreover, as I read through the book I noticed that the audience it really seems to be aimed towards is adults. Our hero Little Hawk spends very little time young. John himself grows with prodigious speed and then is a grown man seeking his way in the world. Are there many enticements for kids in this story? I think not.
There will be, I just know, a child out there assigned this book to read for school. The teacher will gaze with respect upon the author’s name and the words “Newbery Award-Winning Author of the Dark Is Rising” embedded on the book’s front cover. They may even seek out the reviews that praise it highly. PW called it “well-researched and elegant”, while Booklist gave it a star and said, “this is simply an unforgettable reading experience.” No argument there, but I think we differ slightly on what we deem “unforgettable”. Even Horn Book itself praised it to the skies with the words “powerful” and “memorable”. And so they shall assign this book to their fourth or fifth or sixth graders and it will become a book of required reading for many summers to come. The kids could read instead the expertly penned The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich. They could delve into Helen Frost’s Salt: A Story of Friendship in a Time of War or Tim Tingle’s How I Became A Ghost or Rosanne Parry’s Written in Stone. But no. They will be assigned this and they will reach the ending saying precisely what I myself said: What precisely is the point? The point, it would seem, is that even a strong and talented writer who knows how to make a truly beautiful sentence does, occasionally, fall flat. This is not Cooper’s best effort. It is not even in her top ten. It is, however, historical American history. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on whether or not that trumps its other problems.
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Some exciting new books for kids are premiering tomorrow, October 2nd.
Madeline L'Engle's 1962 Newbery Award winning, A WRINKLE IN TIME, is being revisited as a graphic novel.
SON by Lois Lowry is the fourth book in her futuristic world that began with THE GIVER, another Newbery winner, and continued with GATHERING BLUE and MESSENGER.
Both these new stories are fantasies. I told you last week about just having finished ADVENT by James Treadwell. That fantasy reminded me of a classic fantasy series by Susan Cooper, THE DARK IS RISING. You should check it out.
All of the above reads have been for YA readers, but another fun fantasy series is THE CHRONICLES OF PRYDAIN by Lloyd Alexander. It's not new, but middle grade readers should enjoy it. Lots of adventure, plus some laughs.
Today is the perfect day to start exploring a new world. Why not open a book and begin your adventure--if you dare!
By:
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on 7/7/2012
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He won’t read it. He hates everything. #3
By David Teague, The Children’s Book Review
Published: July 7, 2012
On the first day of summer vacation when I was twelve years old, I got on my bicycle, rode three miles down the street through a tunnel of new leaves, emerged into lemon-colored sunshine in the middle of town, racked my bike, opened the front door of the library to release its peppery aroma into the juicy green afternoon, and saw a book with a fantastic cover awaiting me on the nearest wooden table: M.C. Higgins The Great.
On the first page, Mayo Cornelius, sporting lettuce affixed to his wrists with rubber bands (for reasons that became clear later) stared into the distance, imagining the freedom that lay in his future, wondering what to do with it. Just like me: In the deafening summertime silence made up of nobody telling me what to do, and with a bicycle I could theoretically ride until I fell into the Pacific Ocean, I’d spent the entire day thinking, “Now I’m gonna make something happen. But what?”
So I started reading to see what M. C. had done with all his freedom. On a hot, leafy mountainside overlooking the Ohio River, he set out to explore what it meant—the freedom to stand up to his father, the freedom to forge friendships with people very different from himself, the freedom to imagine a future no one else in his family had ever imagined, and the freedom to pursue it. His life was more dramatic than mine, more dangerous, odd, fraught, and strange, because he was a character in a novel, but M. C. himself, I understood. He was on a quest to find out who M. C. really was.
And so M. C. Higgins The Great made the summer of 1975 last forever. His story was the story of how he became himself amid trees and streams and the first hints freedom that come with growing up.
Which makes it a perfect summer book.
Here are a few more like it:
By Tony Abbott
Jason travels to St. Petersburg, Florida, and goes on a quest to uncover secrets that will change everything he ever believed about himself and his family.
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers | April 2, 2008 | Ages 8-12
By Gary Paulsen
Brian survives a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness and comes of age facing the challenge of survival in a thrilling, dangerous land.
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As promised, here are Susan Cooper's and Gregory Maguire's five favorite fantasies as promulgated for our evening at MIT:
Susan's:
Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett (told you she was deep)
The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin
Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White
Gregory's:
The Amazing Bone by William Steig
Father Fox's Pennyrhymes by Clyde and Wendy Watson
The Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton
A Step off the Path by Peter Hunt
It by William Mayne
The last makes me unable to resist my favorite Dorothy Parker line. In reviewing Elinor Glyn's steamy It (1927), Parker wrote of the heroine, "It, hell. She had Those."
WGBH has posted audio and video versions of Susan Cooper's Cambridge Forum lecture on fantasy.
Gregory Maguire and Susan Cooper, photo by Richard Asch
While the rest of you were chowing down on thousand-dollar-a-plate surf-n-turf at the National Book Awards (unless you were too busy fondling--oh ICK I can't even say it) I was scarfing cookies graciously provided by Candlewick Press and Simon & Schuster as refreshment for our evening of talk about fantasy, the reading and writing of it, with Susan Cooper and Gregory Maguire. The house was full (guarding the door, Cambridge P.L.'s Julie Roach told me she heard all manner of subterfuges--"my friend has my ticket"-- and brooked none) and the conversation lively. Greg is naturally loquacious and Susan more reserved, so my job as moderator kept me on my toes. MIT will be posting a video of the event on their MITWorld site and I'll let you know when that's up; in the meantime you can still catch Susan Cooper tonight, free, at 7:30 PM at the First Church in Harvard Square.
Oops, wrong fantasy*. But in honor of the upcoming extravaganza with Susan Cooper and Gregory Maguire, Kitty and Claire have put online some of the Horn Book Magazine's finest fantasy articles, including Susan Cooper on Tolkien and Tom's Midnight Garden, Gregory Maguire on Philip Pullman, Philip Pullman on The Republic of Heaven, and several more esteemed writers on the whole doom-and-unicorns shebang. They won't be up forever, so read 'em now.
*But I still maintain that, in Susan Cooper's time fantasy King of Shadows, young hero Nat and the Bard of Avon totally had it going on, if you know what I'm saying.
So keep that in mind when you read her review of The Seeker.
The upcoming opening of The Seeker, formerly known as The Dark is Rising, has a lot of people on edge, not least Susan Cooper. I'm reminded of another time this title got in trouble, branded as racist in 1976 by the Council on Interracial Books for Children in their Human and Anti-Human Values in Children's Books: A Content Rating Instrument for Educators and Parents. And it was the title itself that got Cooper's book in hot water with this crowd, who believed that the equation of darkness with evil was "racist by commission," meaning overtly harmful. If I recall right, The Dark Is Rising was also labeled "racist by omission," by the CIBC, because it didn't have any black characters. I'll have to remember to ask Susan what she thought about all this.
I will be out of the office the rest of this week, giving a speech in Vermont and then taking a few days to enjoy the Green Mountain State ( a visit to Beau Ties, I hope, and any recommendations for food and ice cream would be much appreciated). And I'm bringing a prodigious number of books whose pages I cannot hope to get through and whose ISBNs I reproduce below in the spirit of reckless theft of intellectual property:
978-0385516297
978-0399154300
978-0670038664
978-0061231728
978-0871139603
978-0452288522
978-1400043958
Richard, on the other hand, is only bringing 978-0385721790 and 978-1400032914, which is far more sensible (and they're both excellent) but I always worry that if I bring only two, it will be the wrong two. And then where are you?
Miss Pod is coming with us too, and she's fully loaded with Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series, which I'm rereading-hearing in preparation for our chat in November. It's always good to have a book along you already know you love.
I will be out of the office the rest of this week, giving a speech in Vermont and then taking a few days to enjoy the Green Mountain State ( a visit to Beau Ties, I hope, and any recommendations for food and ice cream would be much appreciated). And I'm bringing a prodigious number of books whose pages I cannot hope to get through and whose ISBNs I reproduce below in the spirit of reckless theft of intellectual property:
978-0385516297
978-0399154300
978-0670038664
978-0061231728
978-0871139603
978-0452288522
978-1400043958
Richard, on the other hand, is only bringing 978-0385721790 and 978-1400032914, which is far more sensible (and they're both excellent) but I always worry that if I bring only two, it will be the wrong two. And then where are you?
Miss Pod is coming with us too, and she's fully loaded with Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series, which I'm rereading-hearing in preparation for our chat in November. It's always good to have a book along you already know you love.
Last Friday Daryl Mark (of the Cambridge P.L.) and I went over to MIT to look over the new location that anticipatory enthusiasm for the evening seemed to demand. So, we're still on for the program with Susan Cooper and Gregory Maguire, we're still talking about the writing and reading of fantasy, and it's still all going to take place on Wednesday, November 14, at 7:00PM. But note the new location: the program will now be taking place in the Frank Gehry glam Stata Center. MIT kahuna Paul Parravano (yes, consort to the inestimable Martha) showed us around, and it's quite an impressive place. Tickets (free but limit of four) for the evening will be available October 15th by sending an SASE to: Susan Cooper Event, Cambridge Public Library, 359 Broadway, Cambridge, MA, 02139. Note: seating is first come, first served; overflow "population" (MIT-speak for audience) will be accommodated via TV monitors. A reception will follow.
The following evening Susan Cooper will deliver a lecture, "Unriddling the World: Fantasy and Children" for the Cambridge Forum. This event is also free, no ticket required, and will be held at 7:30 PM at the First Parish church in Harvard Square, Cambridge.
For those of you who enjoyed the profile of Gregory Maguire in the NYT yesterday, please put November 14 on your calendar, when I'll be conducting a public interview with Gregory AND Susan Cooper, about writing, fantasy, and the state of the world, in Cambridge, MA, location to be determined. Susan will also be giving a public lecture the next evening for the Cambridge Forum.
I'm also very happy with Gregory today because he's graciously agreed to donate a signed copy of Wicked for a benefit auction my man Richard's company is running tomorrow night for the BPL.
Now Reading: Madame Chiang Kai-shek: China's Eternal First Lady
Just Finished: George Washington, Spymaster: How the Americans Outspied the British and Won the Revolutionary War, Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, Shug
I was really looking forward to finishing up Madame Chiang Kai-Shek this weekend, but I left it at work, because I'm smooth like that. Ah well. Here are some great, classic works of children's literature that I really should have read when I was 12.
The Boggart by Susan Cooper
The Volnik family has inherited an old, Scottish castle. They can't keep it, but they go off to Scotland to see it and get it ready for sale. They decide to have some of the furniture shipped back to Canada, but that's not all that comes--the castle's Boggart, a practical joke playing spirit, has gotten trapped in one of the boxes and has landed in a modern, large city.
The Boggart is full of good-natured mischief and he does like
some things about modern living--pizza for one, and electricity. Where the youngest Volnik, Jessup, enjoys this behavior, the older one, Emily, gets blamed for it-- the Boggart's well meaning actions often land her in trouble. Eventually, she is accused of causing psychic disturbances and it looks like she will have to be hospitalized. The Boggart feels terrible, but everything he tries to help just makes things worse. All he really wants it to go home, but how?
I would have loved this book when I was 12. I liked the portrayals of small village life in Scotland and how the Boggart tried to fit into his new surroundings. I liked the kids, too. Part of the problem is that it's a high-tech solution, but, given that this book came out in the early 90s, the technology is so horribly out of date that it seems a bit laughable now. The Boggart's mischief also would have been a lot more humorous at the age of 12 then I found it at the age of 26.
Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
Tom is shipped off to spend the summer at his aunt and uncle's flat when his brother comes down with measles. Not only does he have to live there, but, he's confined to the flat because he's been exposed to the disease. One night Tom hears the clock downstairs strike 13 and finds a garden that only exists in this lost hour. During his time in the garden, Tom befriends a small girl, Hatty, who is often ignored by her older (male) cousins. Tom knows that Hatty doesn't exist in his time plane and has to find a way to stay with his aunt and uncle.
I think the thing that got me the most was the timing in this book. There are a a few scenes of Tom and Hatty meeting and then you see Tom no longer missing his brother and being distraught at the thought of leaving his aunt and uncle's (and therefore the garden). I thought that these scenes were just representative of a long and building friendship, but then you find out that Tom's only been there for a little over a week (and he didn't get to the garden the first few nights). It just didn't make sense. I also found the ending twist painfully obvious, but I think that Pearce was a pioneer in this respect. This is, however, one of Silvey's 100 best books for children. When I was 12, the wonder and magic of the garden would have captivated me a lot more and I would not have noticed the weird timing and I don't think I would have figured out the ending so soon.
Five Children and It by E. Nesbit
Five children are staying at a country house and are enthralled by all the freedom it has to offer. While playing in a nearby gravel pit, they find a Psammead (a sand fairy) who will grant them their wishes, but everything they wish for goes horribly wrong.
This was disappointing, because it became painfully obvious that my childhood favorite, Half Magic, completely ripped off the plot from this book (but totally did it better). Edgar gives full credit and props to Ms. Nesbit, but still, completely heartbreaking.
Welcome to the Scholar's Blog Book Discussion Group
And to its first discussion. This month, we're discussion Susan Cooper's timeslip tale, King of Shadows
. The title refers to these lines of Shakespeare's:
"This is thy negligence. Still thou mistak'st,
Or else commit'st thy knaveries wilfully."
"Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook."
- Oberon and Puck, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act III Scene 3
And as you will know, if you've already read the book, the tale centres on two performances of
A Midsummer Night's Dream, that are performed 400 years apart.
Here are some of the things I love about this book:
1 - The opening: "Tag." - just one word and yet my attention was snagged and I found myself rushing into the tale...
2 - Nat's introduction to Will Shakespeare:
"'Greet Master Shakespeare, boy.'
It was as if he'd said, 'Say hello to God.'"
If you're a big fan of Shakespeare (or any other author), you know exactly what Nat means by this comment.
3 - The way the time-travel element is handled, with Nat asleep, so the mystery of how it happens is preserved. You don't have to worry about the science, you can just enjoy the magic of the story.
4 - The use that Cooper makes of Shakespeare's own words, with the quotations both from the plays and the Sonnets. I've long known and loved
Sonnet 116 Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. and
Sonnet 18Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.the last two lines of the latter are ones that Nat mentions after Arby gives him a copy of the Complete Sonnets (chapter 19).
5 - The way the tale invites you to see or read
A Midsummer Night's Dream for yourself. I hadn't seen it before reading this book, but I rented a
DVD of Michael Hoffman's
movie (with Stanley Tucci playing "Puck"). And I'm quite sure I got more out of the story, having read Cooper's book first.
So what do you like about this book ? What don't you like or what do you feel doesn't work ?
Oh and if anyone is interested, the carol that the Guy's Hospital nurse sings to 16th century Nathan Field in chapter 9, is the Coventry Carol, and you can find the words
here and the music
here.
The Scholar's Blog Book Discussion Group has started over on my Scholar's Blog Spoiler Zone. Please feel free to join the discussion if you've read Susan Cooper's timeslip tale, King of Shadows.
Just a quick reminder that the first discussion for the Scholar's Blog Book Discussion Group begins next Tuesday, with The King of Shadows by Susan Cooper. It's not too late to "sign up" - just leave me a comment on the post linked above and get ready to chat ! I'm looking forward to this and hope that we can have a great discussion... And rest assured, you don't need a degree to discuss the book - just an interest in books, reading and discussion !
Susan Cooper's King of Shadows is available from Amazon.co.uk and from Amazon.com
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I have to disagree with you, Betsy. It seems to me that this book is taking a terrible beating and picking-apart and that people are saying, “Oh, of course, it’s fabulously written–” as if that were nothing; as if it were easy to write a fabulously written book. It isn’t. Moreover, I think the book has strengths beyond its beautifully cadenced sentences.
I thought the early wilderness chapters were gripping and finely detailed and beautiful. When Little Hawk returned to find his village wiped out, I was horrified. The ensuing story of the increasingly hostile relationships between the Wampanoags and the settlers frustrated me–because the way people screw things up IS frustrating; it’s complex and harrowing to watch. While Cooper is clearly more sympathetic to the Wampanoags (and how could you help it?) she also delineates how harsh the times were for everyone. Life was hard. People were narrow-minded, distrustful, and suspicious of one another, not because it was fun to be those things, but because it was damned difficult to be otherwise.
I thought the book was written with a big mind; I felt throughout that I was in the hands of a writer who was truly thoughtful and serious (as opposed to self-righteous, commercially didactic, or manipulative). I believed in the story; I could visualize and feel the actions and emotions of the characters. And I’m not convinced that the book won’t work for children. I agree with you that the ending was a surprise; it wasn’t what I was expecting, and so I had trouble integrating it into my sense of the narrative. But children may find Little Hawk’s passage into a different world concrete and satisfying. I’d like to try this out on readers of MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN and THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND.
…yeah, this one has been nominated for the Cybils, and I’ve read Debbie’s words about it, and am feeling dread. This makes the dread bigger.
You make a good point about how we treat our literary heroes. We indulge them. Respect, awe, and “take-off-your-shoes-holy-ground” feelings sometimes mean less than incisive editing. And, then the kids get a confusing, messy, expiatory book assigned to them that they shouldn’t have to read. Ugh.
Well, it’s certainly written well but I don’t think I’d pull out the $100 word “fabulous” to describe it. I didn’t really go into it, but it was a bit of a slog to get through. I didn’t bring it up since I suspect this marks the reemergence of 12-year-old me skimming through the Welsh language sections of The Grey King all over again. That said, I sort of had to wade through it up to my waist, striving forward with the knowledge that it had to be going somewhere. When, in fact, it turned out that the book was NOT going somewhere after all, I was less than entirely pleased.
And I would certainly agree that the book is not didactic, self-righteous, or manipulative but perhaps a little sprinkle of one of those wouldn’t have hurt. They certainly would have done wonders for making it more interesting. But I see that many people have fallen head over heels for it. Clearly it is loved. Just not by me.
Very interesting. I’m hearing Cooper talk about this book on Friday so it will be very interesting to hear what she has to say in light of this. I wonder how different the reception of this novel will be here in the UK as compared to the US.
Oh, how interesting! I did see the British cover recently (which doesn’t differ all that much from the American). Do let us know what the reactions are. Certainly I would assume that the UK would be less inclined to delve into the historical details, so I’m interested in how they address her storytelling.
Will do.
Betsy, taking your first paragraph and your last together, i can’t tell if you’re accusing Horn Book and PW and Booklist of coddling Susan Cooper or indulging in cultural imperialism or both. But to blame our reviews for forcing American schoolchildren to read something we apparently liked better than you did seems like a reach.
Oh hells bells. I’m not saying that in the least. I am saying that if a person looks at the professional reviews they will think this a perfectly a-okay book to teach their schoolchildren. I personally do not much care for it, but I hoped that by mentioning the other reviews out there that I could show (without having to go so far as to say it) that mine was clearly an opinion not universally shared. I would sooner eat a shoe than imagine that you were “indulging” Ms. Cooper.
Hi Roger,
How do you define cultural imperialism? I’m not being snarky. I think it would be a worthwhile discussion for SLJ readers to have the opportunity to think about things like cultural imperialism and how they do or do not apply to literature and education.
Debbie, in terms of children’s books, I would define cultural imperialism as valuing non-dominant cultures only insofar as they can serve the dominant one. As you have pointed out, this often happens in books by white people about American Indians. Whether that happens in GHOST HAWK seems to be the substance of the debate over on Heavy Medal. I only winced when the ghost asked Rachel if she was Wampanoag, and, rather than simply saying “no,” she goes into some we-are-all-one blather that the book would have been better off without.