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Who are the professors in Young Adult Fiction?

10/11/2016

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Here's a tweet I saw today, posted by @erinanmcc (and retweeted by @Andrew__Bretz, my friend in the world of academia, which is how it came to my attention). This question made me stay up late and write this post instead of going to bed.
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This question has been bugging me, too, ever since I read a post by @melissaterras (another scholar I don't know at all) way back in 2014, drawing attention to a similar issue: the question of whether there were any books about academics in children's picture books, who weren't old white men. (Here's the post I'm talking about.)

Back when I read that post in 2014, the first thing I thought of, of course, was this page from Herge's The Shooting Star, one of my favourite pages in all the Tintin books, a picture gallery featuring a bunch of white European men who have been chosen to lead a scholarly expedition (along with Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock). This kind of confirms the stereotype.
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I can't speak for representations of academics/professors in pop culture generally, but I have been wracking my brains about fictional academics as portrayed in children's literature, particularly Young Adult Fiction. And my answer is: no, there aren't too many out there, and yes, we could sure use some more!
For what it's worth, here's what I could come up with:

1. Woo Eubong in Maureen F. McHugh's amazing 1992 sci-fi novel China Mountain Zhang.

Without giving away too much, I'll just say this story envisions a not-too-distant future in which the highest standard of living - and educating - is to be found in China. Woo Eubong, who holds the rarified position of "organic engineer," is not only an intelligent and skilled professor, she's a compassionate and patient woman, who also happens to be a wife and a mother, too.

In the story, we learn that she, too, was mentored in her profession by a woman. And the student she's teaching is a gay man. So I have to give this book full marks for featuring academics from a few unsung categories. (And, it's just such a good book.)

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2. E. L. Konigsburg's novels are populated by some of the smartest characters in YA lit. Mrs. Olinski, the smart, compassionate and courageous academic coach in "The View from Saturday," is next on my list. Mrs. Olinski isn't a professor at a post-secondary institution - she's a grade six teacher. But if you read this book you will agree with me that Mrs. Olinski's grade six students could hold their own with any university students you may care to mention. And she embodies those traits that the folks on Twitter have been talking about - she's a teacher who's also an inspiring female role model for readers.

A Google search led me to this photographic envisioning of Mrs. Olinski, so in hopes that the author of the page won't mind, I'll put it in here.
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(As far as female educators go, in books about younger children, there are lots - ranging from the talented and tragic Miss Honey of "Matilda," which might actually be the only one of Roald Dahl's wonderful books that actually offends me, the charming Miss Honey notwithstanding)...
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 - to the pitiful Miss Wilder of Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books. Anyway, though, I digress.)
3. Next: Meg Murry's mom in "A Wrinkle in Time" (as depicted here in Hope Larson's graphic novel based on the book).
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A scientist who makes breakfast over the bunsen burner in her home lab, she's clearly brilliant and a beloved parent into the bargain. But, is she a professor and/or affiliated with an academic institution? She seems to have isolated herself from her peers, when we meet her in the story. Maybe we can imagine that she gets reinstated into the academy after her theories are shown to be true at the end of the story (although it seems unlikely, since it's hard to imagine any traditional stodgy professors who would believe her family's account of what happened.) Her own daughter, Meg, goes on to marry a brilliant scientist while herself staying home to have something like seven children - kind of the same way Anne of Green Gables did. (By the way, what about Muriel Stacy - the teacher who inspired Anne of Green Gables to go to Queen's Academy to study to be a teacher, back in "Anne of Avonlea"? Here's a page I found all which is all about that. (Who were Anne's actual teachers at Queen's, by the way - were they all men? Ok, I digress again...)
4. Back to Madeleine L'Engle: a range of complicated, brilliant grown-ups appear in the pages of her many books (including a bunch of serious old-school female boarding school teachers in L'Engle's early novel, "The Small Rain"), but off the top of my head, I can't think of any real professors. There's Dr. Ursula Herschel in "A House Like a Lotus" - she's a neurosurgeon, I think, so presumably she's done some time at school, but we don't hear about it. In the same book, we read about a literary conference in Cyprus populated by male and female attendees - Vee and Norine are the names I remember - but if they are writers, or academics, or administrators attending the conference, I'm also not sure.  (As you have gathered by now, this post is heavy on the "I seem to recall," and light on the "actual research to confirm my vague recollections.")
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5. There simply must be somebody somewhere in the giant stereotype-busting oeuvre of Diana Wynne Jones. "Witch Week," a book which I'm sure had some influence on the Harry Potter series, features a boarding school full of teachers, some male, some female (and not all great role models). Again, though, these aren't post-secondary teachers.

The Dalemark series (one of which pictured here), a fantasy quartet, features a young lady who runs away from home to study law - at a school where, presumably, some of the teachers are women (maybe?)

And the series that starts with "Dark Lord of Derkholm" ends up with a novel set a university, where some of the students are not humans, but griffins... so that leaves a lot of room to include any marginalized, underrepresented, non-traditional characters you like, I'd say.
6. We also have Noel Streatfeild's revered, respected, awe-inspiring ballet teachers, i.e. Madame Fidolia, who appear in several of her novels ("Ballet Shoes" and "Apple Bough," for example). However, legndary as these ladies are, academics they presumably are not.
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7. This brings me to the children who populate "The Alley" in Eleanor Estes' book of the same title, and its sequel, "The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode." They are all children of academics who work at the nearby Grandby College. Here, as elsewhere in Estes' work ("Ginger Pye," for example), academic parents have a highly positive connotation. However, are any of those academics women? Not in "Ginger Pye" (pictured here: "Call in Mr. Pye, the famous bird man!!!") ...and I can't find my copy of "The Alley." Maybe??? But "The Alley" was published in 1964, so I don't have high hopes.
8. Now for Margaret Mahy's book "Jam: A True Story," illustrated by Helen Craig.
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We don't really find out, though, whether Mrs. Castle goes off to work for some kind of academic research group, or for a private corporation. So - she's smart, but she might not quite quality for what we're looking for, either, alas.

In case you're wondering who ended up looking after the little Castles - please indulge my including what may be a couple of my absolute favourite illustrations in all of children's literature: a two-page spread that lays out a tantalizing description of the a day in the life of the Perfect Househusband.
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I can just imagine wives around the world drooling over this fantasy. (Mahy, who was a single parent of two, may have put some of her own fantasy into this story, as was her wont in other books she wrote, too...) Ok - I promise, that was the last digression!

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Let me finsih with one more note about E. L. Konigsburg. Her most famous book, "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" sets up Mrs. Frankweiler as the lady who holds the key to the secrets that are puzzling scientists and scholars from around the world. But instead of joining their ranks and/or getting in touch with them, Mrs. Frankweiler chooses to keep her knowledge secret, sharing it only with Claudia, a young girl who loves the idea of keeping it secret, too.

I wonder if this whole situation says something about a general mistrust, at least as reflected in YA fiction, felt by its women characters, for the Academy - and/or vice versa. Mrs. Frankweiler even hides behind her dead husband's name (what's her own Christian name??), but seems content to stay in the shadows with her files and her secrets. (Please tell me that a whole lot of people have already written papers about this.)



Another YA model for this relationship between women and the academy is found in Ursula K. LeGuin's "Tehanu" - a book about how women don't even enter into scholarly circles in the fictional world of Earthsea, not because they have no knowledge or power, but because their version of how to use knowledge and power is just a completely different way of being, something that doesn't fit into the existing, available academic boxes.

Maybe these fictional women "professors" - the role models, the teachers, the Mrs. Frankweilers, the Tehanus - are out there, in books everywhere - but they just aren't wearing caps and gowns and lecturing at universities. I want to find them all and introduce them to the scholars and get them into the schools (if they want to come). And then I want to sign up for all the classes they would like to teach.


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Convalescence... and comics for Marvellous Monday!

4/4/2016

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Oh no, it's already April 3rd and I still haven't posted this month's Ramsay newsletter comic strip!
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To be fair, though, my family just went through a stomach bug episode (well, to be more accurate, it went through us) that kept making me think of that illustration by Garth Williams in the "Little House" books that shows Laura crawling across the floor holding a ladle full of water because she's too sick to just walk over and get a drink.

I combed the internet and I couldn't find that picture, but I did find the one showing the Ingalls family recovering thanks to the ministrations of Dr. Tan. That picture's probably better, anyway, since that's more how we're feeling around here now, thank goodness!

Nothing like children's literature to help you get through the winter flu season. And now on to that April comic strip, just in time for "Marvellous Monday!" But first, while I'm here, just one note:

Did you notice, I just wrote something on this blog? And I even put a picture in there! Not that exciting, I know, but getting this blog back up again has been one of the rustiest processes I've ever been through. Rest assured, there is a lot percolating. These posts may still trickle out slowly for the next little bit. But when I get my head around it... and the convalescence is complete... there will be lots coming!
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Work/Life & the Country Bunny

4/18/2014

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I wrote this last year, thinking I'd post it before the birth of my new baby in October. Well, that didn't happen. But since it's kind of an Easter-themed post, I thought I'd put it out there now....

September 2013

Recently I was asked if I'd be part of a panel about "Women in Comics" for the Edmonton Comic & Entertainment Expo. That's just the kind of thing I'd usually love to be part of. But I had to say no, for the same reason I'm missing the whole Expo this year: I'm expecting a baby that's due in just a few more days. What a classic "Women in Comics" situation - or "Women in Anything," really! Babies show up when they want to, throw your career out of whack and teach you how to juggle work and life!

In anticipation of a bit of a hiatus from blogging (and everything else I usually do), there's one thing I've been wanting to write about. Well, actually two things. One is a new book called "Work/Life 3." And the other is an old book called "The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes."
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Work/Life 3 is the third in a series of books created by local publishing house UPPERCASE Press. Here's what UPPERCASE has to say about the series:

"When the first edition of Work/Life was published back in 2008, UPPERCASE was a fledgling publishing house. In 2009, our eponymous quarterly magazine was born, growing into a celebrated publication with readers around the world. In 2011, the second edition of Work/Life was released and featured 100 international illustrators. It was met with much enthusiasm, not only from art and illustration buyers who appreciated the book's quality content and curated talent, but also from other illustrators and aspiring artists who were inspired by the stories shared within. [...] The Work/Life series has developed into something even greater than a promotional publication—these books are educational, inspirational and beautiful; books that have value beyond just a directory of talent."

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This year I've been writing lots of comics and doing lots of graphic recording. I was intrigued by the opportunity to be part of an illustration directory, particularly one that was the product of a Calgary business. I also liked the theme of "Work/Life" - that's been my own theme song for a while now, even before I quit my day job a little under two years ago (best decision ever) to start taking this juggling act seriously!

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So I headed down to Art Central to meet UPPERCASE publisher Janine Vangool and find out a bit more about this little local powerhouse of all of things print. (With the impending demise of Art Central, UPPERCASE has since moved to a new space in the Devenish Building.)

And a few months later, I received Work/Life 3 - a very cool compilation showcasing 100 illustrators from around the world: not just samples of their work, but stories and images from their lives. (Take a look!)

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I have a hard time keeping text out of my pictures... I can't really draw a picture without trying to tell a story at the same time. So here's the piece I drew for Work/Life 3: a comic strip, of course.
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What a cliffhanger ending!! And all true! So much for my plans to launch my brilliant full-time freelance art career. It'll have to remain a juggling act for a while longer. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Which brings us to the Country Bunny!
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But first: a note from April, 2014. (Remember, this whole post was written in Sept. 2013!) That last panel above was the first time new baby Henry made an "appearance" in a comic strip - but it won't be the last! I'll be at the 2014 Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo next week (April 24-27) with the latest in my "mom comics" series, "Alec's 5th Year Book." Henry steals the show!

But more on that later. For now, back to September 2013 and the aforementioned Country Bunny.


As you may know if you've been reading this blog, I'm a fan of children's literature - mostly Young Adult Fiction. But I do love books for younger children, too, and I've been glad, since having had my son Alec in 2009, to have had occasion to enjoy so many of them again! The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes is one that my grandmother gave me when I was small, and which I remembered vividly... but which I've never seen around since. Indulge me for a sec before I tell you more. The story starts with the mention of a little brown country bunny who, as a girl, dreams one day of being an Easter Bunny...
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Already this reminds me of myself - not that I ever wanted to be an Easter Bunny, but of the way I used to have far-flung aspirations of greatness.

This panel from a comic strip I drew in about 2002 shows me being put in my place, not by a couple of jack rabbits, but by my own older, wiser (?) self.

Wait and see...
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So you'd think that that would be the end of the story right there, wouldn't you? (I love the little wrinkle under her eye that just hints at the exhaustion of early parenthood.) When I rediscovered this book a year or two ago, I didn't have any clue about its context or history. All I knew was what it said in the book: published in 1939. Sounds like a time in which the career goals of a young lady rabbit would be forgotten with the arrival of one, much less twenty-one, children! And indeed, this resilient young mother puts aside her dreams and throws herself wholeheartedly into her new "career" - with great results:
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OK, so if you happen to have a child (or a houseful of children), I know you're already fantasizing about the gloriously well-kept house of the Country Bunny and her brood. (And just where is Mr. Bunny, by the way? More on him later.)

Anyway, it turns out that auditions are being held for the post of Easter Bunny (one of five - apparently there are actually five of them, since it's a pretty big job), and Mrs. Bunny heads out with her children to watch the contest (again - where's Mr. Bunny?!). She ends up impressing the "old, kind, wise, Grandfather Bunny" who is doing the choosing. He wonders if she could possibly be swift enough for the job, but she proves herself by sending her children hopping off in all directions...
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(Everyone knows that nothing moves faster than a parent chasing a child!)
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But no! She explains how she's trained her amazing children to take care of the house even better than she can do herself. And this was in the days in which you could actually just go out and deliver Easter eggs all night, leaving your youngsters at home, without even needing a babysitter, a baby monitor, or a cell phone (Or a husband, apparently, because he still hasn't made an appearance). So technically there is nothing to keep her away. And the old Grandfather Bunny says: "I see that you are wise also..."
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I just loved the above picture (a double spread in the book) that shows all those eggs piled up in the cavernous halls of the palace.
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I won't give away the adventures that befall our valiant Mrs. Bunny on Easter night. Suffice to say, her efforts win her the magical pair of golden shoes. And then she hops home...
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As a child, I only loved the story, but re-reading this as an adult, I saw two other things: one, that I think I want twenty-one well-trained rabbit children to clean my house, and two, that there's more to this story than I'd realized. There's actually a pretty strong message of racial equality in the tale of the "little brown bunny" who rises to the coveted post of Easter Bunny, despite the put-downs of narrow-minded, wealthy, snooty white bunnies (whom I didn't show in this post). Indeed, I discovered that the story has been widely acclaimed for its place in the social justice movement. Years later, it was (almost!) made into a ballet - this would have been incredible - produced by Ismail Merchant of Merchant Ivory fame (take a look here to read an article about that astounding project, which seems to have been truncated upon Merchant's sudden death).

But what really struck me was that it was a story of female empowerment. At a time when many women weren't even allowed to work - at least not in the careers of their choice - the Country Bunny takes her twenty-one children to the job interview and gets the job, without apparently even consulting her spouse, much less receiving his permission!

Yes, the absence of Mr. Bunny really surprises me. Either he's working up in Fort Mac, or he's out of the picture completely. But whatever the case, the Country Bunny doesn't seem to be suffering from it. She's completely independent. And she's complex: realistic, but still harbouring dreams.

You'd think that the story of a lady who puts aside her childhood dreams while raising her family, and then goes on to have a brilliant career after the kids are old enough to look after themselves, sounds like a story that would resonate with readers today. It is amazing this feminist-friendly book was written in 1939, and not only that,  written by a man. DuBose Heyward (pictured here) was the startlingly ahead-of-his-time South Carolina writer who penned this little tale.

I'm tipping my Easter bonnet to the Country Bunny, that heroine of a bygone generation who apparently wrote the book on balancing work and life!

Would I have chosen to start a very fun and exciting new career in the same year I was having a baby, if I'd had a choice? No! But am I still loving every minute of this balancing act? Well, yes, although typing this with my left hand while nursing Henry at 1 AM is not exactly the ideal scenario for work or life. But since it is actually what I'm doing, I'm going to wrap this up and go off in hopes of getting some sleep. Happy Easter!
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The Colours of Calgary Reads

2/23/2014

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I like bright colours!

(This sun is on the front of my house.)

A few weeks ago I had the chance to draw some pictures for Calgary Reads, a local early literacy initiative. (Here's the picture I drew!) A group that encourages reading – what’s not to love about that? But there was something else I really liked, too: the colours. Calgary Reads has used colour to make its work space fun, vibrant, and inviting. And in doing so, it’s branded itself as a fun and colourful organization.

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It seems like a no-brainer: bright colours will make things more memorable, more accessible, and more welcoming! But it’s surprising how seldom folks are willing to take a chance and add colour to their scheme. I guess there’s always the danger that the colour you love might rub someone the wrong way. Taste in colour is pretty subjective. But I’d rather take the chance – especially in the space I’m going to inhabit (or work in) myself. Being surrounded by an inspiring space – which definitely includes colour – makes all the difference to my happiness and productivity. Well, and it helps if there’s also a coffee pot.

Calgary Reads front lobby welcomes you in with bright colours that tell you all about what you’ll find inside. Here is a bookshelf’s worth of sponsor names – a great way to recognize them in a permanent way that’ll never get boring.

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Everywhere you look, there’s art by local mural artist Dean Stanton. His style is pretty unmistakable. One of his best-known works is the mural on Sunalta School (you can see it from Crowchild Trail. And you can also get a pretty good view of it from Scarboro Avenue – right across the street from the school – which is where I grew up!).
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I like how the objects on this wall seem to tell a story – starting small and getting bigger as your eye moves towards the right. You “read” the wall from left to right, just the same way you read the words on the page of a book!
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One of my favourite things has to be this wall covered with paintings, many of which feature childrens’ depictions of illustrations from well-loved children’s books. (In case you didn’t know, I’m a fan of YA fiction.) Here’s Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are; Robert Munsch’s The Paper Bag Princess; Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree; and Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson.

You can find out more about Crockett Johnson in Phil Nel's book, Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children's Literature. Phil's book was nominated for an Eisner Award (Best Educational/Academic Work) – pretty cool again. I still have a blog post about that book in the back of my head, but I got distracted from that project by a few things last year (like having a baby). (And yes, I am writing all this in the company of said baby at the really great Telus Spark Science Centre surrounded by a thousand children who can’t play outside because it’s minus twenty-two degrees out.)
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And there's Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar.
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I have the feeling Calgary Reads' Steacy Collyer, who was the driving force behind all these colours, would get along fine with the German artist Angela Holtermann-Stumpf. Here's a picture of her house in the city of Witten. I wish my house looked something like this, too!
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Colours at my house

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When I bought my 1911 Ramsay house in 2004, every single surface in the house was painted white. I loved that – it was like a blank canvas just waiting for me to paint. And I didn’t stop until I had done just that.

I like painting skies and suns on the ceiling. (I’m really claustrophobic, so I think it’s really just about creating the illusion that there’s more space over my head.)


Here’s a sun I painted on the ceiling of an apartment I lived in about fifteen years ago (above). The room was already purple. I never would have chosen that colour, but it kind of grew on me. And here’s my own living room ceiling (below). This picture was taken by Rachel Psutka, a interactive reporter at the Regina Leader-Post, during her internship at the Calgary Herald a couple of years ago.

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Here are some pictures of my house back when we renovated it (and I painted everything!). And down here is a little mural I painted on my son’s wall after he was born. Wasn’t I ambitious back then? We’ll be lucky if my second son even gets a mural at this rate!

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I'm looking forward to catching up with the colourful Calgary Reads on March 6th, at their Reading Rally at Ramsay School! What is a Reading Rally? Here's what Calgary Reads' website has to say:
Reading Rallies are reading parties at Calgary Reads schools. This is a joyful time of laughter and fun with dozens of volunteers who join with the young readers in very small groups to share the joy of reading and read stories aloud. A celebrity storyteller joins in the fun by reading a book aloud, demonstrating how fun reading really can be. Every child attending the event gets a book bag filled with goodies and several new books, often the first book some of these children have ever owned.
Doesn't that sound like fun? See you there!
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When Words Collide

8/15/2013

7 Comments

 
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In case you didn't already know, I'm expecting a baby. Since I did this once before, I think I've got some idea of how much time I'll have for decadent, frivolous free-time stuff after this baby arrives (i.e. not much). So I signed up for something frivolous, last weekend... just because I still could.

I went to a local event called "When Words Collide - A Festival for Readers & Writers." It's the third time this unique annual festival has taken place. I've been to a few academic conferences about literature (and here are some sketchnotes from one such), but this multi-layered event combined academic panels, informal group discussions, one-on-one sessions with experts in various fields (writers, publishers) and a hodgepodge of other writerly stuff. So it was pretty accessible to anyone (I even saw some school-aged kids), while also offering specialized info sessions for professionals.

The festival isn't about mainstream literature, though. When Words Collide features "genre fiction": sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, YA (Young Adult), and any number of sub-genres I probably haven't heard of (I did hear some folks talking about "Zombie Erotica"... that's a genre?!!). If you've been reading this blog, you might know I am a fan of YA fiction (in fact, that's pretty much all I read). But I like those other genres too (well, the first ones I mentioned - probably not the zombie erotica, I have to confess).

I did have cause to reflect, while I was there, that it's a funny thing that YA fiction gets lumped in with these other categories - in much the same way indie comics get lumped in with superheroes, TV show fans, toy collectors, and cosplayers, at the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo. Drawing sketchnotes about this weekend's event, I kind of felt the same way I did at the Expo earlier this year - kind of on the periphery of a bunch of stuff I don't know anything about.

But maybe that's part of the reason for putting all those things under one umbrella. You come looking for one thing, and you end up learning about another. Here's what I took away.
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And now I have a confession to make. I couldn't resist putting a little piece of my own writing onto this anonymous slush pile. There's this story I always write when I have time (which is hardly ever. Even writing this blog is ridiculous, considering the stuff I should be getting done RIGHT NOW). So it's pretty slow going - I've been working on it for, oh, twenty years or so. Anyway, it's in no shape to send to a publisher, but I did think it was in good enough shape for an anonymous critique such as this one. (And luckily, it seemed to go over OK.)

But here's the funny part. Until I came to this panel, I had completely forgotten that I had, once before, submitted a piece of this same old story to a panel of critics. This would have been in 1997. I had just moved back to Calgary. A friend of mine told me about this group called the Imaginative Fiction Writers' Association. I had just finished taking a senior Creative Writing course at the University of Toronto (in which, of course, I worked on this same story... it's the only one I got!) - and I was feeling kinda "writerly" - so I submitted an excerpt from it to this group for a critique.

After that, though, I started painting and writing indie comics instead of writing fiction, and I haven't really been moving in Calgary's Imaginative Fiction Writers scene (in fact, I only just this moment looked them up and found out that they still exist!). But when I came to this panel I suddenly thought, "Hey... I bet these same folks, who are now local superstars and who are organizing this conference, were all part of that old IFWA group from fifteen years ago!" And I was right.

Here's what I dug out of my old story box of files when I got home (yes, I keep all that story-related stuff in one big box... pretty organized, no?):

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And just as I expected. There they were - these same folks! Still driving Calgary's writing community after all this time. Now there's commitment to both craft and community.

Besides the critiques written by Randy McCharles, Hayden Trenholm, and Tony King, some of the other ones in my box were Al Onia, Liz Westbrook, and Sandy Fitzpatrick - names I also glimpsed here at When Words Collide 2013.

I should add that the story I submitted all those years ago was entirely forgettable... and I kind of was, myself, too. I'm much more interesting now. And those fifteen years of self-editing have really paid off, judging by the more recent comments I received! Ha, ha.

Ok - thanks for indulging me in that lengthy digression. Now let's dive back into the festival.

Here are some notes from an entertaining group discussion with author Jefferson Smith about names. Everybody knows that sci-fi and fantasy stories are full of weird made-up names. But there's a method to the madness...
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Personally, I give first prize for made-up names in literature to Ursula K. LeGuin. Not because her names are always the best (it's hard to beat Tolkien at that) - but because she does it again with every new book: each imagined world filled with convincing names for people, geography, technology, you name it.

By the way, I should add that Ursula K. LeGuin, who is 83, is the last surviving one of my four favourite authors. The others all passed away not too long ago: Diana Wynne Jones (died in 2011, aged 76); Margaret Mahy (died in 2012, aged 76); E. L. Konigsburg (died in 2013, aged 83). Hang in there, Ursula!
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And now you should take a look at Linda Kupecek's website. The fact that I only ever read YA fiction is my excuse for not knowing more (if anything) about local writers who write anything else. So I am always excited to find out more. Meanwhile, I also see that Linda's site features a blog, in which she also wrote about her weekend at When Words Collide (she's clearly much quicker on the draw than I am - but then, she didn't have to upload all these cumbersome images). From the sound of her review, it sounds like she had a great time!

For fans of speculative fiction in Alberta, here's "On Spec". And for fans of virtual reality, here's the "Oculus".

Couldn't find the banjo player online, though.
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Something (someone) else I couldn't find - online OR at When Worlds Collide: Vance Neudorf! Vance, where are you? Ok, so Vance has no idea who I am. But I know who he is, because in about 2009 I bought his self-published, locally-set fantasy novel "The Hammer" at the now-seemingly-defunct Calgary Children's Book Fair & Conference. Since I was right in the throes of new parenthood back then, I didn't get around to writing about how promising I thought The Hammer was at the time - though I did mention it recently in this post about novels set in Calgary. Anyway, Vance, I hope you haven't given up - I thought your book was great and I thought it should have been at this event!

Maybe Vance just takes fifteen years to complete his writing projects - like me. OK, so back to the festival again. This next panel was about children's literature - a bit more up my alley.

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Here's Gordon Lightfoot's Canadian Railroad Trilogy. (It's a song - not a book!) And here's Ian Wallace, who drew the pictures for this particular book featuring the song.
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Ginger Mullen's retelling of the story of the prince who married the tortoise reminded me of another tale - The Flying Carpet, illustrated by the three-time-Caldecott-Medal-winning Marcia Brown. I have a lot of books from my childhood, but this one has been lost along the way. However, I can remember it pretty vividly and a quick Google search yielded this brief blog post about it - featuring the fabulous comment that the illustrations "are like what you’d get if Marc Chagall were an Arab." Um, awesome - and accurate!

Ginger Mullen also mentioned that countless fairy tales feature the motif of a human who marries an animal. This reminded me of another children's book that tells just such a story: Errol Le Cain's The White Cat (which, I'm amazed to see, seems to be out of print). Luckily, I still have it:

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More unforgettable illustrations.

The next panellist spoke about this book pictured on the right. I've seen Sherman Alexie's book around, but I haven't read it. Now, I think I'd better!
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This next talk was another academic panel featuring three speakers. Here are the first two:
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Ok, so, first: with regards to Jessica Bay's talk about books that cross genre boundaries: even though I wasn't familiar with the books she discussed, I love her subject. And so, in aid of that, here's Ursula K. LeGuin again, with a quote to that effect (from an essay I wrote a long time ago, back when I actually had to type my text, print it out, cut it out, glue it on to the page I'd illustrated, and then photocopy that. Luckily, Photoshop has changed my life since then).
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And now to Paula Johanson. To judge by her talk, she likes Ursula K. LeGuin, too (well... who doesn't?).

I can blame my aforementioned exclusive reading of YA books for my utter ignorance of The Curve of Time. Sounds pretty interesting... even if the book was lousy (which it sounds like it's definitely not), the premise sounds great: the true story of a single mother in the depression who takes her five children on boat trips along Canada's northwest coast... and then writes a book about it? Why hasn't every Canadian heard of this cool mama?

Hey, I took my son camping this year and I lasted one night... sleeping in a tent while pregnant did not agree with me. I felt kind of guilty to be such a wimp, and now I feel even more guilty (and wimpy). But hey, I'm making up for my lack of outdoorsy-ness in other ways, right? Like: just ask me to rattle off the names of a whole lot of Canadian YA books about outdoorsy stuff! I can do that with my eyes closed! Don't even get me started!

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Here's where you can find out about The Centennial Reader - an intriguing-sounding initiative.

Actually, here's something I just read on its "Call for Submissions" page: a description of the project that sounds very much like something that might be a good description for When Words Collide, too:

The Centennial Reader straddles both worlds: the academic world and the popular publication world. Submissions should therefore apply intellectual thought to topical concerns, offered in an entertaining and popular way.

And now - the last panel (for me). I couldn't attend on Sunday, by the way, so all these sketchnotes are just from Friday & Saturday's talks.
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I was looking forward to this discussion about books set in Canada, but although it was fun, I think it only really scratched the surface of a topic I've given probably way too much thought to over the past ten years or so. If you feel like it, you can read this blog post I wrote about it not too long ago, in response to a post by Amy Jo Espetveidt of awesome local blog Calgary is Awesome, who was looking for books set in Calgary.
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I actually bought a book at When Words Collide - a new YA book (something I rarely do. I like to buy second-hand books. And I like to wait until they've been out for a while, so I know they're more likely to be on the shelf because they're good, and not just because they're being well-hyped).

I know - I should have gone to the "What's new in YA fiction?" panel!! It was on the top of my list! But it was also at 10 AM on Saturday morning and I had to help out at the (amazing) Inglewood Night Market the night before... so it didn't happen. (Check it out, folks - there's only one more Night Market this year, and it's on Friday, September 13th.)

Anyway - I missed the panel and had to take a guess with regards to something good in new YA fiction. I chose a book called Run like Jaeger from Owl's Nest Books. I chose it for two reasons: one, it was by an Alberta author (Karen Bass - who also worked as a librarian, like my favourite author Margaret Mahy). And two, it looked like it was set in Germany. I used to go there a lot, but I haven't been there in almost two years, so I figured this story might keep me in the loop a bit. Then, after I bought it, I realized it was about an exchange student from Calgary who spends a year in Germany! Well. I did that too, a really long time ago.

Funnily enough, even though the action of the story takes place in Germany, the protagonist's "real" home is in Calgary, so that's ALMOST one for Calgary is Awesome's list of  books set in Calgary.

Almost.

Thanks, When Words Collide, for a great weekend... it's nothing short of inspiring to glimpse what's going on out there in the world of local literature! Now I'll be retreating to my neighbourhood again for a while. But not too long. I promise it won't take me another fifteen years to finish that neverending story.

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Calgary Books... or, the lack thereof

5/18/2013

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Samantha's Secret Room

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When I read Calgary Is Awesome's post about fiction set in Calgary, I thought: Oh, I love this subject!!!

CIA's Amy Jo Espetveidt writes about her experience reading a novel while literally immersed in its local (Ontario) setting. I had a kind of similar experience. When I was a voraciously-reading kid of about eight or ten, my grandmother gave me this YA novel: Lyn Cook's "Samantha's Secret Room" (because of the name. Back then there weren't as many girls named Sam, so it was cool to read this one). The setting of the story didn't register with me back then - I just remember loving the twisty plot, the romantic older cousin, and other important details like that alluring turquoise hairband.

Later (when I was sixteen), my grandparents built a family cottage near to the Ontario town of Penetanguishene (a name that confounded all my German friends). My grandparents were Toronto people - they didn't really know the Penetang area at all. Why do I mention this? Because about ten years after that (when I was about twenty-six) and I had started to pay a lot of attention to YA fiction, I realized that everywhere in Penetang you'd come across that same old book: Samantha's Secret Room.

So I read it again and I realized it was set in Penetang (in the 1950's). Reading the book as a grown-up, I realized that it was 1) still a great read, and 2) it was a fabulous example of a YA novel making brave, bold, unapologetic use of a local Canadian setting! And doing so in the 1950's, no less! Reading that story after I'd actually been to all of those places, was delightful. And it was even more delightful to think that my grandmother, who, to my knowledge, had never been to Penetang and knew nothing about its local stories, had just happened to give that book to me so long ago, without knowing that it held the story of a place she'd later come to call home herself.

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Here are some Penetang pics. But now back to Calgary Is Awesome's call for Calgary-based fiction.

Local Settings in Canadian Teen Fiction

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I pretty much only read teenager books ("Young Adult Fiction" so-called), but I read them a lot. And I have some pretty strong feelings about the importance of placing stories in real, local settings. So I thought it would be fun - and easy - to come up with some Calgary-based YA story suggestions to send over to CIA.

But it turned out that this was really hard to do.

Let me give you some context. I know a bit about Canadian YA fiction. From Farley Mowat's The Black Joke to the contemporary fiction of Canadian writers like Tim Wynne-Jones, I love finding Canadian places referenced in YA novels (If you haven't read anything by Tim Wynne-Jones, rush out and do so right away. The Maestro, his compelling tale of a unlikely comraderie that is born in the northern Ontario wilderness, would be one good place to start).

But the settings don't have to be overt. When Monica Hughes writes about a nameless futuristic city in a YA sci-fi novel, it's close enough to Edmonton for me. When the amazing (amazing!!!) Beth Goobie describes her characters strolling along a well-described riverbank, I cheer for the unnamed, but implied, Saskatoon. But don't get me wrong - I also love it when authors place their Canadian settings front and centre (yes, that's centre with a -tre!), from Ethel Wilson's back-to-the-land classic Swamp Angel, to Cora Taylor's evocative prairie tale Julie, to Nan Gregory's Vancouver-based I'll Sing You One-O. (Swamp Angel isn't exactly a teenager book, but it's close enough for me.)
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But Calgary?
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Calgary is Awesome did track down a few titles for its blog, which is more than I was able to do.

So, there's local author Shirlee Smith Matheson. I've only read her non-fiction books - which certainly tell tales of local history - but I know she has a collection of YA books too, which I'm pretty sure are packed with Alberta - and probably Calgary - places and people. If this is the case, she's my one and only bona fide Calgary-setting YA author.

And there's longtime Calgary author Judd Palmer (who no longer resides here, I've heard) - who brought some cachet to the metier of being a Calgary author with his really beautiful-looking "Preposterous Fables for Unusual Children," (but didn't actually set any of his books in Calgary, as far as I know). These books are original and lovely, but I've always felt they might have missed the mark - supposedly for youngsters, I think they're actually enjoyed more by grown-ups. It makes them hard to categorize. But I digress, as usual.

I thought of Ted Stenhouse's Across the Steel River. I loved this book about the friendship between two young men - one Indigenous, the other a settler - not least because I had to wonder if there was a gay subtext in there (maybe I was reading into that - gay-themed YA fiction is a favourite subject of mine - and another genre of books which, though growing, isn't big enough for me. More on that another time). The novel is set in a 1950's Canadian prairie town which - I can't remember - may or may not be somewhere around Calgary. I might just associate it with Calgary because I bought it at the Calgary Children's Book Fair and Conference. This event, which was held at the Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Association for a few years, doesn't seem to be scheduled for this year (the person to ask would be Simon Rose, an enthusiastic Calgary children's author - but another one whose works may or may not actually be set in Calgary, as far as I know). Is this event no more? It was a great collaboration of local readers and writers!
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And there's Vance Neudorf, whose impressively self-published first novel The Hammer (2008), as I recall, is set in a prairie town not far from Calgary (could be Three Hills - I'm pretty sure Neudorf hails from there himself).

I really liked The Hammer. I read it back in 2008 and really wanted to write about it, but got distracted by having a baby. I had been reading another new Canadian YA author - Ontario author James Bow - whose novel The Unwritten Girl was a bit of a sly homage to Madeleine L'Engle. Bow's novel incorporated a whole lot of references to her work. However, intentionally or not, it was Neudorf whom I felt was actually channelling L'Engle in his novel. Maybe it's the fact that both Neudorf and L'Engle seem to be fuelled by a strong spiritual Christianity, which inspires, rather than detracts from, their excellent storytelling skills. I thought The Hammer - at least, the early copy I read - needed some editing. But other than that, it was one of the strongest new local novels I'd read in a long time. That was in 2008. What's Vance Neudorf doing now, I wonder? Writing, I hope!

Why I Care About All This

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Part of the reason I've thought so much about the importance of local settings is because of my own roundabout process of coming to terms with being a Calgary person.

As I wrote in this comic strip, I used to feel ashamed of coming from such a cultureless hick town. Then, inspired by New Zealand's brilliant children's writer Margaret Mahy, I started to feel that it actually behooves "hick town" residents to write about their towns, thereby transforming them into places worthy of culture and art.

A while ago, I wrote an essay that's partly about how Margaret Mahy overcame her inability to envision her hometown - and her home country - as places worthy of setting stories in. Here's a bit about that:
Mahy writes, "For a variety of reasons, partly because my own childhood reading was so predominantly British, my first stories were set in nowhere – or rather, in that place where all stories co-exist, where story is nothing but itself." However, Mahy's settings began increasingly to incorporate elements of a New Zealand setting, although initially, these elements were not necessarily apparent to readers. Mahy has said of her 1982 novel The Haunting: "In my mind the characters... lived in New Zealand, though there is no real clue to this in the story..." 

...

"You'd think," says Mahy, interviewed in a 2005 article, "[that] you'd automatically be able to write about the place you've lived in all your life – but the stories I'd had read to me as a child [set predominantly in the United Kingdom] somehow disinherited me." Elsewhere, she has explained: "the landscape in which I had grown up and the idiom I heard every day seemed somehow unnatural to me..."  Mahy's changeover from a writer labouring under what she has called an "imaginative displacement" from her native New Zealand, to a writer who, decades later, was able to say that she "felt quite triumphant over writing a story set in [her] own country," has been well documented, in numerous interviews, as well as in her own book of essays and criticism, A Dissolving Ghost, and Tessa Duder's 2005 biography, Margaret Mahy: A Writer's Life.
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The conclusion to the essay was written as a comic strip, and this is part of it. You can read the rest of it here.

But you know what - I don't think this is the reason I can't find contemporary YA novels set in Calgary. It's not a case of that Canadian humility that makes us feel our hometowns aren't worth writing about. Most Canadian authors have gotten past that. It's something about Calgary.

Why Not Calgary?

OK, here's my theory.

I think there's a critical mass thing that happens - when enough people live somewhere, or at least know about that place, authors feel like they can write about it. So we have novels set in Paris and songs about Sunset Boulevard (or maybe that's a movie. But you know what I mean.) American authors always seem curiously unafraid to place their fiction in unapologetic local settings (even naming their stories after those place names - even when those places are fictional - from Centerburg Tales to Winesburg, Ohio) - but I think there's a different culture of place down there. As far as Canada goes, Ontario might be history/population-heavy enough that writers aren't afraid to throw down those weighty place names. At least, there are certainly a lot (a lot!!!) of YA novels set in Ontario.

On the other hand, there's also a strong precedent for nameless, placeless and/or fictional "Canadian" settings. From Margaret Laurence's Manawaka (based on Neepawa) to Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (set in the fictional town of Mariposa, modelled after Orillia), to James Bow's aforementioned The Unwritten Girl (set somewhere on the Bruce Peninsula, if I remember right). And there are countless stories that are just set "somewhere" - all specific references to location omitted - presumably (it always seems to me), so that the stories will be more "accessible" to American markets.

So here's what I think. Maybe Calgary falls into an awkward spot between a really well-known place (say, Paris) and that ambiguous, nameless "somewhere". Authors, or publishers, or somebody, must have the feeling that placing a story in Calgary places it somewhere in a reader's mind: somewhere limiting enough that it will distract from the universality of the story, or worse, dissuade the buyer.

Setting a story in some unnamed ambiguous prairie town gives the enormous markets - I mean, readers - in Ontario/the USA/etc the freedom to imagine the story in a prairie town of their choice. But saying it's in Calgary will immediately bring up an image in the minds of those buyers - er, readers - which might not appeal. Like... you name it... cowboys? Engineers? Right-wingers? Oil barons? Whatever it is, it's presumably not as "universal" as, say, an imagined character who lives in Toronto. That could be ANYBODY!

But ANYBODY could live here, too... and does. Are we letting Canadian readers know?
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So What Can We Do?

We just have to keep telling stories about Calgary. We have to set stories in Calgary until it's as common to find stories set in Calgary, as it is to find stories set in Paris, or London, or New York. Or at least until "Calgary" doesn't read synonymously with "limited appeal" to publishers.

Am I totally wrong about this theory? Please let me know if that's the case! After all, I'm just making this up in my living room at 2 AM. Someday it would be fun to go listen in on what some real scholars have to say about all this.

Meanwhile, if you want your city to be known for the arts, you have to make the art yourself, and let people know where it's happening. That's why I'm writing comic strips about my neighbourhood. And I actually chose @calgaryhester as my Twitter handle (something I would never have dreamed of doing ten years ago... even if I could have imagined something like Twitter). (By the way, I realized afterwards that this handle might be awkward if I actually do ever leave Calgary, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

OK, I'm waiting for a bunch of indignant local authors who have set their novels in Calgary to set me straight. And I hope they've written to tell Calgary is Awesome that they're out there, too!

Notes... because I haven't said enough about all this

A few random related/unrelated things crossed my mind while I was writing all that...
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1. Brooke's Blog

Back in university I made a friend who liked books, just like me (maybe even more). It seems we still have a few interests in common, because these days he's blogging about stories from around the world that refer to Canada. Not Canadian books - not books entirely set in Canada - but places in which Canada gets a mention from a non-Canadian point of view. This is a fun and actually pretty enlightening subject to read about. Brooke's blog about "Canada through the eyes of World Literature" is called Wow - Canada! And you should check it out. Even though he lives in Toronto (ha, ha).

There are quite a few pictures of Brooke in the Drawing Book, but here's the only one I can find right at the moment - from a very short comic strip called "Eulogy for a Scarf."

When I first saw Brooke's blog, I thought right away of this one tantalizing, seemingly throwaway reference to a Canadian setting in a non-Canadian book: it's from Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom (Faulkner is one of the few "grown up" authors I really love), and shows up in the last line of the last page of the book, at the end of a list of the characters' brief biographies:

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After wading through this gigantic long novel about the Deep South, we find out that one of the main characters is from Edmonton, of all places! In fact, since he seems to have outlived all the other characters in the story, it looks like this one guy in Edmonton is the sole surviving keeper of the whole epic tale. Why Edmonton??? We never find out any more about it, despite the fact that this is a book that's all about finding out the reasons behind things. So you know there's got to be a reason. Just not what the reason is. That's one heck of an enigmatic Canadian reference.

Luckily, I'm not the only one who's been wondering. It looks as though a scholar by the name of Kayoko Shimanuki, apparently a doctoral student at Kyoto University sometime after 2006, wrote a paper called Absalom, Absalom! Reconsidered: A Story of Canadian Shreve. It doesn't explain why Faulkner picked Edmonton, but it does talk about how Shreve's Canadian-ness influences his perspective on this American story. I hope Shimanuki got that PhD.

2. More about Margaret Mahy

Here's some more from that essay about how Mahy struggled to overcome a whole nation's history of literaturelessness... and how Canada has suffered from the same trouble. But not anymore, right?
Mahy's "displacement" is accredited (in a 2004 interview) in part to "the default assumption then, [when Mahy was a child] and for a long time afterwards, ...that New Zealand experiences were less interesting and valuable than British or European ones" (Ridge 2004). Contributing to this kind of assumption was the absence of a solid oeuvre of New Zealand writing. Mahy explains elsewhere: "Other contemporary New Zealand writers also had difficulty in writing about New Zealand at that time, partly because there was so little to draw on. The indigenous writing of the 1930s and 1940s was very self-conscious" (Eccleshare). As Mahy says of her reaction to this literary climate: "I didn't imaginatively believe my own New Zealand stories in the ways I believed in the fantasies and such things that I'd been writing" (Larsen).

Some aspects of New Zealand's developing literary climate could be said to have had their parallels in Canada. Jennifer Andrews has written that the respected Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock "may have believed that Canadian humour... was better positioned to compete on the world stage when it was not overtly defined as Canadian" ("Humouring"). A traditional view of Canada's cultural output was expressed by British children's literature critic John Rowe Townsend in 1976: "Canada, in children's books as in much else [including, presumably, comics], remains in the American shadow" (210).
3. Proof that I'm insane

Once, I recorded... and graphed (!!??)... all the references to Canada that were made in over 20 years of "For Better of For Worse." (Actually, I think my multi-talented friend Andrew helped me make the graph.) I'm too sleepy to say any more about this now, for which I'm sure you will be truly grateful.



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Happy Birthday Margaret Mahy!

3/21/2013

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It's Margaret Mahy's birthday. (At least, it was yesterday if you're in New Zealand, but there are still a few hours to celebrate in this time zone.) Margaret Mahy... my literary hero... passed away last year. Right now I really hope she's up in heaven having tea with W. S. Gilbert. I wish I could be in the heavenly audience when they start collaborating. Has there ever been such a meeting of like-minded poetic geniuses on earth? Well... hardly ever! It is fun to imagine what their combined wordsmithery, wit, irreverence and humour would produce. And you know there'd be pirates.
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I'd love to be a fly on the wall during that conversation. For now maybe I'll just re-read "Portable Ghosts" while listening to The Mikado at the same time. Not quite the same, but it'll do for now. (Actually, that might seriously mess with my brain.)

By the way, "Portable Ghosts" is about a couple of ghosts who haunt (respectively) a book and (eventually) a laptop computer. Portable ghosts... get it? It is nice to think that Mahy's spirit is just as portable - inhabiting every one of her many great books and leaping out to astonish her readers every time - just as it did while she was still alive.

In case you're interested, I've written a bit more about Margaret Mahy here in this blog. And here is a comic strip I wrote about her. I've written about Gilbert & Sullivan here and there in The Drawing Book, but I don't think any of that stuff is online. Ah well... I'm sure it's only a matter of time!

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Tiny Houses

3/17/2013

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After I wrote about multi-generational housing, I heard from all sorts of interesting people with different kinds of experience and expertise in this subject - either as caregivers for their own multi-generational families, or as urban thinkers who've given a lot of study to the subject of how we can make our living spaces work better.

My neighbour Fred Hollis lent me this book ("The Small House Book" by Jay Schafer). It is full of inspiring pictures and ideas - inspiring not only if you're trying to do a major downsize, but also if you only have a small space to start with. Tiny can still mean luxurious, liveable, and definitely cozy.



Then tonight I happened to read a story to my son: published in 1971, Peppino is illustrated by Sita Jucker and written by Ursina Ziegler. As far as I can tell (and I can't find out much... i.e. a link to put here!) they were (and still are, perhaps?) both Swiss. This book (like most of the zillions of children's books piled around my house) was mine when I was little. I remember loving this story of a boy whose dad was no longer able to work as a travelling magician; Peppino (the boy) helps by earning money - and creating hope - with his wonderful drawings. I loved all the pictures in the book, but I really liked this one, which shows Peppino's drawing of the house he dreams of living in with his father.

Peppino was ahead of his time! He was designing tiny houses long before they became trendy!

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And, you know, this wasn't where I was going with this at all, but those pictures just make me think of another children's story: Roald Dahl's "Danny, the Champion of the World" in which another boy lives with his father in another cozy "tiny house" (a gypsy caravan - pictured here in one of the original illustrations by Jill Bennett). Tiny homes in children's literature - perhaps a subject for another day!
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Stories from the Library

1/13/2013

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I heard that Calgary's Signal Hill Library will be getting some new public art. I thought that sounded exciting, and I went down to take a look at the library. Although I have some good friends in the neighbourhood, I hadn't actually been in the building before. It was a lovely spot: bright and spacious, but inviting and cozy, too. And there was a lot going on in there. I liked being reminded of how much the Calgary Public Library is about more than just books. It's a gathering spot for familes, seniors, students, and all sorts of Calgarians.

Since that visit, I've been thinking about about how much libraries have shaped my life. A lot, it seems.


The North Battleford Public Library

I learned to read at one of Canada’s historic Carnegie libraries: in 1975, I was the youngest person in North Battleford, Saskatchewan with a library card. North Battleford's library building is still there today (one of Canada's few Carnegie libraries left standing west of Ontario), although it's not a library anymore, apparently.

I don't actually remember going to this library (I was two). What I do remember is the walk to the library, which I drew in this unpublished 2003 story:
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Why did we count in French? I'm guessing my mom was trying to come up with ways to improve our minds, of which, in a life of walking back and forth to the library with a two-year-old in a small prairie town, there were probably relatively few.


Trinity College LIbrary

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When I was a student, I worked for four years at the University of Toronto’s Trinity College Library. During the first three years, I was actually attending Trinity College - then I took a break and came back to work there again while I was a student at OCAD. I always worked the 6 PM - midnight shift (and these are still my favourite working hours). Things weren't very busy then (as now) and there was lots of time to sit and draw.

Strangely enough, when I look around the internet for photos of the old Trin Library, I can't find a single one. It was in a century-old basement, and rather dark and dingy. The whole thing has been moved to a shiny brand-new building (pictured here - and not even that new, anymore). I knew the library had been moved to this new and improved location, but I'm surprised that there isn't a single picture of the old one to be found.

Incidentally, I'm also surprised that I can't find a single image of U of T's old Sig Sam Library, either. The stacks were built of metal grilles. You could see through the bars. The floors and ceilings were made of it, too. So if you stood in the aisle between the stacks, you could look up, down and all around and just see rows and rows of books. It felt as though you were in a kind of surreal 1950's book-filled cage.

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As a university tour guide, I made a point of taking new students through this library just so they'd get a feeling for how university would soon immerse them in books. Well, partly it was just to freak them out a bit, too.

Somehow, it seems no one's taken a picture of this.

However, I did find this picture of the Hart House Library, a cozy spot in which, according to both my dad and my grandfather, students used to come for a nap. If you Google "Hart House Library Nap" you'll find quite a few pages of testimonials from other erstwhile nappers. (Incidentally, the picture was part of an article in which the author mentions that she, too, used to take naps here.)

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I may be the only student who actually read a book there. I still remember taking it off the shelf: Aldous Huxley's Music at Night. I was crazy about Huxley, but hadn't read this book of essays. I was sitting there getting positively electrified by his prose. (Well, I was an English major, what can I say.) And then I saw that the title of one of the essays was "Squeak and Gibber." It's a reference to Hamlet (Horatio's talking about the creepy inarticulate sounds made by the ghosts of some dead Romans). Well, I love it when authors share these kinds of semi-private jokes with those members of their audiences who get it. I got it. And that's when I knew I really had become well and truly immersed in books. 

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The only image I can find that has anything to do with my four years at the Trin Library is this picture of a library bookplate. These were glued into the inside front cover of library books. When I look at it, I can still smell the glue paste.

Christchurch City Library

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At the same time I was learning to read in rural Saskatchewan, Margaret Mahy began working as a children's librarian at the Christchurch City Library in New Zealand. Mahy went on to write the myriad of wonderful stories we know and love (although, alas, we don't know them very well in Canada. Today, despite Mahy's literary accolades such as two Carnegie Medals and the Hans Christian Anderson Medal - children's literature's "Little Nobel" - I can tell you exactly which of her works can be found on the YA shelves of Calgary's Public Library. Maddigan's Fantasia (also published as Maddigan's Quest) (fun, but not her greatest novel); the soaked-in-Gilbert-&-Sullivan and luckily-still-popular Great Piratical Rumbustification; and her last great work, The Magician of Hoad (which I've also seen under the title Heriot). Publishing restrictions must have something to do with this serious lack of Mahy. It's not the fault of the library. But if not for second-hand bookstores (see above), I'd never have discovered Mahy's The Catalogue of the Universe. Enough said).

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Luckily, I discovered it, wrote about it, and was invited to come down to the Christchurch City Library to speak about Mahy's impact on my life and work. I loved being in the place Mahy herself had worked. And I loved meeting Margaret Mahy. Despite my Bob Dylan groupiedom, I'm really not much of an autograph-seeking kinda person. But that was one in-person meeting I will always remember.

This is my only picture of Margaret Mahy and me. She was signing my old copy of The Catalogue. As I wrote in a tribute to Mahy published in Storylines' online newsletter following her death earlier this year: she reminded me of an Ent. It was fun to see that we were both wearing long drapy scarves around our necks. (It was freezing. But so was my whole trip to New Zealand. A intelligent-seeming graduate student asked me the following question about Canada: "Don't you have some kind of special houses up there to keep the cold weather out?" Well, we have insulation, if that's what you mean. Anyway.)

Here's a bit about Mahy and libraries from the comic-strip portion of an essay I wrote about Mahy.

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By the way, I suspect that the reason you can always find The Great Piratical Rumbustification on the shelves of a library is that it's usually published with a companion story, The Librarian and the Robbers. This fantastic tale of a heroic librarian is one that Mahy clearly wrote from the heart, just as it warms the hearts of librarians everywhere. The fact that it's illustrated by Quentin Blake just makes it all the nicer. I wish I had a picture or a quote from it to add in here, but as soon as I find a copy I inevitably give it away to someone. Oh well - if you want it, you know where to get it.


Calgary Public Library

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Well, and last of all, my own hometown library. I have many fond memories of growing up with the Calgary Public Library. Maybe the strangest one is being part of a kids' summer reading group that used the following method to encourage youngsters to read: Every time you read a book, you'd report on it to the librarian, who'd make a mark on your chart. When you'd read a whole bunch of books and the marks reached the bottom of the chart , you received some kind of a prize.

I know - that doesn't sound too strange. The strange part was that the charts depicted oil derricks pumping oil out of the ground. (I have tried to draw a picture of this big chart here.) Each child got an oil derrick (and was allowed to name their own oil company. I can't remember what I called mine, except that it ended with the words "In Company," which I thought was what "Inc." was short for. You can see my future wasn't in business). At the bottom of the chart there was a picture of an enormous underground pool of oil. As each book was marked off, you got a bit closer to the oil. When you struck oil, you hit the library jackpot! I can't remember what the prize was. But I remember loving the big wall-sized chart on which some creative librarian had glued construction paper to represent layers of sand, rock, and other stuff you had to "drill" through to make the reading journey more exciting and suspenseful. I remember thinking, "when I'm grown up, I'll make a big wall-sized poster like that."

Well, that was Calgary in the oil boom of the late 70's/early 80's. It didn't occur to me then that there was anything unusual about oil-pumping library incentives. I also thought that building cranes were a regular feature of any city skyline.

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A later Calgary Public Library memory is going with my dad to hear Robertson Davies speak at the Central Library in about 1991. I remember he took questions from the audience in a rather bored manner. With a pounding heart I raised my hand and asked, "What do you think will be coming up next for Canadian literature?" (Or something like that.) He gave me a piercing look and said, "Now that's an interesting question." R. D. had some strong feelings about Canadian literature, and even helped to shape it. I think What's Bred in the Bone was his only really good book, though.

I don't remember going to the Memorial Library (below)- Calgary's first library, and another Carnegie gem - as a kid. I remember discovering it in my twenties, when I went in to explore it with a few Beltline-dwelling friends. I was instantly captivated by a box of "discards" for sale. My eye was caught by the classic children's book Freight Train by Donald Crews. I bought it. My friends thought I was crazy.
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And now Calgary's getting a new central library. This would be exciting enough if it weren't for the added good news about the library's location: the East Village, not too far from Ramsay (my own hood). This has been a long work in progress - you can watch Special Projects Librarian Rosemary Griebel's 2010 talk about the library (from Calgary's sixth PechaKucha) here.

I’m so glad to be putting down roots in a city with a world-class library system. Doubtless there will be more library stories down the road! But, I hope, no more glue paste.
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My Favourite Book

11/29/2012

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There's only one thing you can really do when you find out that only a depressing twenty-seven percent of eligible voters chose to participate in your riding's recent federal by-election: hide in your bed with a tub of ice cream and your favourite book.

I didn't actually do this (although I wished I could). Anyway, I've read that particular book so many times that at this point it's more fun to write about it than read it again. So here goes.

The book: Apple Bough by Noel Streatfeild (author of many Young Adult ("YA") novels, including the classic story Ballet Shoes).

Disclaimer: I don’t read grown-up books – I pretty much just read YA fiction (that's another story). And there are many other YA authors I really love (Margaret Mahy, of course, being one). But this is the book that’s been there for me through thick and thin, which is why it’s earned the title.

Another time, I could tell you why it crystallized, around twenty years ago, into this enviable position. Something about the subject matter (the tale just resonated with seeming parallels to my own life); something about Streatfeild’s writing style (of which more below); and something about the way the story brings you home. It’s the ultimate comfort-food book for me: the one in which you know things will turn out all right. (This one, and Louise Fitzhugh’s “Sport”. That’s the second-place contender.)

I usually save it for times when I need a reassuring read (for example, this page from The Drawing Book (circa 2000), featuring scenes from the story, shows how I cleverly took it along with me on a stressful solo journey – anticipating (correctly) that I would need some comforting escapism to get me through, and that no other book would do.
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Also testifying to my fondness for Apple Bough: I've  painted this quote from the novel on the kitchen walls of a few places I’ve lived. Here is my current kitchen wall.

In the story, the new governess arrives at Apple Bough (an old rambly house) inhabited by a family of four children and two “vague”, usually-absent parents. Finding the children hungry, cold, and left to their own devices, she takes the situation in hand by deciding that they’ll skip lessons that day and do some cooking together in the kitchen since “kitchens are usually cozy.”

…“I don’t think our kitchen is cozy [replies one of the children]..."

“It will be…”

By sheer force of character, Miss Popple creates order from chaos. Having myself lived in a few places with the chilly, ramshackle, comfortless atmosphere of those early days in Apple Bough, I guess I felt that, in the absence of a solid English governess to cheer things up, I could at least paint her reassuring words in my kitchen, to remind me that houses – and their atmospheres - can be transformed. (By the way, my British edition spells that “cosy,” but I put a “z” on my Canadian wall.)

It is always fun to see what strikes you when you read something anew. (I definitely subscribe to the advice of Harold Bloom - which I remember reading somewhere long ago (where?)- that, rather than reading everything you can get your hands on, it's a better idea to pick a few excellent books and read them over and over again, learning something new each time. Bloom picked Shakespeare and the Bible – or something predictable like that – and I’ve got six or seven YA authors.) Looking through Apple Bough this time, I’m struck particularly by two things:

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1. Those sentences.

How did she get away with those sentences? But she did. Only Noel Streatfeild could do this. Her sentences babble along like brooks, without any ups, downs, corners or obstacles. It has to be one of the most measured, moderated narrative voices in YA lit. In fact, she leads you through the whole book without ever raising her voice. In Chapter 15, Wolfgang (who's about twelve, I think) runs into the house with the exciting news: "Mrs Bottle - Mr Bottle - I'm going on telly." Just a period at the end of that sentence. Exclamation points strictly reserved for overseas phone calls and exclamations of disgust. ("I'm going to write pop songs." ... "Ugh! I hope you're not.")

But it's these long comma-filled sentences that astound me each time. Not only does she use a lot of commas, she uses them almost exclusively. To be precise: in the first hundred pages, there are only twelve colons and six semi-colons (and three ellipses for good measure). But get a load of these commas. It's as if she isn't even aware that there are, in fact, other punctuation marks:

"...few in the audience were taking a reputation made abroad on trust, Sebastian had to make a new reputation in his own country."

"He is ready, I think, and there should not be too much strain if you, as the committee hope, would be at the piano."

Or:

"Apple Bough would be perfect, of course, but that's only a fairy-tale idea, anyway, it was sold. But perhaps some day a house like this, only ours, with our things in it, not other people's..."


Could you write sentences like this, and get them past an editor? How did she do it? It’s kind of crazy. Don’t get me wrong. I love it.


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2. Good things come in small packages.

I’ve already rambled a lot (elsewhere – though not in this blog… yet) about the reprehensible lengthening of YA novels since the advent of Harry Potter. People want long books now. Not just long books, they want seven long books in a long series, with offshoots and spinoffs and sequels and costumes and movies. They want this to be a long, drawn-out (or long-drawn-out, if you prefer) experience. And publishers seem quite pleased to encourage this arrangement. Needless to say, I’m happy that teenager books (and their authors) are finally getting the attention they deserve. However, the watered-down prose of the last decade seems a high price to pay for all the limelight.

But back in the day (Apple Bough was first published in 1962) the audiences for YA fiction were smaller, and the budgets for YA fiction were tighter. You’re hard pressed to find a YA book from that era that’s over 200 pages. And so the writing had to be brilliant. These amazing authors had the smallest possible space to get it all in there, and so the way these books have been whittled down to the bare bones of the story just knocks your socks off. Diana Wynne Jones could have crammed Harry Potter’s seven novels into seven mind-blowing chapters. And Ursula K. LeGuin would have written The Hunger Games as a short story.

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Anyway, Apple Bough epitomizes the kind of great writing that can be turned out if your author only has 200 small pages to work with (allowing room for a lot of really iconic illustrations by the brilliant Margery Gill). Streatfeild sets up the story’s problem in exactly fifty pages. The solution is presented on page 72. And it’s all in the bag one hundred and thirty-three pages later. In the meantime, four children have become world travelers, started a secret rebellion within their own family, and achieved rather astonishing fame and fortune, not to mention happiness and self-respect. And it’s all told in a manner that sketches them out as real, believable people to whom any reader could relate, even if you’ve never given a mysterious greeting hiss or been asked to act in a film by the great Owen Oslip (Streatfeild’s character names are sometimes a bit weird).

And one more note. You may never have heard of Ms. Streatfeild, but you know she’s the real deal – i.e. the apex of children’s authors - when her name’s dropped in a Hollywood movie about how tragic it would be if an independent children’s bookseller goes out of business. Well, I'm joking, but it's definitely surreal to watch Meg Ryan (of all people) getting teary-eyed while rattling off Streatfeild’s titles (the American titles, of course) - and actually spelling her hard-to-spell last name. Somehow I would never have thought of Meg (if I thought of her at all) as a Streatfeild fan. It is funny that the movie-makers were possibly thinking that they'd be bringing Noel Streatfeild to the attention of a new generation of movie-goers – when what actually happened was that the Streatfeild mention brought this otherwise pretty forgettable movie (“You’ve Got Mail”, 1998) to the attention of a bunch of YA fans and critics. There's not a Streatfeild fan who can't name that movie. Ha ha.
Apple Bough is out of print. So if you see it around anywhere, get it while you can!

And when you find it, turn off the election results, curl up with a tub of ice cream and enjoy.
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    sam hester

    I am a graphic recorder based in Calgary. I like local stories. I write comics when I have free time. And I leave eraser shavings everywhere I go.

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