While the stories deal with the members of the Armitage family, a wide cast of characters floats in and out of the stories: visiting wizards, fairy godmothers, a stray unicorn, mischievous cousins and envious witches.Joan Aiken is most familiar to readers for her children’s novels such as The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Black Hearts in Battersea. But she was a talented story writer as well, producing Dahl-esque modern day stories that often rely on supernatural elements.
What: The Serial Garden: The Complete Family Armitage Stories by Joan Aiken is a collection of children’s stories written by Aiken. The Armitage family moves through a landscape reminiscent of the England of the Pevensies or Would-Be_Goods and they have the same, non-cloying sweetness to them.
Who: Read this if you’re a MG or YA author looking for inspiration. Or if you’re a parent looking for some solid reading to share with your children..
Why: Read it because Aiken knows how to construct a short story. Look at how deftly she weaves in elements, tying them all up in endings that are unpredictable but ineffably right.
When: Read it in the evenings, as befits fairy tales.
Where and How: Read it if you’re in the mind for a little gentle silliness and the ghost of a governess conducting midnight lessons.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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You Should Read This: Turn Not Pale, Beloved Snail by Jacqueline Jackson
From the introduction by Jacqueline Jackson: "This is a book about a lot of things, all clustered around the idea of writing. I've written it because it's the sort of book I wish someone had written for me. From third grade to seventh I filled dozens of notebooks and a fat briefcase with an assortment of stories and poems, but I never saw a book about writing for kids except textbooks."This may well be the first writing book I ever read. My grandmother met Jackson at a book festival and had her sign a copy for me. The inscription reads: Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance! Keep up your writing — you’re already choreographing the steps!” I have treasured this book for decades and it still, somewhat improbably, even retains its dust jacket.
What:Turn Not Pale, Beloved Snail is a writing book aimed at children. Jackson is an experienced YA adult writer, but this is less about writing for children than it is about being a kid who likes to write.
Who: While this is a great book for the nascent writer in your family, any writer will benefit from Jackson’s insight into what hooks a reader as well as her examinations of her own work.
Why: This book is full of joy in writing, a spirit so strong it can’t help but inform your own.
When: Read this with your kids if they’re thinking about writing. Or read it if you’re thinking about writing something aimed at kids and want to remind yourself what the reading experience is like for them.
Where and how: Read with a pen in hand, if only to jot down the many fiction recommendations Jackson makes (or if you forget, they’re all collected in an appendix.) It’s a reading list that shaped my own middle-grade reading, leading me to L.M. Boston and Tove Jansson, among others. Try the exercises as you go.
You Should Read This: A Biography of the English Language by C.M. Millward
Our language is nuanced with a thousand historical references, even when we think it at its most innocent.What:There’s a t-shirt that reads “English is a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary.” In A Biography of the English Language, Millward presents some of this complicated history of the English language, first talking about what a language is, along with basics of phonology and writing before moving into Indo-European, Old English (the sage of the arrival of the English, the Christianization of England, and various Viking invasions), Middle English, Early Modern English, and then the array of recent forces shaping our language: the printing press, the industrial revolution, colonization, the codification of grammar, and more. It finishes up with present day English, at least as present day as a book written in 1989 can be. I should note that, looking at Amazon, the book is expensive as heck. I suspect any thorough history of the English language will do as well, but this book is VERY thorough. I bet it’s also available through libraries.
Who:Read this if you are a writer who likes to know what’s built into the words you’re using, what they say about their circumstances as well as what resonances they add for the knowledgeable. Read it if you love the minutiae of language, all the little “who would have thought” and “Although unlikely” facts that get seeded into long and drifty conversations, like the fact that Indo-European had three numbers: singular, plural, and dual.
Why: Read this so you can use words both more efficiently and more artfully. SO you know how the literary tradition you are working for and against, bound inextricably within, has been affected by linguistic change and created its own pressures to change in turn.
When: Read this when going among bores, for it will arm you with facts with which any recitation of X-Files plots or sports trivia can be met. Read this when you want something a little academic, with that cleansing flavor of self-improvement that the scrub of dry details can bring. Read it when you’re cramming for a test that involves volcabulary.
Where and how: Read this sporadically, tucking facts away, or with a notebook in hand. Read it for a class that takes you through centuries of linguistic change, showing you how history is tucked into every Vocabulary lesson.
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