I don’t know if I’ve really ever talked all that much about my love of fairy and folk tales on this blog. I mean, I talk about how fantasy draws from those traditions, but I love the tales themselves and finding out about the cultures that gave birth to those tales, theory about tales, and on and on. One of my favorite classes at Simmons was my folklore class, taught by folklore expert and author Kate Bernheimer*. We focused mostly on the Grimm tales in the curriculum because that made for a convenient text, but we also studied retellings like Angela Carter, many different picture books, different versions of the same tales across cultures, and the scholarship of folklore experts like Jack Zipes, Maria Tatar, Bettelheim, Marie-Louise von Franz, and . . . a very important one whose name I’m blanking on.

So when I saw on Endicott Studio a link to Joseph Campbell’s reading list for an Introduction to Mythology at Sarah Lawrence, it gave me a whoooole nother list of books I should look up someday. There are so few books on that list that I’ve read! (Some might be more outdated than others, but it’s a good list.) The first one that I need to rectify is The Mabinogion, a gap in my education that I’ve regretted many times already.

Also in that page they link to Endicott’s own favorite reading list, with more books I should read. And reread–some of those books from that class I need to read again.

*Editor of Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales.

With the recent departure from our department of longtime Wizards editor Mark Sehestedt, we find ourselves in need of an editor on the adult fantasy side. If you’re an editor with five years or more of book publishing experience, with at least two years at a trade publisher preferably, or if you know of someone who fits that description who would love the chance to work with a fun department and some great fantasy books, check out the listing at the Wizards job site. Information on how to apply online is on that page, too. Note that specific experience with science fiction, fantasy, and/or horror publishing, including contacts with agents and authors is preferred.

Speaking of that imprint, remember that the open call for the Discoveries imprint is open now. More information on how to submit, including submission guidelines, can be found at the Wizards website. 

But apparently Winchester the cat is more longsuffering.

Not to say we haven’t tried, mind. Note the pitiful look in Tildrum’s eyes as he wears the baby bonnet my roommate made for her new niece. Note also that none of the pictures of Mogget turned out because he wouldn’t hold still long enough.
 

In comparison: the blur that is Mogget:

I’ve referred several times over the years to a talk I once saw Katherine Paterson give in Boston at the Cambridge Forum, but only now realized that it was recorded as a podcast in addition to being broadcast on the local radio. It’s a really great talk about how a writer handles the serious topics in children’s literature. Kind of in the same vein as something Madeleine L’Engle once said: “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”

She addresses how her background as the child of Christian missionaries and how her everyday faith today affects how she writes. 

At least, that’s what I remember her addressing. Now that I’ve tried opening the file, it appears to be in a format that I can’t access. 🙁  I’ll go ahead and post this anyway, and if anyone knows what program
would play that file, let me know in the comments.

Publisher’s Weekly reports today that Madeleine L’Engle died last night at the age of 89.  From what I can tell, it was probably related to old age, and I hope that she passed peacefully.

I cannot say enough how much Madeleine L’Engle’s work affected my life. It was in the fourth grade when Mrs. Hawes gave me a copy of A Wrinkle in Time that the world of fantasy and science fiction was opened up to me. It was my gifted project for a time to read the book and underline any word I didn’t know so that I could look it up–and she had some doozies right on the first page. It’s because of Madeleine L’Engle that I know the word tangible, which I always thought sounded so interesting.

It also appalled me to be underlining words in a book–you didn’t do that to books! It makes me sad that sometime in the intervening years I lost that copy, because that old cover brings back a lot of good memories. 

I then went on that year and the next to devour any Madeleine L’Engle books I could find, especially the ones about Meg and her family. But my favorite today is A Ring of Endless Light, which I checked out again and again. I was fascinated with the idea of being able to talk to dolphins. I believe that was the book in which she had character crossover from the Austins to the O’Keefes, too, though it’s been years and I can’t remember rightly. I just bought a new copy of that book, though, and I intend to relive that experience soon. Let’s hope it’s one of those childhood reading experiences that hold up to an adult reading! I reread A Wrinkle in Time in grad school and was surprised at how heavy handed it felt at times, and yet how omnipresent some of the ideas of IT (which I kept reading as I.T., as in the I.T. department!) and the same little children throwing same little balls feel regarding today. I had no concept during my first read in 1984–yes, that seems a fun little fact for me, given the book’s few similarities to the book 1984–of how the book had been written 20-odd years before. (I wa
s also into Trixie Belden at the time; sometimes I feel like I grew up in the 50s and 60s with all the older books and comics I read!)

Anyway, I owe Madeleine L’Engle a big thank you for sparking my imagination in those years. Her books were amazing and I would be lucky for the books I help create to touch readers in the same way hers touched me.

And suddenly it’s the weekend. I got back Tuesday afternoon but it’s been a rush in the short week to get everything done that I needed to. I don’t have time this morning to tell you all about L.A. but hopefully I’ll find a spare moment later today or sometime this weekend. My doctor has cleared my shoulder for at least non-jarring exercise, though, so I might just take off and go for a hike or something while the weather is still nice. 

One quick note, though. My old friend

 just posted that his first children’s book, Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians, has shipped to bookstores a month early. (He’s the author of three adult fantasy novels, but this is his first middle grade.) It’s a fun fantasy story about a boy named Alcatraz and a bag of sand. Yes, a bag of sand. And it’s funny. Brandon (the author) doesn’t have the site up yet, due to it being a month early, so I can’t link you to the Alcatraz site which I hear will be fun, but do check out the book and Brandon’s blog.

Well, I’m off to L.A. in the morning for a mini-vacation before I go to the L.A. Public Library to speak to the YA librarians there. I’m very excited to meet everyone, and looking forward to spending the weekend with a couple friends. I’ve never been to L.A. before, so they’re going to show me around–the Getty, the beach, and apparently a surprise. I can’t wait! Now, let’s just hope that my sinus infection lets up so I can enjoy it. 🙂
Pictures will come, but they’ll have to wait for me to get a replacement power cord. I turned on my computer last night to find the power cord just up and died. I’m writing this from my roommate’s borrowed computer, which I’ve got just about long enough to be able to write this. Now I need to finish my laundry so I can finish packing before it gets too late!

So says Meg Cabot. She’s written a hilariously apt analogy of the relationship between editor and writer on her blog today:

But it would be awesome if there WERE mole people in one of my books. Only guess how long THAT revision letter would be???? “I understand how much you love the Mole People, Meg. But seriously…where do they bathe? I know that Mole People probably do bathe somewhere, but where? He must brush his teeth or his breath would be stinky when he kisses her, but where does he do this? You see? This complicates the plot in ways I fear we don’t want to get into….” See what I mean by how editors are the sheriff? Better not even to risk it….)

I’d never read any of her books before this year (strange how sometimes that gap in reading happens), but as you can see from my sidebar, I’ve been making up lost time. Her audiobooks also have some really good narrators, so that just adds to the experience.
In other news, today is a multiple book birthday! ‘s In the Serpent’s Coils has been sighted, and Nina Hess’s A Practical Guide to Monsters comes out today, too. Pictures later, when I can upload them on a computer with an SD reader.

…was that my mirrors was actually a two-way talking device. I’d have conversations with myself in my mirror, pretending that it was a friend I was talking to, even if it was an imaginary friend (I had no Imaginary Friend, named, per se, but plenty of people who could have been on the other end of that com link). As I grew older, the conversations turned into earnest rehearsals of conversations that would be stressful (or ones in which I wished I’d said something differently, thus perfecting the art of “I should have said…”). But it probably started about the same time that I started imagining that the Dukes of Hazzard were my real family, that I’d been switched at birth and that they’d come in the General Lee and take me off into the sunset to live happily ever after. (Yes, I did imagine the sunsets.) That would be a year or two before I started wishing I was born Japanese, because at the time the Japanese kids were touted as the smartest in the world and I wanted to be the smartest kid in the world. Only I would never have said “kid” because one of my mottoes at the time was “kids are baby goa
ts.” (The other was that one saying they always recited in Brownies, the one about new and old friends, one is silver, the other gold? I have it in a Brownie art book we made in the 2nd grade around here somewhere.)

Candice Ransom jokes that she needs to write me as a character in one of her books. I kind of feel like I should yell dibs. But then she went and did it anyway. (Sort of.  I’m honored! I’ll have to give you a link later when it’s available.)

I think it’s pretty important that those of us who are involved in children’s lit be aware not only of all the developmental stages and how kids read and what the kids in our lives are into, but also that we remember that sense of wonder we had when we were children, that expectation that pretty much anything could happen, if we just knew how to access it. Sometimes, it’s just so hard to remember. I can remember feelings and memories, but time has a way of filtering it to make a life narrative.

What childhood fancies did you have? Or that your friends/family had, or that your kids have/had? If you’re a writer, do you incorporate them in your books? How do you get in touch with that inner fantasist nowadays? 

And can I tell you how much I love fantasy books? Because you never have to really give up that sense of wonder.

Sometimes a writing breakthrough comes in dreams, I’ve heard, but never experienced it until I woke up this morning. I don’t have time to go into detail, but basically I had the weirdest dream that involved a party at Cheryl Klein’s house (who I’ve never met) and an old friend from Boston who I never talk to anymore. I woke up completely weirded out, but then as I was thinking about it I knew it was the key to how I would write the rest of a story I’ve been working on for a little while now. Different people and different motivations will be involved–meaner people than the utterly nice Cheryl and old friend, who laughed with me at my clumsy mistake in the dream–but it will be a key scene that, changing a few things around, will work nicely.

Anyway, weird dreams: put them to use!