"The Little White Horse" is alive and coming to the screen!

I'm passing along a post from the wonderful 5th grade teacher, blogger, and child_lit notable Monica Edinger's blog "Educating Alice," about a very favorite book of my childhood, Elizabeth Goudge's The Little White Horse, and the movie being made of it, due to be out in 2008. Dakota Blue Richards, who plays Lyra in the Golden Compass movie to be released later this year, has been cast as the heroine, Maria Merryweather. This was, in my life, the introduction to the magic and mystery of the Unicorn. Shel Silverstein's song came much later, and then in due time the tapestry in the Cloisters. Now unicorn images are ubiquitous, not least in the lead trinkets coming by the gross on container ships from the East to our discount outlets. But to be a child or pre-teen in the fifties, discovering the magic of Goudge's "little white horse," was to be truly enchanted by story,poetry,and legend.

One of the few poems I can still recite by heart is the title poem from the novel. Its magic still casts its spell as I walk down the street in my by the ravine at night and recite aloud to the air, "It was under the white moon that I saw him/ The little white horse,with neck arched high in pride...."

Don't miss Pullman interview!

Hot off the presses, or on cool cyberwaves, is a wonderful interview with Philip Pullman in the British journal, Literary Review. Read it now while it's available online, as you have to pay to subscribe online (but you can get a sample issue free). Pullman talks about education, religion, Blake and Milton, fantasy, and of course His Dark Materials, with a tantalizing mention of the book he's currently working on. Thanks to the wonderful Monica Edinger and the The Guardian blog for letting us know about this interview.

Tree is in park behind Silver Spring Elementary School, Riverside, RI

At Swim, Two Boys, by Jamie O'Neill

For one week while away this month I lived in Jamie O'Neill's At Swim, Two Boys, first published in 2001. My plunge into its world began with the cover image, and I dove into 1915 Dun Laoghaire and the telling of a story that began with words that cast a spell of language and narrative:

"At the corner of Adelaide Road, where the paving sparkled in the morning sun, Mr. Mack waited by the newspaper stand. A grand day it was, fair and fine. Puff-clouds sailed through a sky of blue. Fair-weather cumulus to give the correct designation, on account they cumulate, as Mr. Mack believed. High above the houses a seagull glided, gliding on a breeze that carried from the sea. Wait now, was it cumulate or accumulate he meant? The breeze sniffed of salt and tide. Make a donkey of yourself, inwardly he cautioned, using words you don't know their meaning. And where's this paper chappie after getting to?

In delicate clutch an Irish Times he held."

There's a lot here: a setting, a distinct character, and two distinctive voices, that of Mr. Mack and of the narrator. In time we meet Mr. Mack's teenage son, Jim, and another father-son pair integral to the plot, which interlocks romantic love, love of family, and love of country in a time of unrest.

Good fiction creates a world in which the reader lives for a spell. And a spell, an enchantment it is, one that deepens our knowledge of the world and the human heart and adds vicariously to our experience. In this book I have felt as a boy in the confessional, confessing he knows not what but that he is wicked. I've felt the mixed and unarticulated emotions of that boy as he prays on his knees beside a priest whose psychological power over vulnerable boys is almost unlimited. I feel the pride that enables another teenage boy to shovel dung and still dream and love the world. I enjoy the all male swims in the sea, and the boys' determination to swim out to the Muglins the next Easter. I've lived through the planning of an uprising among Irish citizens who are faced with involvement in a great war at the same time they want to wrest their independence from British rule.

A great writer puts us into the lives of other people while still allowing us the perspective of the writer/reader. In the dual vision we create meaning.

I emerged from this book, at p. 562, wanting to go back and start over. I know I'll go back.

For dessert there's O'Neill's website with links to a number of early reviews and a few pictures. The story of O'Neill's ten year process of writing the book is in itself a great struggling-young-writer story. The title was inspired by that of Flann O'Brien's At Swim--Two Birds. The American publisher of O'Neill's novel wanted to call it just At Swim (too vague, too dull). O'Neill added the comma, and literature was enriched once more. You can see very fine photographs of the bathing area at the Forty Foot at the website of the photographer Tom O'Doherty. You'll have to scroll down a few pages to the set of the baths at Dun Laoghaire.

I'm a Dog! And I love it!

Wow! What a book! Very unusual, and surprising! You'll never guess how it ends! Melvin Burgess is my hero this summer. Go to his website, and read what he says about teenagers, teenage boys in particular, and writing books they like to read. Mr. Burgess is married and a father of three children, and he writes books that offend some people. He dares to write about things that really happen in the lives of teenagers in Britain (and here), things some people would rather we just don't talk about. Is he a responsible writer? That is, one who cares about the effects his books have on young people? Yes. Because he shows life as it is and lets the consequences of kids' choices work themselves out realistically.

Lady: My Life as a Bitch is different from the other MB's I've read in not being entirely realistic. It's psychologically very true to life, but in actual life people don't ACTUALLY turn into dogs. But in a novel, a girl can very easily have in her head and heart the thoughts and feelings of a real girl AND those of a dog. (Insofar as we can imagine being inside a dog, but that's a digression..... )

I found it a bit long in the middle, but read it! Stick it out to the end, and you'll be surprised and maybe delighted. I think Ursula LeGuin would like this book. Maybe Zack can suggest it to her....

How I Live Now

My (public library) copy has the golden Michael Printz Award seal, the ALA's relatively new award for Young Adult literature. This novel for teens and up also won the Guardian Children's Fiction prize for 2004 and was shortlisted for the Whitbread in the same year. http://books.guardian.co.uk/childrensfictionprize2004/

On first reading, and with no reading of reviews yet, here's how it went. Daisy's voice grabbed me right away: here is a unique person yet identifiably a teenager speaking. The premise is terrific: she's off the England to stay with her cousins because her dad has a horrible new wife. She's fifteen, between child and adult. She falls in love with one of her cousins and has sex with him, and she bonds strongly with another, nine-year old Piper, a wise little girl. Then life really changes: terrorists occupy the country and keep it under siege. Army troops take over villages and people's houses, families are split up, the men and boys sent mysteriously away. Suddenly we're in a thriller, one with very strong characterization, great plot, and a genuine voice. And teenage sex. I have to say that because a lot of parents and librarians in the US would prefer that we not spotlight a book that includes this element of modern realism. But, like the novels of Melvin Burgess, another award-winning author of books for teenagers ("teen and up" is what I call it), Rosoff's novel is a gripping read and shouldn't be kept out of the hands of teens.

I recently read Penelope Lively's Cleopatra's Sister and am struck with the similarities in themes and situations in these two novels. The threat of terrorism is alive and present in our minds these days, and both of these books present scenarios which could happen, given the imperialist heritage of both the UK and the US, and the present neo-colonial mindset of some of our leaders.

The theme of love is strong in both: erotic love, familial love and its absence, the fierce protective love a person can discover when a child is threatened, the strong bond between people and animals (dogs, here). Teenage love that turns into a lasting relationship. The fortuitous meeting of two people. The energetic love that can get people through anything. (Cormac McCarthy's The Road is maybe the strongest example of this last motif since the setting is so bleak and stripped to the earth's bare bones.)

Recommended for teens and up.

Misspelling in a new book

I'll talk about Martha Grimes' Dust later but want to put it on the record that I've noted a copy editing mistake in the 1st edition, first printing of the HarperCollins 2007 edition. On p. 175, on the last line, the word given is, incorrectly "provenence." On the next page and several times thereafter it is correctly printed as "provenance." I'm sure Ms. Grimes' copy editor was at fault, and not she herself.

Two Tales of Suspense

It's time to catch up on recent reading. Now that school is out I have no excuse (except that I have to use the less-comfortable desktop computer for now and can't sit on my back porch, which is like a tree house hideaway). These will be brief notices, better than none. Maybe they will point one or two people to books they might not otherwise notice.
Geraldine Mccaughrean, the wonderful British author of Peter Pan in Scarlet, The Kite Rider, and lots more, has an Antarctic tale that will cool you off during hot summer days. The White Darkness is a fast paced tale of a teenage girl on a trip to Antarctica. Sym is fascinated by the story of a 19th century explorer Titus Oates and makes a trip to the Antarctic with her Uncle Victor. Her fascination with Oates, the growing psychological tension between the characters as Victor's obsession takes over the trip, and the stunning descriptions of the landscape make for a mesmerizing tale.

The late, great Jan Mark, another British writer somewhat neglected in the U.S., gave us an unusual story that falls into the science fiction slot but also has fine characterization and her always fine writing. The story is Useful Idiots and deals with an anthropological quest in a somewhat future England. Part of the mystery is the reader's, whose task is to figure out exactly what is going on.
Note: sometime this month the 2006 Carnegie Medal winners will be announced. I've been reading some of the books on the short list and can't wait to see which title wins. Visit the official site for back lists of nominations and winners.