He Could Not Play with the Other Boys of Pingaree

Sherwood Smith was commissioned to write Trouble Under Oz as the second in a series of four latter-day Oz adventures assembled by packager Byron Preiss and published by HarperCollins. The next two titles may never appear, a frustrating situation I described back in February.

Smith’s first title, The Emerald Wand of Oz, revisited scenes and characters from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This one draws its main inspiration from a couple of later L. Frank Baum novels: Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908) and Rinkitink in Oz (1916, but based on a lost manuscript written about 1905).

More specifically, Trouble brings back Prince Inga, the hero of Rinkitink, to help the young American heroine on her quest. I think Smith does a fine job with his character, which could be difficult. Not that Inga’s difficult. No, he’s a sterling prince, dedicated to truth, justice, and the Pingaree way.

Here’s how Baum himself described Inga:

Inga was often left to amuse himself, for a boy could not be allowed to take part in the conversation of two great monarchs. He devoted himself to his studies, therefore, and day after day he climbed into the branches of his favorite tree and sat for hours in his “tree-top rest,” reading his father’s precious manuscripts and thinking upon what he read.

You must not think that Inga was a molly-coddle or a prig, because he was so solemn and studious. Being a King’s son and heir to a throne, he could not play with the other boys of Pingaree, and he lived so much in the society of the King and Queen, and was so surrounded by the pomp and dignity of a court, that he missed all the jolly times that boys usually have. I have no doubt that had he been able to live as other boys do, he would have been much like other boys; as it was, he was subdued by his surroundings, and more grave and thoughtful than one of his years should be.

A quick note to the fictional characters out there: If your author has to assure readers that you’re not a prig, you’re a prig.

But Baum ascribes Inga’s seriousness to his upbringing. (Baum was always a “nurture over nature” man.) Indeed, Inga seems unique among Baum’s fantasy heroes in being heir to a throne. Other young people become rulers unexpectedly: Tip in Marvelous Land of Oz, Bud in Queen Zixi of Ix, Trot in Sky Island. And there are princes who have been deposed (Pon in The Scarecrow of Oz) or who, through a quirk of immortality, will never succeed their parents (princes in The Magical Monarch of Mo). But Inga is the only Baum protagonist who’s preparing himself for major government responsibilities, and that’s shaped his character.

Smith picks up on that side of Inga’s personality without turning him into a caricature. Some readers have developed little crushes on Inga because he’s such a paragon of brave princeliness, but Smith’s American heroine realizes that, conscientious and cheerful as he is, his idea of wild fun is rather stuffy. He makes a good foil for this series’s bad boy, an ambitious young Nome named Rik. But, alas, we may never learn whom our heroine would choose.

The Adventure Begins

Lemonade Mouth author Mark Peter Hughes's first audio postcard on becoming a full-time YA writer ran on NPR's All Things Considered this week. Listen here.

Silver World Class

I read Cliff McNish’s Silver Sequence out of order, zipping through the second title, Silver City, as part of the Cybils Awards judging and reading the first, The Silver Child, some months later.

After those two books, I expressed some disappointment that McNish hadn’t shown us more about his young characters before their lives and their bodies are changed by some supernatural, extraterrestrial force. They change without intending to and often feel compelled to act in certain ways, so we rarely see these characters decide to do things. And tough decisions are key to understanding who characters are.

Now I’ve finished the third volume, Silver World, and found it a powerful ending to a haunting trilogy. We still don’t know much about the children’s lives before the novels begin (more thoughts about that someday). But we do see them struggle with tough decisions in this volume. Their long-threatened confrontation with the interstellar monster called the Roar becomes a strategic chess match, each side trying to anticipate the other’s moves and lull the enemy into traps.

McNish raises the stakes immediately by removing Hannah’s father, the only adult, from the little community of guardians. The Roar starts screaming louder. Animals join the children of the world in the little haven of Coldharbour. Millions of creatures on the other side of Earth perish. And now the kids have to find most solutions for themselves, with time running out. It’s a gripping read.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t still have unanswered questions: about the kids, about how those Unearthers’ drill hands are supposed to work, about how the enemy is ultimately trussed up, and so on.

Most important, I’m not sure who created the Barrier around Coldharbour. At the beginning of Silver City, narrator Thomas explains that it’s appeared since the last volume, excluding adults from the area where children feel compelled to come. The series offers four possible sources for such supernatural phenomena: the Roar, her underground child, Earth’s Protector, and the kids’ own evolving powers.

In Silver City a boy named Tanni says of the adults, “I reckon they’re being kept out for their own protection,” which implies the Barrier reflects a benevolent force. But later there’s reason to suspect Tanni’s judgment. The Barrier expands as more kids arrive at Coldharbour, implying it's linked somehow to their needs and powers. Yet as Silver World begins, mind-reading Hannah thinks the Roar has subtly moved the Barrier, implying that monster also created it--but why? Or does the Barrier arise from how all those unearthly forces push against each other? Do any Silver Sequence fans out there have an answer?

Meeting John Dough and the Cherub

Hungry Tiger Press has just announced the publication of its centennial edition of John Dough and the Cherub, written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by John R. Neill. This edition comes with a new, full-color cover; black and white reproductions of all the original illustrations; and an introduction by, well, me.

When Baum wrote John Dough and the Cherub in 1906 (yes, the math for a centennial edition doesn't quite work out, but the book was a production headache), he had written two Oz books and didn't expect to write any more. But his publisher persuaded him to return to the land of his most popular books the next year.

That in turn opened up the exciting possibility of cross-marketing. In The Road to Oz (1909), Baum brought the rulers of many of the other fairylands he'd invented to the Emerald City. No matter that such a gathering left no room for a plot in that part of the book. No matter that some of those earlier books implied that the rulers had grown up and perhaps even passed on. Everyone got an invitation to Ozma's birthday party. (And for me as a young reader, the result was one of my favorite books in the series. Someday I'll figure that out.)

The illustration on the cover of the Hungry Tiger Press edition comes from the interior of Road to Oz, for the first time rendered in vivid color. It shows, left to right and foreground to background, John Dough, the American-made gingerbread man; the gender-neutral Incubator Baby named Chick the Cherub; Para Bruin, a bouncy rubber bear; and loyal subjects from Loland and Hiland. To learn how they all met, you'll just have to read the book.

Divided by a Common Language in Lionboy

The circus proprietor in Lionboy is named Major Maurice Thibaudet, pronounced Tib-uh-day. (Every novel should have a circus proprietor, don’t you think? It would have made all the difference to Crime and Punishment.)

The major speaks “French, but with an accent Charlie [our young hero] recognized to be southern Empire.” The trilogy never identifies that Empire straight out, but a powerful clue appears on page 110 of the first book:

”Hey there, Lionboy!” called a voice from the deck behind him. It was Major Tib. “Y’all better get back on board right now. We don’t do shore leave without leave. Get back in here and help Maccomo. There’s plenty of work to be done.”

The “Ya’ll” is a giveaway that Major Tib comes from the American South--and that author Zizou Corder (Louisa and Isabel Adomakoh Young) does (do) not.

Major Tib is using “y’all” to address one boy. But “y’all” is a second person plural form.

Centuries ago, English had different pronouns for the second person singular and the second person plural. The singular forms were thou, thee, thy, and thine. The plural equivalents were you, you, your, and yours. The first group has fallen by the wayside, kept up into the last century by traditional Quakers but no one else. In both Britain and America, people use you in both singular and plural contexts.

(Similarly, in French the plural vous also serves as a formal singular form, with tu reserved for intimates and children. Though I recently read that past president Jacques Chirac and his wife still use the vous form with each other.)

American Southerners apparently realized that there’s grammatical value in distinguishing between second person singular and second person plural. So they’ve recreated the plural form as you all or y’all. We Yankees and English-speakers from other countries (who think all us Americans are Yankees) usually don’t realize that, and get y’all all wrong--as in Lionboy. We think it’s just those quaint Southerners being ungrammatical, but this word reflects a more sophisticated grammar than the rest of the English-speaking world uses.

Americans from outside our South use “you all” as a synonym for “all of you”--i.e., everyone I’m addressing now. So if Southerners understand “you all” to mean y’all, how do they signal when they’re addressing an entire group?

“All y’all,” naturally.

(A final note: Lionboy’s reference to the USA as an “Empire” makes an interesting contrast to our depiction as rebellious colonies in other recent British fantasies that revive the British Empire. Unlike those books, Lionboy is set in the near future, after a petroleum crash.)

Come Un Dun

I read only about 100 pages of China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun before I had to take it back to the library to fulfill someone else’s request. (All the more reason to put off reading new books for a year or three, I say.)

I was most impressed by Miéville’s combination of verbal and visual imagination. Often authors seem to have one or the other. AUTHOR%20Alan Snow, for instance, has striking character images but flat prose. Cliff McNish creates terrific descriptions of moods and relationships, but I’m not always sure what things look like. Miéville, who also illustrated his own novel rather well, takes punnish inspiration from both verbal and visual cues. Inventive details pop out of every page, practically every paragraph.

I have trouble understanding Miéville’s approach to section breaks within a chapter. Most authors use those to elide from one scene to another, signaling the passage of space or time. But Miéville often plops section breaks within scenes, with the action and conversation taking up just an instant after it left off. They seem more like especially emphatic punctuation (“Think about that now!”) than like storytelling conveniences.

Details and blank lines aside, the story in Un Lun Dun is conventional--so far. Two young people, wisecracking Zanna and loyal best friend Deepa, are sucked into a strange world. It’s like London, but--get this!--everything is different.

Well, not everything. It’s not as if in this universe water contracts when frozen, thus becoming denser and ending up on the bottom of the ocean where it's never thawed, giving water-based life no chance to form on the planet. It’s not as if the weak and strong nuclear forces don’t apply, fundamentally changing the nature of matter. No, things in UnLondon are different in a picturesque, occasionally disturbing but usually entertaining way, with dangerous giraffes and affectionate milk cartons and double-decker buses sprouting wings and legs.

The people of that society have all sorts of rules and customs and expectations by which they live. But--wouldn’t you know?--our heroes don’t know what those rules are! Laughs galore ensue. And here’s the kicker: everyone in UnLondon treats Zanna and Deepa as special, as Chosen visitors whose Coming has been Prophesized because it is Very Important to the Future of Both Worlds.

And did I mention the huge, malevolent, disembodied force of evil, here called the Smog? You were already expecting one of those, I bet.

I understand from reviews of Un Lun Dun that Miéville’s book ends up deconstructing those modern fantasy clichés. Which could be a lot of fun, especially with his imagination and his prose, so I look forward to snatching the book away from some other library patron and finishing it. But that shift hasn’t happened yet.

My Teacher Is Bruce Coville

One of the main speakers at last weekend's SCBWI New England conference was Bruce Coville, and I was delighted. Not just because I'd heard him speak before, at a main SCBWI conference in LA, so I knew how entertaining and encouraging he was. I also greatly admire him as a writer, and here's why.

(I'm going to tell this story as I understand it from my memory of speeches and articles. If I get little details wrong, I apologize and welcome corrections. If I get big details wrong, I'm going to sulk because I want to preserve my illusions.)

In the late 1980s Byron Preiss, the visionary book packager, approached Bruce with a proposal that he write a middle-grade novel called My Teacher Is an Alien. Bruce was then a struggling children's writer who'd shown a knack for fun science fiction and fantasy stories, and he had also been a struggling schoolteacher. So he was a good candidate for turning Preiss's title into an actual book.

In Hollywood terms, My Teacher Is an Alien is "high concept": all the information you need to grab readers is in that five-word title. Clearly, the book was shaped for maximum market. It was paperback product. Writing to fit a packager's title is the children's-literature equivalent of, say, basing a movie on a theme park ride.

Bruce made My Teacher Is an Alien into a fun, tight little story, not only giving us the entertainment we wanted but also the surprises we might have had no reason to expect. And readers responded. My Teacher Is an Alien was a hit. So Preiss asked Bruce to turn that one book into a sequel. I'm not sure whether that offer came with the implication that if Bruce didn't want to, Preiss would find another writer who did. The company owned the book's copyright, not the author.

And this is where I stop admiring Bruce Coville's luck and talent and start admiring his values as well. Because he didn't want to write the same teacher-is-an-alien plot over and over. He wanted to find more meaning in the situation he'd set up. And he did.

For each of the three sequels--My Teacher Fried My Brains, My Teacher Glows in the Dark, and My Teacher Flunked the Planet--Bruce chose a different narrative voice. He addressed different personal issues. He took us out of the classroom into alien cultures, and then back to Earth to view it through alien eyes.

Furthermore, the series gains depth with each volume. It gets into questions of bullying, intelligence, education and moral guidance, war and peace, responsibility for other species, and whether human nature is inherently good or destructive. All without ever leaving behind the humor and neat stuff that filled the first book.

According to Bruce's essay in Something About the Author, reprinted here, this series

remains a secret between me and the kids, since not many adults have paid attention to it. Indeed, a startling number of teachers and parents have told me they had not read My Teacher Is an Alien specifically because of the title or the cover, and were startled to find, after a child had urged it upon them, how much they actually enjoyed it.

Yes, this series is the equivalent of a movie based on a theme park ride and its market-demanded sequels. But some movies based on theme park rides are very good movies. (Well, so far one has been.)

Distinctive Dialogue

Last Sunday, in my workshop on dialogue and dialogue tags at SCBWI New England's annual conference, I promised to post some material from one of my PowerPoint slides here on the blog. And now, five days after I started this entry, I'm finally finishing it.

I propose that the key to creating distinctive speech patterns is to focus on little things: habitual sentence structure, word choices, exclamations and questions. If we make those touches distinct for each character and keep them consistent, then readers will pick up characters' speech patterns and be able to follow a complex conversation, even with several speakers and changes in the emotions or opinions that individuals are expressing.

I put up a slide listing several ways that speech patterns often vary. Some involve the content of a character's speech (what she says) and others the form (how she says it):

• Contractions v. Full words
  
• Metaphors v. Plain language
• Originality v. Clichés
• Grammatical constructions v. Non-standard
• Long sentences v. Short
• Anglo-Saxon words v. Latinate expressions
• Complete sentences v. Sentence fragments
• Interruption and apposition v. Directness
• Sarcastic v. Sincere
• Joking v. Serious
• Negative v. Positive
• Hemming and hawing v. Smooth speech
• Slang v. Formality
• Qualifying (e.g., rather, quite, very, sort of) v. Bald
• Overstatement v. Understatement
• Direct address (i.e., using the other character's name) v. None
• Repetition v. Terseness
• Catch Phrases v. Generic language

This is by no means an exhaustive list. These variables are just those I came up with as I prepared my talk, probably far too late at night. But I hope it's a useful starting-point.

One workshop participant talked about having three characters who are all scared--which in certain scenes makes sense. How could each character's dialogue sound individual when they're all expressing the same emotion? One might be prone to overstatment ("We're all going to die!"), another to sarcasm ("Oh yeah, yelling will help."), and the third to asking questions ("But what are we going to do?"). If readers recognize those traits from calmer times, then they'll remember when the tension rises.

I must admit to getting a special kick out of distinctive speech patterns, particularly in my somewhat elevated if not exactly "high" fantasies. I just looked at chapter 10 of one of my manuscripts, and I see seven speaking characters:

• A cross little dog, all snappish interjections and barks.
• An old-fashioned American farmgirl, prone to saying things like "Gracious" and "I’m jes’ fine, ’member?"
• A corporal who speaks so tersely he tends to leave the subjects and articles off the start of his sentences. Doesn't need them. Gets along fine.
  
• A contented hippopotamus with his mouth full. “Oo ehuh ahh oo hi ih!”
• A cottonmouth snake with a lisp.
• Two alligators who speak in a somewhat formal style, frequently addressing each other as "brother" and "sister."

Those speaking styles send my word processor's "Spelling and Grammar..." tool into a tizzy--nothing but red and green underlines. And for a more realistic, serious story, such a variety of speech patterns might well be too flashy. But I guarantee you, readers won't lose track of who's saying what.

Pulling It Out with Lemonade Mouth

At last weekend's SCBWI New England annual conference, Mark Peter Hughes, author of the teen novels I Am the Wallpaper and Lemonade Mouth, offered an energy-filled workshop on character development. Now his website offers the character-building exercises from that workshop.

Mark also served as conference registrar, and he lent me his laptop for my Powerpoint presentation on Sunday morning, helping me set up and--even more important, as it turned out--close down.

I'm a Mac person, so I've been trained to eject every data storage device on the desktop before daring to touch the hardware, at the risk of damaging the device, or the computer, or the fabric of the universe. Therefore, at the end of my session, with my sister's college graduation an hour away (both by the clock and by the highway), I was stuck, trying to figure out how to tell Mark's PC to stop thinking about my flashdrive. That's so easy on a Mac, so hard on a PC--because you don't actually have to do that on a PC. Finally, Mark came over and yanked out my drive, for which I'll always be grateful.

This summer Mark and the whole Hughes family (stars of the Friday night dance party) embark on 28-city van tour to promote Lemonade Mouth. As I understand it, public radio will give us regular updates. And I'm sure that trip will build character in many ways.

Breaking the Frame with Hong Kil Dong

One highlight of last weekend's SCBWI New England conference for me was hearing from author-illustrator Anne Sibley O'Brien. First there was the cabaret act she performed with Charlesbridge Editorial Director Yolanda LeRoy and pianist Marilyn Salerno. I hadn't expected such professional-quality singing. Don't miss them if their tour takes them through your convention!

The next morning I attended O'Brien's workshop on new graphic novels for kids, and specifically on how she created The Legend of Hong Kil Dong with Charlesbridge editor Judy O'Malley and art director Susan Sherman. This legend of the "Korean Robin Hood" features a hero with some superhuman powers, so using the comics format made artistic/literary sense.

At the same time, some of the creative team's practical decisions seem to have led to trouble. The book's trim size and 48 pages make it look like a standard picture book, despite the panels on the cover. Some reviewers and librarians have had trouble categorizing the book: graphic novel or picture book? Just recently Booklist threw its weight behind the former category, including it in the Top 10 Graphic Novels for Youth for last year. It’s really a hybrid of the two genres, I think, and more power to it.

Behind the scenes, O'Brien decided to draw all the speech and thought balloons into her art. That no doubt helped with composing the pictures and giving all the art the same line quality. (Korean-style brush work, not pen drawing, by the way.) But the text eventually had to be rewritten to fit well into those inflexible balloons.

I was sitting next to another old fanboy, Greg Fishbone, during the presentation, and we both knew that for decades comic-book publishers pasted the speech balloons onto their panels. Now most comics artists go digital at some stage, another way of solving the same problem. But O'Brien didn't feel confident of her computer abilities, so she and her team were reinventing the wheel with a kink in it.

Now Charlesbridge has the challenge of selling foreign rights in the book with the news that any translated text would have to fit into those same spaces. This sounds like a job for someone with superhuman powers!