I was saddened to learn of the death of children’s author Georgess McHargue on Monday, July 18th. It seems that this was a death our community missed and I am sorry for it. Ms. McHargue penned many a fine children’s novel, but my favorite would have to be Stoneflight, a tale of New York City’s statuary come to life. According to her obituary, “After working at Golden Press, Georgess became an editor at Doubleday. In her long career as an author, she published 35 books, many are for young adults, some focused on archaeology, mythology and history. She was nominated for a National Book Award for The Beasts of Never, and wrote many reviews over the years for the NY Times Book Review.” Jane Yolen was a friend of hers and alerted me to her passing. Thank you, Jane, for letting us know. She was a brilliant writer.
- Diane Roback, now I doff my hat to you. The recent PW article on Colorful Characters is a boon to the industry. I dare say it’s brilliant. One does wonder how Walter Mayes, who is not old, feels about being included amongst the dead and elderly. I hope he enjoys it! Being known as a “colorful character” will keep folks talking about you (and writing about you) for decades to come.
- That’s cool. Zetta Elliott had a chance to interview and profile Jacqueline Woodson in Ms. Magazine’s blog recently. Good title too: Writing Children’s Books While Black and Feminist. The part where she’s asked to name “five other black LGBTQ authors of children’s literature” is telling. I don’t know that I could either.
- Living as we do in an essentially disposable society, Dan Blank’s piece on Preserving Your Legacy: Backing Up Your Digital Media makes for necessary reading. As someone who has lost countless photos and files through my own negligence, this piece rings true to me. Particularly the part where Dan says he makes sure that “Once a day, I backup my photo library onto an external hard drive.” Anthony Horowitz once told me the same thing. How’s THAT for name dropping, eh eh?
- Jobs! Jobs in the publishing industry! Jobs I say!
- And much along the same lines, were you aware that there’s a group out there made up entirely of youngsters who are entering the publishing industry? At 33 I reserve the right to call twenty-somethings “youngsters”. I am also allowed to shake my cane at them and use phrases like “whippersnappers” and “hooligans”. But I digress. The Children’s Book Council has an Early Career Committee
This month marks 70 years since the outbreak of the Second World War. The First World War had been described as the war to end all wars - yet just over thirty years later, Hitler’s invasion of Poland triggered a new conflict that would go on to engulf the whole world. Older Brother came home from his first day back at school yesterday and announced that their topic for this term is to be the Second World War. I am relieved that the teaching of history has moved on since I was at school, when all we seemed to do was draw diagrams of battle lines and rote learn significant dates. Now, I am sure, he will learn about these events but also about the cost to human life - and, I hope, he will emerge with an inkling of the horrors of war.
A superb picture book which both provides historical context and reminds us of the human tragedy which accompanies the macchinations of war is Photographs in the Mud by Dianne Wolfer and illustrated by Brian Harrison-Lever (Fremantle Press, 2005). We follow the stories of two soldiers, one Australian, the other Japanese, as they set off for the front in Papua New Guinea. Jack leaves behind a pregnant wife; and Hoshi, his wife and small daughter. Each carries photographs to remind them of home - and the passing of time is emphasised through the illustrations as these photographs change.
There are many casualties on both sides before Jack and Hoshi encounter one another. Both fatally wounded, they turn to the comfort of the photographs that are their only connection with home - and then share them with each other. When they are found the next day, a soldier retrieves the photographs from the mud and tries to separate them but they are stuck together.
Photographs in the Mud is a moving tribute to the soldiers who fought and died in Papua New Guinea during the Second World War and serves as a sensitive reminder of the human cost, not just for the soldiers themselves but for those left waiting in vain for the return of their loved ones.
The story was inspired by a trip Dianne Wolfer made along the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea, during which she heard many stories about the fighting there during the Second World War. There are photos from this trip on her website, as well as teachers’ notes to accompany the book.
Vojtech Novotny is a Czech tropical biologist who established a research station in a remote part of Papua New Guinea, where he involves local tribes-people in his work. In Notebooks from New Guinea, his latest book, we find inspiring descriptions of the rainforest and its peoples alongside bemused and affectionate accounts of his fellow-scientists, and of Western tourists. In the original post below, he describes a medical emergency in the village where he was researching. Be sure to check out the other posts in this series, which will continue all week, here.
Exotic peoples strike us as exotic chiefly because of their differences in taste, as exemplified to perfection in the morning process by which one finally decides whether to wear one’s Adidas baseball cap to work, or one’s coronet of cassowary feathers. We are fascinated by differences of opinion as to the ideal morphology of headgear and other such frivolities and they have become the driving force of the tourist industry.
However, our fascination with cultural diversity in no way prevents us from expecting that on such graver questions as life, health, sickness or death we will be more at one with our exotic friends than when it comes to choosing a hat. We take it for granted that, deep inside, each and every one of us is furnished with that universal mental organ known as ‘common sense’.
A fellow tribesman falling seriously ill and needing to be helped is such a basic crisis scenario that even in our multicultural world there should be little room for misunderstanding. Speedy medical assistance is also organised in much the same way all over the world – you dial a particular number and in next to no time an ambulance or helicopter shows up to whisk the patient to hospital.
We have instituted the same principle at the New Guinea village where, alongside the natives, we are researching the ecology of the tropical rainforest. Admittedly, the patient has first to be conveyed fifteen kilometres through the jungle to the nearest passable road, but once there, we can summon an off-roader by satellite phone and have the patient taken to Madang, which is all of 100 km away, but it does have a hospital. To our surprise, even this apparently simple system may be vitiated if the ambulance and the patient happen not to come from the same tribe or continent.
Our village headman, Jason, asked for the urgent transfer to Madang hospital of his first wife, Mary, after she fainted from the pain of a neglected breast cancer. Our car promptly deposited her there, but Mary, fearful in a strange environment, took herself off to a rural mission hospital instead, where they weren’t equipped for complicated cases. After several days when no one took a look at her and she herself started feeling better, she returned to the village.
We learned of the failure of the hospital mission only after Mary fainted again, her cancer having advanced further and the pain being now even greater. Jason suggested waiting until she felt better and capable of making it to the road herself. We were far from certain that this situation would materialise, so we proposed she should be stretchered to the road then taken on to hospital by car. Jason hesitated, and finally came up with the excuse that the village didn’t have enough willing porters. So we suggested that porters be paid our standard rate of 25p per kilo of load.
Only then did Jason admit, with some reluctance, that tribal custom made the carrying of a woman by men taboo. Allegedly, his own father had once broken the taboo and had died shortly thereafter. This is a generalisation of a rule that states that anything that a woman steps over is unclean for men. Thus the men of the village, including Mary’s own husband, would not carry Mary to the road even if her life were placed at risk by their refusal.
The territory of the village is also home to incomers of the Simbai tribe. They recognise no such transport taboo and so were prepared to carry Mary to the road, yet not even that proved doable. Not only must men not carry a woman, but a woman must not be carried by men, without the risk of some catastrophe of cosmic proportions.
The taboo does not apply to women porters, so if Mary were to be borne along by local women, the order of the universe would not be jeopardised. There was no technical problem to the exercise either, since the women, hung about with several children of various sizes, regularly haul heavy loads of firewood, sweet potatoes or other agricultural products. Our suggestion that they might, by way of an exception, swap their habitual loads for a woman on a stretcher was treated as utterly absurd and the women refused to contemplate it for a single second as even a hypothetical possibility. Nothing of the sort had ever happened in the village, so in principle the whole thing must be impossible. We were not in the least surprised by this attitude, since we already had first-hand experience of the extreme conservatism of the women of the village and their total resistance to any kind of innovation. This included several years of vainly attempting to teach them to cook such exotic things as rice for our staff.
There could finally be no doubting that the only way to get Mary out of the village was on her own two feet. This was eventually achieved and we could deliver her to the hospital. The very next day she was visited there by the village magician, who tried to persuade her to leave the hospital, since hospital treatment and other such extravagances would only bring all manner of disasters down on her village. The magician had been sent in by Jason’s youngest, that is, his third, wife. We the bystanders, whether Papua New Guinean, European or American, were united in believing this move to be a wily attempt by the third wife to be rid of the first. Mary obviously thought as much herself, since she sent the magician packing and underwent an operation the very next day.
My name’s Prue and I wrote Camel Rider which is an adventure story set in the Middle East. It’s about two boys called Adam and Walid who trek through deserts and mountains to save a dog called Tara.
I love adventures and I’m just in the middle of packing for a trek of my own. This one is through the jungles of Papua New Guinea. One of the best things about being a writer is that I can go on adventures and call them research. This one should be an adventure because Papua New Guinea is a country where people still live in their remote mountain villages without running water or electricity like their parents and grandparents and great, great etc. parents did before them.
The reason I’m going is because my two brothers talked me into it. Our Dad was a soldier in the Second World War and he fought alongside the Americans in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. They had a really tough time because this is how a soldier who was there described it – “Imagine an area approximately 100 miles long – crumple and fold this into a series of ridges each rising higher and higher until 7,000 feet is reached and then dropping to 3,000 feet – cover this thickly with jungle, short trees and tall ones tangled with vines… About midday and through the night pour water over all this so everything becomes slippery and muddy.” Sounds great doesn’t it? Well if you like trekking through mud and being eaten by mosquitos and attacked by leeches it could be fun.
My Dad and lots of other soldiers traveled along a track through this area called the Kokoda Trail. Not only did they have to try and make their way up and down these slippery, muddy ridges and through fast flowing rivers but they were also being shot at by their enemy. I remember my Dad showing me and my sisters and brothers a scar on his back that he told us was when an enemy soldier dropped out of a tree and had his knife almost into Dad’s back when luckily for Dad, but unluckily for the enemy soldier, there was a friend behind Dad who saved him. Dad said he learnt a lot about himself and life during the time he was a soldier. He said one time when he was fighting he got so close to an enemy he looked into his eyes. He saw the man was really frightened. From that time on Dad said he knew that there’s no such thing as an enemy – just people who don’t know each other but who have got themselves into a situation which is about life or death and they’re just doing what they can to survive.
When I’m struggling up and down those folded ridges I’m going to try and remember that at least I’m not being shot at.
But I’d better get on with my packing. When I get back from this trip I’ll be back to work. One of the interesting things about being a writer is the variety of work you can do. My next job is reading nearly 15,000 poems from children all around Australia because I’m one of the judges of a national poetry competition. Someone asked me what I’ll be doing with all those poems after I’ve read them. I figure I might plant them in our garden. Maybe I’ll grow a P
oetree.
Hope you enjoy Adam and Walid’s adventures. I wrote this story when I was living in the Middle East and although Adam and Walid aren’t real people, Tara is a real dog. She’s here alongside me now and is waving a paw. She likes being the heroine of the story and has visited lots of schools here in the Australia when we go and talk about Camel Rider and what it was like living in the Middle East.
Posted by author Prue Mason.
Quick correction: Georgess McHargue got her NBA nomination for THE IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE, not THE BEASTS OF NEVER.
Wow. Now that I know I was being manipulated by a “band of hippie hammer-lovers” or imperialist loving trains I don’t think I’ll look back on my son’s early childhood the same again. Although honestly, he just loved the trains and talking construction vehicles. Is that sooooo bad???
Good catch, Peter! And bad show, oh obituary writer.
Colleen, I think you’re in the clear. Unless you son starts colonizing other kids’ sandboxes “for their own good”. Then at least you know who to blame.
I am absolutely thrilled to be a Colorful Character and honored to be among such greats!
Love the Children’s Book Council Harry Potter link! I am totally going to name a local trivia team That’s So Ravenclaw, if the originators wouldn’t mind.
(And as I’m headed to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios this weekend, I’ll look for a chance to use the phrase.)
Love the minimalist posters, especially the ones for The Princess and the Pea and The Wizard of Oz (though it was missing ‘home’). Thanks for the link.
Is that Spinelli cover supposed to be about a boy and his older triplet brothers? Or did the illustrator have only the one model and not enough imagination to change somebody’s hair color?
Thanks so much for mentioning my post. I’m thrilled! And that cover is obviously a young Henry Winkler, dreaming of being the Fonz.
Elliott posted the full and unedited interview with Woodson in two parts on her blog. Its a must read if you like the profile in Ms. Magazine
Speaking of youngsters to publishing, the AAP has been sponsoring the Young to Publishing Group for 10 years now! I really enjoyed it when I was a newly minted editorial assistant in New York in the early 2000s and hopefully it’s still helpful for other newbies. Check it out at: http://youngtopublishing.com/
You might appreciate today’s drawing lesson on how to draw bunnies: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2011/aug/02/how-to-draw-bunnies-simone-lia
(and note that Simone Lia, as well as Oliver Jeffers in his post (Same series) on how to draw penguins…. both compare various appendages to sausages). Ah, the UK. Not sure our american illustrators would use the same analogy.