Lionboy Trilogy Originally a Biology?

I can't find any external evidence for this theory, but I suspect that Zizou Corder (actually Louisa Young and her daughter Isabel) originally wrote her Lionboy series as a single large book, or two volumes, and added a third volume on the recommendation of the publisher or agent.

The book deal that made news in early 2003 was for three connected books, but as late as that August Young admitted that the series, "as it's a three-parter, [wasn't] even finished." Does that hint that a two-parter would have been finished by that time?

The first book, titled simply Lionboy, ends at a positive but inconclusive moment. Young Charlie Ashanti and his lions have outdistanced their pursuers and found at least a temporary refuge and powerful friend. But none of them is home, Charlie hasn't found his parents, and those villains are still on the move.

In contrast, second volume Lionboy: The Chase ends with nearly all the plotlines from the first volume resolved. Charlie's family has been reunited. The lions are home in Africa, and even Primo the saber-tooth has found a place where he is loved. The two main villains have been dispatched in different ways.

Yes, there's still the rapacious Corporacy steering the Rich World from its Gated Village Communities. But as far as the damage that occurs in Charlie's own life at the start of volume one, all has been repaired. Together, the two volumes make a most satisfying adventure, albeit one with unanswered questions and the seemingly extraneous (easily added, easily removed) minor character of a chameleon.

That makes the beginning of Lionboy: The Truth, the requisite third in the trilogy, a difficult challenge. The first several chapters grind a little as the vast machinery of plot moves again, like an ocean liner leaving the dock.

Characters who appeared to be left to the fates they deserved, either good or bad, must find reason or freedom to escape from those holes. Supporting characters who've had their time upon the stage and left, such as the king of Bulgaria and the circus folk, must be reengaged. And, though it requires a fair dose of stupidity, Charlie must let himself be kidnapped once more ("He'd been a fool--he knew it immediately"). Then another chase is on. And this time the little chameleon is crucial to the plot.

The third book also introduces a couple of minor plotlines that aren't fully developed or, in the case of the king trying to learn Catspeaking on page 116, ever heard of again. Though the problems problems that fuel this leg of the journey are long-standing and worldwide, they seem to get resolved in a rush, in contrast to the well-paced conclusion of book two.

But three is a magic number; who ever heard of a two-book fantasy series? As the Book of Armaments commands, "thou shalt count to two only shouldst thou immediately proceed to three."

It Won't Be Too Novel

This morning I woke up to a somewhat blah NPR interview of William Gibson, coming away slightly less groggy but no more energized.

However, at the end of the day I had the pleasure of reading Gibson's pithy Q&A with the New York Times Magazine, including these fine exchanges:

Do you feel that you’ve transcended the science-fiction genre in your work?

My roots are in a genre. That is the funny thing. Novels are called novels because, ideally, they provide a novel experience. But in genre, you’re sort of buying a guarantee that you are going to have essentially the same experience again and again. It’s a novel. It won’t be too novel. Don’t worry.
. . .
Although you’re known as the father of cyberpunk science fiction, your new novel, Spook Country, is set in the post-9/11 present and endows the whole culture with a noirish gloom. At what point did American life become stranger than science fiction?

If I had gone into a publisher in New York in 1981 and told them I wanted to write a novel that is set in a world where the climate is out of whack and Mideast terrorists have hijacked airplanes and in response the U.S. has invaded the wrong country--it’s too much. Contemporary reality is like an overlapping set of dire science-fictional scenarios.

Mysteries of the Summerland Cover

One of the biggest surprises of Michael Chabon's Summerland for me was the cover art.

The book is about a boy whose father is a dirigible designer, and as he sets off on his adventure the hero has the family car attached to the family's backup dirigible. There's also a heavy baseball theme, including enthusiastic miniature players with some connection to Native Americans.

All of which certainly explains why artist William Joyce and the Reel FX design shop centered the cover image on a small car hanging below a blimp, carrying a man and a boy and some little men in old-fashioned baseball uniforms with feathers in their caps. This image appears to be part photo collage, part painting.

But the book says many times that the family car is a rusty orange Swedish station wagon, not a yellow miniature convertible. The book says many times that the father is plump and bearded. The little ballplayers are supposed to have faces like playing cards. The father, son, and those little people are never all in the car together, at least not without several other characters.

Young readers supposedly care about such details--about making sure the color of the main characters' hair matches what the book says, and so on. "Your students may be fascinated when you show them books with inaccurate or misleading covers," Leigh Ann Jones wrote in School Library Journal in June. This article is about getting students to look past covers they don't like, with the lesson that covers may--amazing!--not accurately reflect the books they decorate. Clearly the students' fascination would arise from seeing something unaccountably wrong.

Perhaps the only people who care more about making the details match are authors.

Yet Summerland's cover art obviously doesn't match the book it covers. What's the story behind that art? Obviously, William Joyce is a very big name in children's books--big enough for Miramax's page for Summerland to include a bio for him, though he was involved only with the cover art. (Brandon Oldenburg of Reel FX provided the interior illustrations.)

Did Joyce receive no more than a brief memo on the image Miramax wanted for the cover? ("It's a book about a kid and a dad, and there's this blimp, with a car hanging from it...") How much work did Joyce do, compared to Reel FX? (The artist and firm have also worked together on Aimesworth Amusements and a short movie called "Man in the Moon.") Did Miramax decide to run with whatever came in because the artist was, after all, William Joyce? How did Chabon feel?

And do kids notice? Do they really care?

A Wrinkle in Time in Its Own Time—and Ours

Square Fish, the new paperback imprint of Farrar, Straus and its corporate cousins, sent me the "Special Teacher's Edition with Bonus Material" of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, part of a promotion that includes a dedicated website.

This reissue includes Anna Quindlen's thought-provoking five-page appreciation of the book at the front. Quindlen reminds us how A Wrinkle in Time grew out of the cultural concerns of the early 1960s:

The identical houses outside which identical children bounce balls and jump rope in mindless unison evoke the fear that so many Americans had of Communist regimes that enshrined the interests of state-mandated order over the rights of the individual.

Yet within the next ten years, American youth would see the danger of conformity coming from quite a different direction: from within American society itself. That theme of the book remains powerful over four decades later, even as our notions of sameness continue to evolve.

The heroine Meg's personal geekiness is another way that A Wrinkle in Time proved to be a leading indicator of changes in our culture. She was smart but not socially adept, scared but insistent. And of course she was a girl in a novel with more than a dollop of science fiction, a genre then considered for males only. Meg presaged many changes in children's literature, and remains resonant today while most female protagonists from other forty-year-old books seem historic.

Indeed, about the only important detail that feels dated in A Wrinkle in Time to me is the shame Meg and her family feel about local whispers that her father has abandoned them. Divorce no longer being such a taboo and anathema, I suspect that the community would react differently today, even if the family felt the same.

As a last, minor illustration of L'Engle's prescience, the great villain of the novel is IT, a "cold and calculating disembodied intelligence." In 1961, when L'Engle started to write, who could have foretold that forty years on we'd all be in thrall to Departments of I.T. and their machines?

The other bonus material in this Special Teacher's Edition is:

• an interview with L'Engle (also available as a PDF download from this page)
• L'Engle's Newbery acceptance speech from 1963 (also available here)
  
• a cast of characters for her two main series (Murrys and Austins), with intertwined family trees
• a Discussion and Activity Guide, with web resources

More Bad News for Bookselling Business

In February, Publishers Weekly carried the unhappy announcement that the U.S. Census Bureau estimated bookstore sales fell 2.9% in 2006, compared to the previous year. December holiday sales tumbled 8.8%. Those declines happened even as sales for all retailers rose 6% in the year.

The latest comparable report, issued this month, carries the story through the first half of 2007.

Sales declined every month in the January through June period, resulting in a 4.6% drop in bookstore sales at the midway point of 2007. For the entire retail sector, sales were up 4.0% for the first six months of the year and were ahead 3.8% in June.

All the monthly figures for 2007 are laid out at Bookselling This Week.

The continued growth in other retail sales means that Americans are still buying things. We’re just not buying so many books, at least through the retail stores that the Census Bureau tracks.

That downward trend isn’t due to the big chain outlets pushing out independent bookstores because the chains are hurting, too. Barnes & Noble and Borders both acknowledged disappointing performances last year, as did some large regional chains. Borders announced several new strategic initiatives, including selling more technology and “carefully trimming” the inventory--meaning that it will stock fewer titles.

These trends may be part of a long-term leveling off or even shrinking of the US book industry. Back in March, Steamboats Are Ruining Everything offered a graphic glimpse of the long-term problem, also based on census data. Even though the population and economy continue to expand, total book sales haven’t risen as fast, and in fact have gone down in the last two years. Publishers still saw revenue rise only because prices went up.

The July bookselling figures will be anomalous, boosted by a particularly popular and expensive title. But beyond that the future for bookstores doesn’t look good.

Then again, that decline may only be expected since written information is:

• easily digitized, and thus easily delivered online.
• easily mailed, since a codex is compact, durable, and not prone to spoil.
• competing in our culture with other sources of stories and facts, many of them requiring less consumer effort.

Stories aren’t going to go away. Writing isn’t going to go away. But frontlist retail bookstores may be the travel agencies of tomorrow.

Tried to Find the Key to 50 Million Fables

Fox has changed the title of what we've been calling "The Dark Is Rising movie" to The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising.

According to a message quoted at ArtsandFaith.com, the stated reasoning is:

As the film is based on a sequence of 5 books and THE SEEKER: THE DARK IS RISING is inspired by the second book. The focus of this story is on the character who is referred to as The Seeker and his quest to "seek" and collect signs hidden throughout time to right the balance between dark and light. THE SEEKER: THE DARK IS RISING more accurately describes the focus of the film.

Irate online movie fans point out that these days a movie series' name usually goes first, as in the mellifluous Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones. But that's the sort of thing only online movie fans get irate about.

The title change might indicate that the studio sees enough potential in this movie to position itself to make sequels: Greenwitch: The Dark Is Rising, and so on.

Then again, it might just be that children around the world have come to associate the position of "Seeker" with exciting action sequences, and the studio knows the Dark Is Rising fan base has already given up.

No More Tom, Dick, and Harry

Last week I quoted from Joelle Anthony's article on recurring motifs from recent YA novels, including her warning that authors should beware of "showing their age by naming characters with names they grew up with (i.e., Debbie, Lisa, Kimberly, Alice, Linda, etc.)."

I decided to test that by using NamePlayground.com to look up the most popular American boys' names of 1965--i.e., the names I think of as defining normal. They are:

1. Michael
2. John
3. David
4. James
5. Robert
6. William
7. Mark
8. Richard
9. Thomas
10. Jeffrey

And a more normal, almost boring bunch of guys I could hardly imagine.

In contrast, here are the most popular American boys' names of 1997--i.e., what will seem perfectly normal to a twelve-year-old reader in 2009.

1. Michael
2. Jacob
3. Matthew
4. Christopher
5. Joshua
6. Nicholas
7. Brandon
8. Andrew
9. Austin
10. Tyler

Michael keeps his perch on the top of the stack, but every other name from 1965--including my own--had fallen out of favor. (They hadn't fall far, though: they were all still in the top 100.)

Instead, the parents of 1997 were choosing some names that weren't even in the top 300 when I was born: Jacob, Joshua, Brandon, Austin, and Tyler. So to me some of those names feel so unusual as to carry faint connotations that would be appropriate for some characters but not others. But to today's ten-year-olds they're just like Tom, Dick, and Harry. (Tom and Dick, at least.)

Here's another telling statistic that I calculated from NamePlayground's data: in 1965, 29% of American boys had one of the top ten names on the first list above. In 1997, only 17% of American baby boys received a name from that year's top ten. In other words, regardless of what specific names are most popular, parents are now choosing a wider variety of names for their boys than before, apparently seeking more individuality.

And for today? Nicholas, Brandon, Austin, and Tyler have slipped off the top ten to the I Love the 90s circuit, and William is back--along with Ethan, Daniel, and (bada bing!) Anthony.

Woodturners in Oz

Through Eric Gjovaag, I learned about an exhibit at the World Forestry Center in Portland, Oregon, called "Return to Oz." It promises "Poppy fields, wicked witches, tornadoes, and flying monkeys as never before seen through the eyes of talented woodturners." Above is an image of the promotional postcard; it might get bigger if you click on it.

Oz fans are gathering at the museum for a potluck picnic on Sunday, 19 August, at noon. For more information, contact Karyl Carlson through the email address here. The exhibit closes on 16 September.

I must admit I had no idea there was a Forestry Hall of Fame. The nomination process seems mighty open. Perhaps it should include the creators of the Paul Bunyan tales, if anyone is willing to sponsor their entry.

Good Old Beautiful Phoenix

On my five-hour bus ride last Friday, I learned that my godson's five-year-old first cousins on his mother's side some fine children were enjoying E. Nesbit's The Phoenix and the Carpet. And that put me in mind of one of my favorite passages from that magnificent character study:

"I've been here all the time," said the Phoenix, yawning politely behind its claw. "If you wanted me you should have recited the ode of invocation; it's seven thousand lines long, and written in very pure and beautiful Greek."

"Couldn't you tell it us in English?" asked Anthea.

"It's rather long, isn't it?" said Jane...

"Couldn't you make a short English version, like Tate and Brady?"

"Oh, come along, do," said Robert, holding out his hand. "Come along, good old Phoenix."

"Good old beautiful Phoenix," it corrected shyly.

"Good old beautiful Phoenix, then. Come along, come along," said Robert, impatiently, with his hand still held out.

The Phoenix fluttered at once on to his wrist.

"This amiable youth," it said to the others, "has miraculously been able to put the whole meaning of the seven thousand lines of Greek invocation into one English hexameter--a little misplaced some of the words--but

'Oh, come along, come along, good old beautiful Phoenix!'

"Not perfect, I admit--but not bad for a boy of his age."

I especially admire Nesbit's insertion of the word "shyly."

[ADDENDUM: Indeed, I realized after posting this passage that every adverb in it but "impatiently"--in other words, every adverb modifying something to do with the Phoenix--brings a little irony. The Phoenix's yawn isn't polite, the bird isn't shy about seeking compliments, Robert's plea isn't miraculous, and the 7,000-line invocation isn't just "rather long." The adverbs draw attention to themselves and the qualities they describe only to make us reexamine what's really going on.]

Classifying Fact as Fiction

This summer Publishers Weekly ran an article on how the publishing industry on the European continent treats some memoir, autobiography, and other books that might be called "literary nonfiction" as fiction.

In France, it is "the literary character and the novelistic dimension which define a work as 'fiction,'" explained Fabrice Piault, deputy editor-in-chief of the book trade magazine Livres Hebdo. . . .

[Orhan Pamuk's memoir] Istanbul, as Piault notes, "absolutely has its place on a fiction list as a novel" because it is not the result of learned research but "an intimate vision of a city, hence a work of literature."

Yet many continental lists also classified John Grisham's The Innocent Man, which was researched rather than remembered, as fiction.

The magazine cites Olivier Nora, head of the firm Grasset, as noting that there's a big incentive to classify books as fiction in France: book prizes drive book sales, and some of those prizes are open only to fiction.

Bernhard Fetz, an Austrian author, claims to see longstanding cultural differences:

"While Germany or France have a mostly idealist tradition in culture, Britain, and hence the U.S., have always had a more pragmatic approach." Essays by Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Goethe always combined factual accounts with personal intuitions and self-reflections of the author, giving autobiographies also a political angle by defining a life story as exemplary for a nation. The Anglo-Saxon tradition was instead much more and much earlier influenced by science, and therefore supposed to rely on facts and less on intentions, Fetz said.

So where does that leave James Frey's A Thousand Little Pieces? Would the European literary world be as upset about the confabulation of that "memoir" as America's was?

Or do we see the European attitude slip out in the way some Americans refer to any book of a certain length, whatever its literary genre, as a "novel"?