What I’ve Been Reading
Mary’s Monster–poetry and appropriately haunting black and white art combine to create a biography of Mary Shelley that’s unforgettable. At first the text reads a little stiffly, not quite as moving as the evocative artwork–but as the book progresses the poems grow in strength.
Love, death, exile, longing, despair, creativity, beauty, horror–all gathered together in Lita Judge’s sensitive and powerful work.
Read MoreWho Decides Morality?
Classic? Controversial? Scandalous? All three?
I posted a while back about the emergence of morality clauses in publisher’s contracts. It continues to be an issue. Judith Shulevitz has an interesting take on it in the New York Times, pointing out that:
This past year, regular contributors to Condé Nast magazines started spotting a new paragraph in their yearly contracts. It’s a doozy. If, in the company’s “sole judgment,” the clause states, the writer “becomes the subject of public disrepute, contempt, complaints or scandals,” Condé Nast can terminate the agreement. In other words, a writer need not have done anything wrong; she need only become scandalous.
I take issue with Ms Shulevitz contention that it’s okay for children’s book authors to sign morality clauses while adult writers should resist them. We encounter scandal in the children’s book world too, and we occasionally stir it up. The Chocolate War, Where the Wild Things Are, and Harriet the Spy are all classics of children’s literature that were controversial and by some considered outrageous when they were published.
I think her other points are valid and important, though. Consider:
Read MoreAfter our conversation, Ms. Gersen sent me an email pointing out a possible unintended consequence of the Condé Nast [morality] clause. Who are the groups subjected to the most public vitriol for their published work, she asked? Who is most viciously trolled? Women and members of minorities. “That is one of the realities of publishing while a woman or minority in this age,” she wrote. “The clause is perversely posing more career risk to women and minorities than to white males.”
If all it takes to lose a magazine gig or book deal is to fall into “public disrepute,” it won’t be only villains whose voices are lost.
Sunshine State Young Readers List
The Eureka Key
Whoo-hoo! The Eureka Key is on Floria’s Sunshine State Young Reader’s List! I note that fellow Mainer Megan Frazer Blakemore has made it on this list as well. Hey, Megan, we’re snowbirds!
https://www.floridamediaed.org/ssyra.html
Read MoreAll These Orphans
A dog is so much better than a parent.
My daughter’s elementary school is putting on a production of Annie this year. Several of her classmates are going to be in it. They’re excited.
I like the catchy tunes as much as the next person, but I don’t care for all the stereotypes about adoption. In general, adoptive parents (and I am one) don’t want their kids to get the idea that “nobody cares for you a smidge / when you’re in an orphanage.” My daughter and I watched the film a few weeks ago so she’d be prepared. She didn’t mind Mrs. Hannigan as much as I do, although she wasn’t a fan of Punjab the Indian manservant.
It made me think a bit more about all the orphans of children’s literature.
Annie, of course. Anne of Green Gables. (Don’t name your daughter Ann or Anne, folks–there’s some kind of bad cosmic influence there.) James (of Giant Peach fame). Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella (okay, their fathers aren’t dead but they might as well be.) Harry Potter, of course. Of course. Gilly Hopkins. Dicey Tillerman.
Part of it is simple–if you don’t kill the parents or otherwise remove them from the picture, the action of the book takes a severe hit. Generally, parents are supposed to keep their kids safe, and safe is the opposite of dramatic. If you don’t want to kill the parents off, another good trick is to send the kids away from them–to boarding school (see anything by Enid Blyton) or summer camp (hello, Percy Jackson) or away from London during the Blitz (Peter, Susan Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie). Or just make the parents useless, of course–that worked for Jane and Michael Banks. Or have the mother dead and the father lost at sea or ruling a cannibal island (hi, Pippi Longstocking). But whatever you do, just don’t let the parents be around.
(In my own books, I’ve got two orphans–Kata of Deadly Flowers and Deadly Wish and Rosalind of The Secret of the Rose. Plus, Mella of Dragon’s Egg ditches her parents early on.)
But even allowing for the fact that it’s a very useful plot device, there are an awful lot of orphans.
I think parents don’t really belong in kids’ books at all. Books are the places kids go to be free. To be independent. To become themselves. To shake off their parents and all our rules and plans for our lives and become who they really are. Maybe every book is a rehearsal for the day they’re off to college or a road trip or the army or their first jobs and their very own apartments, when they can finally stay up as late as they want and eat ice cream for dinner. And we can’t stop them.
They want us to go away–not to die, not really, but to vanish for a while. To rule a cannibal island or stay home while bombs rain down upon us while they explore magical wardrobes or float away on balloons under the eye of magnificently indifferent nannies. We want to take care of them forever. They want to stop being taken care of at all.
What a good thing we’ve got literature, to let them be free of us while still safe and cozy on the couch. Frankly, it makes me feel a little better about Annie.
Read MoreSarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Thomson focuses on newfound connection, magic, and suspense to conjure a fast-paced, heartwarming mystery. Thomson’s world is populated by resourceful protagonists, fanciful creatures, and quirky supporting characters.”
—Publishers Weekly