Christmas Poem & Pastel by Joan Aiken Best wishes, and thanks to all who visit See you next year! >>>>>#####<<<<< Filed under: In her own words, Joan's Life, Joan's Quotes, Picture by Joan, Poem by Joan Tagged: Joan Aiken Christmas poem, Joan Aiken pastel drawing
“It was dusk, winter dusk – snow lay white and shining over the pleated hills…” Sound familiar? The opening lines of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase could almost describe a scene from Joan Aiken’s first adult novel, The Silence of Herondale published just two years after her most famous children’s classic. The novel draws on […]
“Heard melodies are sweet,” Keats wrote, “but those unheard are sweeter,” and for Joan Aiken they often provided the inspiration for stories full of music which the reader can hear only in his imagination. She invented some marvellous musical creations, like a tune which when whistled or sung brings a cardboard cut-out garden to life, […]
Ghost stories are an unusual taste for a six year old, but by this age Joan Aiken was relishing them: I had already read Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James, and nearly died of delicious terror at “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You”. Searching for more fodder of a similar kind – […]
“Being a writer is not unlike being a medium; sometimes the message comes through loud and clear, sometimes it doesn’t,” Joan Aiken said in a talk on writing ghost stories. Perhaps this is particularly apt for those with a gift for sensing odd atmospheres or noticing the unusual in the everyday, as she certainly did, […]
It’s easy to write a children’s book isn’t it? From the huge numbers of new books now appearing, including all the Ebooks and self published works, character driven series, tv and movie spin offs, and school reader series, it looks as though it could be an ideal career for anyone, and certainly the publicity given […]
It’s easy to write a children’s book isn’t it? From the huge numbers of new books now appearing, including all the Ebooks and self published works, character driven series, tv and movie spin offs, and school reader series, it looks as though it could be an ideal career for anyone, and certainly the publicity given […]
Joan Aiken’s advice to young writers when she went to give talks in schools was always to carry a small notebook and to jot down anything of interest. She wrote: “The most frequent question they ask is Where do ideas come from? And if I’m talking to them in a classroom I produce the small […]
This was Joan’s idea of a Perfect Holiday… what about you? ********* Read the full letter from Joan at The Wonderful World of Joan AikenFiled under: Joan's Life, Joan's Quotes Tagged: Holiday reading, Letter from Joan Aiken
Joan Aiken enjoyed some very happy relationships with her illustrators, notably Pat Marriott, who illustrated her first story collections from 1953 onwards, and was responsible for the first ‘Wolves Chronicles’ covers and pictures, and so helped to create some of the best loved ( and scariest!) characters in the series. Pat became so familiar […]
Joan Aiken, best known for writing her classic, almost Dickensian novel, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, has always seemed ultimately English, despite the fact that she had been born to an American father, the Pulitzer prize winning poet Conrad Aiken, and a Canadian mother. The family, with her older brother and sister, who […]
Wishes have been at at the heart of story telling for as long as there have been stories…they are in themselves the first breath of the creative imagination that introduces a new life, or a fantastic world, or they can be the dangerous stirring of unease, the first creak of discontent that creates a landslide […]
Joan Aiken produced some beautiful pastel drawings while mulling over her plots, you can see some of them on the website, but this little doodle on the back of an envelope suggests a rather different, very un-fertile state of mind, brought about by the distractions and pressures of daily life (Gas in barn? […]
It is not surprising that Dido Twite is such an enduring heroine, her very survival was a piece of luck, or perhaps was even engendered by her own strongest character trait – she never gave up hope. Joan Aiken has admitted that she had imagined Dido drowning at the end of Black Hearts […]
You might imagine that Joan Aiken’s famous writer father, Conrad Aiken, would have been her most formative literary influence, or even her stepfather, British author Martin Armstrong. Hardly ever mentioned, but of huge importance in the development not only of Joan’s writing but of her whole character and imagination, is her mother, Jessie […]
Reading is one of the easiest ways you have of empathising with another person, a way of being alone with them when they are alone; it is a way of taking time off from your own preoccupations, and entering another mind, another world. Once you have experienced this, it is almost like making a friend, […]
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is a modern classic which for fifty years has thrilled and delighted readers all over the world, but the book itself has a story almost as astonishing as the adventures of its two desperate orphan heroines – this was a book that nearly didn’t get written! It all began one […]
A sister played a more important role than a romantic hero in Jane Austen’s own life; Cassandra was her lifelong confidante, and literary consultant, and after Jane’s death took charge of her reputation and legacy even to the extent of burning many of her sister’s letters. Perhaps because of this relationship, sisters are of supreme […]
Joan’s answer to this was that ‘One needs to be always on the lookout - It is a case of selection of suitable ingredients out of the mass that flows past every day – things said by people, overheard conversations, things read in the papers, heard on the news, seen in the street…’ She […]
One of Joan Aiken’s pastel drawings – mushrooms ready for supper “Just because I’m sweeping leaves doesn’t mean I’m not thinking,” she would say – or perhaps she would be drawing a picture of mushrooms, or staking runner beans, or making Rowan jelly or sewing hessian curtains…. the activities were endless. She might be gardening, […]
The delightful Charles Schlessiger of Brandt & Hochman, who is celebrating his 8Oth Birthday on July 25th (hopefully not at the office!) has been Joan Aiken’s agent for 50 years. But as Lewis Nichols noted in the New York Times in 1963, in an article accompanied by this comic cartoon – she was not the […]
A story can be the best companion, if you are a listener. If from childhood you had the good luck, the time, the solitude and the books to take you away, to transport you to a place more real than the one you lived in, you had a gift, a means of escape. You also […]
With over one hundred books published in her lifetime, Joan Aiken has contributed so much to the lives of her readers that some characters have lived on as a part of their own history, like old friends. Everyone has that aha! moment as with the taste of Proust’s famous Madeleine, when they catch sight of […]
Creating her own period of alternate history gave Joan Aiken the freedom to exercise her endless imagination, but also provided her with the opportunity to use a variety of stored information from her wide ranging reading and her life-long fascination with all kinds of study. These elements, combined with an absolutely riotous ear for dialogue […]
One of the very worst things you can hear as a child coming home to find that your room has been ‘Spring Cleaned’ must be: “Oh you didn’t want that did you? I thought you’d finished with it.’ This was clearly a memory from Joan Aiken’s own childhood, and she turned it into one of [...]
Thank you all at Aiken Towers (or maybe just you, Lizza?) for a wonderful year of posts. Hope you have a lovely break and see you in the New Year. Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!