Recently many of her out-of print-novels have been brought back by Open Road in electronic editions as well as a half-dozen new editions of her classic titles from Atheneum. That all her work was in print in some form at her death was a source of immense pride and pleasure. I will miss her and her new work as a woman of patrician sensibility and the proud daughter of a cowboy in a world now gone.
Karen Wojtyla, v-p and editorial director at Margaret K. I loved working with Zil — she had such a natural talent for character and voice. Her characters flew off the page and were as real as anything. She did hate commas, though. That, Zil would say, is the way people think, and talk. One of the proudest moments of my publishing career came from Zil.
To Karen Wojtyla. And in memoriam to Jean Karl. Wojtyla also shared an anecdote, one, she explains, that Snyder told to Karl in , which was preserved in a speech that Karl later presented.
Between and , Snyder completed 43 books. She was most famous for writing adventure stories and fantasies. While Snyder was growing up, interesting stories filled her household. Both of her parents spent a lot of time relating true accounts of past events in their lives, so Snyder came by her storytelling instincts honestly. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. On returning to Sonoma County I began work on a novel for young adults.
It was a story concerning a teenage boy and a magnificent buck deer, and when I began to write I had in mind a fantasy about mythical animals. But A Fabulous Creature turned out to be one of those novels that seem to take over and direct their own development and I soon found I was writing a story that was quite realistic and that had a bit to say about one of my pet antipathies—the whole mystique of the sport of hunting.
As had happened many times before, I suddenly said, "Oh, so that's what I'm writing about. That backdoor approach to themes or "messages" has been a part of the scene for me since my first book, when I thought I was basing my story's antagonist on Greek mythology and only discovered after-the-fact that I'd been writing about someone I once knew—and feared; and my unconscious theme concerned the evil that arises when selfish and insensitive use is made of a naturally dominant personality.
It worried me for a while, this rather haphazard approach to thematic material, and now and then I tried it the other way, starting a few stories with the intention of addressing a given problem. But it never turned out well. Plots went lame and characters turned into caricatures. After a while I decided that, for me at least, "messages" were best left to their own devices.
I would mind my own business, which was to tell a good story and let "messages" take care of themselves. They could, and would, I found, and in more subtle and interesting ways than when marshalled by my conscious mind. A case in point were some books of mine that were endorsed by the National Organization for Women. The stories in question had been written before my own consciousness had risen very far, and I'd not set out to say anything in particular about liberation or equality.
But the message—that little girls can be vital and original and courageous people—found an appropriate opening, and there it was. As the eighties began we were still living in Sonoma County.
Larry had been lured back into administration serving as dean of humanities and then of the School of Performing Arts at Sonoma State University—and the pendulum of American youth culture had begun a dramatic swing. Liberal arts departments were shrinking, while business management and computer sciences burgeoned. Watching this new breed of hard working, practical young people, it suddenly occurred to me that some of the present teenagers, were undoubtedly the offspring of the flower-child generation.
The next step was to wonder where teenage rebellion might take a child who had grown up in the "hippie" milieu. The result was another young-adult novel called The Birds of Summer. Blair's Nightmare, a third book about the Stanley family of The Headless Cupid, and The Changing Maze, a picture-book fantasy illustrated by Charles Mikolaycak, brings me up to the present, the spring of —a present set in a garden flat near the Porta Romana in Florence, Italy, where Larry and I are again living, this time for a year in which he is serving as director of the California State University's foreign study program in Italy.
Having transported a word processor to Italy, with no little difficulty, I am still writing while Larry deals with the Italian bureaucracy and sixty-nine California students of art, literature, and architecture. Among the side trips we've been able to make this year was a nine-day exploration of Egypt, a destination that has been high on my must-see list since I used to walk to school as Queen Nefertiti when I was ten years old.
Larry and Zilpha and a camel named Moses, So there it is, the story of my life and work, and while sticking to the facts wasn't easy, or nearly as much fun as fiction, I've faithfully done so. And that is why?
Once, some years ago during the question and answer period after a lecture, a man asked me why I wrote for children. He didn't give me any other choices, but there is another answer. The ego and the pocketbook are affected, of course, at least minimally; much of the time only too minimally.
But the maximum reward is simply—joy; the storyteller's joy in creating a story and sharing it with an audience. So I write for joy, my own and my imagined audience's—but why for children?
Unlike many writers who say that they are not aware of a particular audience as they write, I know that I am very conscious of mine. Sometimes I can almost see them, and they look very much like the classes I taught, and often read to. And, like those classes when the story was going well, they are wide-eyed and open-mouthed, rapt in the story and carried out of the constraining walls of reality into the spacious joys of the imagination.
I began to write for children by accident, through the fortunate accident of nine years in the classroom. But I've continued to do so because over the years I've come to realize that it's where I'm happiest. It is, I think, a matter of personal development or lack of it, as the case may be. There are several peculiarities that I share with children which, like having no front teeth, are perhaps more acceptable in the very young, but which, for better or worse, seem to be a part of my makeup.
First of all, there is optimism. Since growth and hope are almost synonymous no one begrudges a child's natural optimism, but a writer's is another matter. It's not fashionable to write optimistically for adults, nor I must admit, even very sensible, given the world we live in today. But my own optimism seems to be organic, perhaps due to "a bad memory and a good digestion" a quote that I can't attribute due to the aforementioned failing. Secondly, there is curiosity. Mine is as intense as a three-year-old's, but where a three-year-old's most obnoxious trait might be asking "Why" several hundred times a day, I am given to eavesdropping on conversations, peering into backyards and lighted windows, and even reading other people's mail if I get a chance.
And thirdly there is a certain lack of reverence for factual limitations and a tendency to launch out into the far reaches of possibility.
So I enjoy writing for an audience that shares my optimism, curiosity, and freewheeling imagination. I intend to go on writing for some time, and though I may occasionally try something for adults, I will always come back to children's books, where I am happiest and most at home. Zilpha Snyder and friends, It has been forty one years since when my first book, Season of Ponies, was published by Atheneum. Since then I have continued to produce fiction for young readers at the rate of about one book a year.
Over the years I have occasionally asked myself "why? Especially in recent years when, on finishing a book, I often announce that I am considering retirement, or at least a long vacation from writing. But then, after a week or two, I invariably catch myself beginning the slow spin of interrelated ideas that gradually lead to the production of character sketches, beginning scenes, and plot ideas for a new book.
And now, twenty years later, my answer would be very similar. I would again touch on the fact that for me writing fiction is probably, more than anything else, a continuation of a childhood habit. The habit of amusing myself by taking bits and pieces of information about real events, people, places, etc. As before, I would have to admit that it was a behavior pattern that occasionally got me into trouble, most often with my mother for doing something she referred to as "embroidering.
So it almost seems, for better or worse, that turning facts into fiction is one of my inborn character traits. Another answer I have at times given to the "why write? As in, "What would he think of that? You find yourself thinking, "Yes, that's exactly what Gib would have said," or, "That's the way April would have reacted. So in recent years I have continued to produce characters that run into interesting and sometimes slightly supernatural problems that I have them solve in ways that I try to make intriguing and believable.
Among these stories are Song of the Gargoyle, a tale set in the Middle Ages in which a boy makes friends with a creature who may be a gargoyle enchanted into life, or simply a very large, very ugly dog. As in many of my stories the ending gives the reader an opportunity to opt for a supernatural explanation for what has occurred or a more realistic one.
Another book that I feel especially good about is Cat Running. A story set in California during the Great Depression, it concerns a girl named Cat Catherine who is locally famous for her ability to win races. Her own family's problems and her interactions with a schoolmate whose family lives in a nearby "Okietown" lead to a footrace which turns out to be a matter of life or death.
Cat Running won many tributes, among them the Patricia Beatty Award from the California Library Association, an award given to a distinguished children's book that best promotes an awareness of California and its people. Other recent works include two books that were inspired by my father's early life. Gib Rides Home and Gib and the Gray Ghost tell the story of a boy's life in Zilpha in Persopolis, Larry and Zilpha in Mohanpura, India, a Nebraskan orphanage in the early nineteen hundreds, and then with the family by whom he is adopted, or perhaps only "farmed out.
The Unseen, published in , is the story of Xandra who feels herself to be the only ungifted and un-loved member of a large family, all the rest of whom are beautiful and talented. Animals, particularly ill or abandoned ones, have long been her friends and companions, and when a mysterious bird leaves her a strange feather, she soon realizes that it is a key: a key to a world in which emotions are turned into living creatures, love and sympathy into gentle, cuddly animals, and anger and jealousy into painful monsters.
Dorcas would like to think that she has inherited some of her Celtic ancestor's supernatural abilities, which could be useful in solving difficult cases. But actually, Abby is the one who has such talents.
She can produce visions revealing the whereabouts of a person by holding one of their belongings in her hand. As a young child, Abby had asked a baby-sitter about her disturbing visions and was told, "Don't worry about it. It's just your imagination.
When she realized that wasn't true, she began to resent her "weird" ability. Abby wants to be like her school friends who lead "normal" lives, but circumstances often force her to make use of her strange talent in one way or another.
It was a particularly fun book to write. Other career-related information might include the fact that several more of my recent books have been recorded by Recorded Books Inc.
I have been pleased with the quality of these recordings, all of which are unabridged and are read by talented actors. Along with writing, I have continued to travel. I have often said that I married a man who was born knowing he wanted to see the whole world, just as I was born knowing I wanted to write. In recent years my husband and I have made several trips inside the U.
All travel is enlightening but the visit to Iran was particularly eye-opening. Before we left, friends and neighbors would ask if we weren't frightened and nervous about visiting Iran. And I guess I was, just a bit. However, we are now able to tell our doubtful friends that we have never been in a country where we were welcomed with such eager enthusiasm.
The young people of Iran and there are lots of them—fifty percent of the population is no more than twenty-five years old are among the best educated in the Middle East. They are on the Internet, are surprisingly well informed about world affairs, and are curious about America. And, having grown up during their horrible war with Iraq, they tend to be less angry at us for what we are doing in that country than are the people of many other areas. Along with the friendly and engaging people, Iran also has many fabulous tourist sites, including the amazing ruins of Persepolis, the palace of Darius the Great, built more than years B.
If I am to cover the most significant developments in my life since I last updated my Something about the Author material, I can't leave out the results of our first trip to India. While we were staying in the Bissau Palace Hotel in Jaipur we decided to join a group that was taking a trip, via bus and camel, to a village in the country.
It was during that excursion that we visited a school: an elementary school with an enrollment of almost children, that had no running water or electricity, desks, books, pens or paper, and where most of the students sat outdoors on the ground and copied on slates what the teachers wrote on portable blackboards.
When we returned home we decided to establish a fund at the Marin Community Foundation to provide support for the school and were able to locate an Indian couple in Jaipur, already active in non-governmental organization work, to act as our local administrators.
Our fund was named the Mohanpura Education Project and several of our friends contributed to it. That was in and when we returned in March of we were welcomed with great ceremony and were able to see the many improvements that had been made possible by the modest funds we, and our friends, had been able to provide. Where there had been only three teachers for five grades there are now five. The pupils now have texts and workbooks, pens and pencils, and a daily hot lunch.
Scholarships have been awarded to a few older students Zilpha and Larry, enjoying their travels in Tahiti, to travel to Jaipur for technical classes, and electric wiring has been provided for a new computer. Because a librarian friend donated a large number of discarded children's books, there is now a school library which contains many American picture books, and some slightly longer books in Hindi which our Jaipur representatives were able to acquire by trading with some of the private schools in Jaipur, where many of the older students speak and read English well.
One development that particularly delighted me was that the huge first-grade class now is largely made up of older girls who had never been allowed to go to school before, but whose parents now see school attendance as worthwhile for them.
Where there had been a very small percentage of female students, there are now more girls than boys enrolled. Our fund has also made it possible for some women to learn to use sewing machines, and for a self-help women's group to be established.
Members of the group receive low interest loans that allow them to buy items that make it possible for them to contribute to their families' income—a development that also helps to improve women's status in the community.
The women buy such things as sewing machines, goats, and—for the more ambitious—female water buffalos, which give milk as well as pull plows. When someone asks, as a few have, why we chose to help these Indian children when there are so many people in our own country who could use some assistance, we can only say that the amount of money we were able to provide would not be enough to accomplish much of anything here at home.
And so life and the written word goes on. My newest effort is set in an enormous crumbling palace that will someday be inherited by seriously undersized Harleigh IV, my central character. But then Harleigh, who has given up on believing that a recent operation will enable him to grow, meets Allegra, a strange girl who claims and at times really seems able to fly. Harleigh's growth, which has been stunted not only by his malformed heart but also by his strange impersonal family life, discovers and finally achieves several different ways to grow.
As for the title? Don't ask. It's still being debated. Sidelights Three-time Newbery Honor Book recipient Zilpha Keatley Snyder is noted for her novels for middle graders, books full of wonder, mystery, and suspense. James Press Detroit, MI , Twentieth-Century Children's Writers, 3rd edition, St. Booktalker, September, , p. Catholic Literary World, October, , p. Christian Science Monitor, February 29, Dell Carousel, fall-winter, Growing Point, September, , p.
Junior Bookshelf, December, , p. Hot Property. Times Events. Times Store. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options. Zilpha Keatley Snyder, the author of dozens of young-adult novels focused on teenage girls with rich but chilling fantasy lives, has died. By Steve Chawkins writer. Steve Chawkins.
0コメント