Star Jones - The missing Bagthorpe?

Star Jones recent comments about Barbara Walters have a distinctly Bagthorpian air of malice about them. This is exactly what Grandma Bag would have said in the same situation:

“It is a sad day when an icon like Barbara Walters, in the sunset of her life, is reduced to publicly branding herself as an adulterer, humiliating an innocent family with accounts of her illicit affair and speaking negatively against me all for the sake of selling a book. It speaks to her true character,” Jones told Us Weekly magazine.

Oh man, that sunset of her life line is gold! And “it speaks to her true character?” How many times did Grandma Bag say that about Mr. Bagthorpe.

I wonder if Star was a Bagthorpe fan or maybe her spin doctor was. Either way, it’s too good to pass up this close to Helen Cresswell week.

Madge is on the move!

Woohoo! Check this out, Madelyn Rosenberg — frequently referred to on this blog as Madge — has an essay in this book about traveling with kids:

 

Happy Birthday Qwikpick

May 10th is the 1-year anniversary of The Qwikpick Adventure Society. That’s one year of being a published author. One year of being Sam Riddleburger. One year of constant worry about sales numbers and whether or not the sequel will get published.

And it also means a year (actually a tad more) of writing this here blog. Nearly 600 posts.

There have been ups and downs.

Many of the ups have been reviews by other bloggers. And the general niceness of this community.

The other best moments are school visits. Wow, there is just nothing like that. All those kids getting all fired up about writing smelly poetry. And some of the kids have read the book and that’s really neat.

There have been some great moments on the blog, too. Getting to interview two of my all-time favorite authors: Daniel Pinkwater and John Christopher.

And then there’s Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede Blues and Dolly Parton’s Pigeon Forge Days and Dollywood Nights, although I may be the only person who considers that a highlight.

It was great to share my good news about Origami Yoda with you. And I really hope to roll out some good news about the Qwikpick sequel one of these days. I love those kids — Lyle, Dave and Marilla — and there’s a lot more story to tell about them.

Until then …

 

Happy Traum’s tips for American Idol contestants

I was looking over an old favorite book: “Tricks of the Trade for Kids.” (This and its companion “Tricks of the Trade” are highly desirable books, packed with how-to chapters by famous experts like Julia Child on cooking and egg, Jonathan Winters on being funny, Chevy Chase on pratfalls. Fascinating and useful.)

Anyway, Happy Traum has tips for kids who want to perform.

I’ve picked out a few that are frequently ignored by American Idol contestants:

1) Develop an air of confidence: I hate watching the contestants crumple or get defensive under even minor criticism. Are you a superstar or aren’t you?

2) Make eye contact with your audience: Andrew Lloyd Weber chastised Archuletta for not doing this. Constantine made a career out of it.

3) Don’t apologize for yourself. “Don’t say ‘I usually sound better but I have a cold today…’” Jason Castro, who I had picked to win, said that he had started coughing right before his song or some such. Then he got sent home.

Octavian Nothing book two reviewed - I can’t look

I’m excited to hear that Octavian 2 is good: http://www.readingrants.org/2008/04/21/the-astonishing-life-of-octavian-nothing-traitor-to-the-nation-vol-ii-the-kingdom-on-the-waves-by-mt-anderson/

But I just can’t read any further in the review for fear of spoilers. I don’t want to know one iota of what’s coming.

Helen Cresswell Week: My letter to Mrs. Cresswell, circa 1984

As a kid, I wrote only one fan letter. Yes, I devoured books and dearly loved many authors. But it was Helen Creswell I wrote to. And the response I got back was incredible - not only did I get a long, personal letter, but she may have also used my plot suggestion in another book.

Even more incredible now when I realize that at the time she wasn’t just the author of a funny series of obscure books … over in the UK she was all over the BBC at the time with shows based on her books and screenplays.

But she took the time to write me a wonderful letter.

A letter that has sadly been lost in the intervening 25 years. Although it was carefully kept inside one of my Bagthorpe books, it snuck off somewhere along the line. Cece claims it made it to this house, but if so where could it be?

But I remember a good bit of the letter.

 She talked about how pleased she was with my letter, which was more than just a run-of-the-mill fan letter. It must have been clear to her that I had really loved and studied those books. For one thing I included a floorplan or somesuch of the Bagthorpe’s house. She said that while she had never gone that far herself, it looked like I had gotten it about right.

I also asked her a question about Cousin Luke. So as to avoid any spoilers, I’ll put it this way: Did he really? And she wrote back that she regretted to say that, yes, he did. (If you’ve read Bagthorpes Unlimited, you may know what I’m referring to.)

Now here’s the really hazy part, especially hazy since I didn’t keep a copy of the letter I sent her. But she wrote that she liked my idea or that she saw it possibly working.

I think that my idea had been for us to finally get a good look inside The Knoll. And, yes, in a later book The Bagthorpes do visit The Knoll. That may not sound like much, especially if you don’t know what The Knoll is, but it’s a lot to me. Maybe, just maybe, I helped shaped the Bagthorpe Saga.

And what more could a young fan dream of when writing off to an author?

Helen Cresswell Week: The Beachcombers

Okay, you’ve heard me say how funny the Bagthorpes are. But maybe you don’t dig funny books.

Maybe you want something deep and strange and wondrous…

Then if I can convince you to try just one Cresswell book, let it be The Beachcombers.

It’s hard to explain it any better than this Horn Book review, from 1972 I assume:

“The author of The Night Watchmen has woven another fantasy whose elusive threads of meaning form a spider web of substance…” and “The author is setting foot where no other fantasy writer has ever quite set foot before.”

Now you know me, I hate to give away any information that could spoil the book. If you must have a synopsis before you read: it’s about beachcombing.

But why was young Ned offered a free stay at the beach?

Mrs. Pickering: “Where there’s money paid, there’s questions asked. No money — no snooping. All square and above board — free hospitality and holiday by the sea.”

Yes, something sinister is afoot. But it’s not your garden variety sinister. As Horn Book suggested, it’s more and less than that.

“He was conscious all the time of hints and glances flying like forked lightning about him, of Mrs. Pickering hovering…”

Oh, that Mrs. Pickering. Now there’s a great character.

But I almost wonder if that “one book” you need to read is The Night Watchmen. Try them both if you can. And if you’re a librarian, please keep them both on your shelves.

 

R.I.P. Ted Key, inventor of the Wayback Machine

Here’s a shot of my beloved Mr. Peabody hat, in honor of cartoonist Ted Key.

Key was also a Kidlit author and Disney screenwriter — The Cat From Outer Space!. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Key

Helen Cresswell Post - First Lines

The first line of Ordinary Jack is:

“When Rosie, who was only eight anyway, beat him doing ten lengths of the pool, it was the last straw.”

Perhaps now you see why I almost gave up on the book before becoming a Bagthorpe fan. That’s dull. Who wants to read about swimming? Luckily, by the end of the chapter there’s mayhem and destruction and the Bagthorpes are properly off and running.

 Compare it to the madcap opening of the sequel Absolute Zero:

The whole thing started when Uncle Parker won a cruise in the Caribbean for two after filling in a leaflet he had idly picked up in the village shop. The minute the news was known in the Bagthorpe household disbelief, annoyance and downright jealousy began to generate into what became, inevitably, an All Out Furor.

and here’s the start of book 3:

If one had to pinpoint the event that sent the Bagthorpes plunging into the madness that was to possess them for a whole season…

Now for The Beachcombers, which is a wholly different type of book:

It was Ned who wrote this story, of course. It could have been no one else. Only Ned could have known so much about the two Worlds of the Dallakers and the Pickerings — so much detail, from the scarred and barnacled sides of the Sea Queen, to the stained oilcloth on that scullery table in the dark basement.

And Winter of the Birds:

All the drafts in the world go past this corner. I am an old man to be living alone. Old and impossible I am and they all say it, and keep away as much as they can.

(In the next few paragraphs the old man gets into those terrifying descriptions of the birds: “I see the birds that do not fly, but run on wires.”)

Helen Cresswell Week - Why the Bagthorpe Saga matters

It is my intention, as I already stated, to evangelize on behalf of the Bagthorpes. But I don’t know that I have the skills to do it. In another post, I’ll talk about plots and such. But here I’ll just try to explain why it’s wonderful when these books fall into the right hands.

It’s a tragedy that these books are getting discarded by libraries.

These are special books and if they sit on a library shelf for 10 years and only reach one kid then it’s worth it. They do not appear to hold any sort of valuable moral. Nor do they raise one’s conciousness. They very well might make one smarter, but that’s not the reason to read them.

They are hilarious, but even that might not be the reason to read them.

These books create another world as surely as Rowling or Tolkien did. Yet, it’s just a story of a 1970s English family living in suburban England. There’s no magic and the only mythological creature is a cat that died long before the series begins, but whose memory lives on. (Beloved by grandmother, feared by rest of family.)

In the Bagthorpe’s world, cleverness is king. Winning a slogan contest or convincing people that you’re a psychic are not only important ways to spend your time, they are worth any effort and any risk. The ravings of some anonymous ham radio nut are to be taken seriously and seeking to make one’s own name immortal is a given. Reading Voltaire and raising maggots are equally worthwhile endeavours.

Brilliance is a given. You must be brilliant — and ever-vigilant and, at times, dastardly. But that’s not enough, because whatever happens, it will all end in a row and you must be prepared to shout and hyperbolize your way to the top. And where you fail to hyperbolize, the omniscient narrator will gladly lend a hand. Madness! Chaos! Doom! Yes, all this is everyday life in the Bagthorpe household.

 It’s probably best that the real world isn’t like this, because the Bagthorpes are, after all, insufferable. But what a great thing for a kid to read about.