Besides NF fiction, do you write ballads, shorter poems or
fiction, and do you have fun with any of the musical
or visual arts?
My dream is to publish a middle grade novel. I have
several that I have begun. I also have some poems about pickles and about picky
eaters, which I have not shared with any agents or publishers.
As for music, my mother has a beautiful voice, and my
children are very musical, but somehow the gift passed me over. I can’t
remember a tune or sing on pitch and I was terrible piano student.
I like to draw, but am not
trained. I enjoy making quilts that are kind of bright and wacky and I do have
a nice rhyming picture book about a quilt that I need to shape up for
publication.
Your father read THE HOBBIT to you, seated in his rocking
chair
when you were a kid in Sacramento, California; he inspired
your love of books. Any memories of imaginative play with
dragons or
of dreamy times thinking of The Shire as a kiddo?
This is such a good question, and I really wish I had a
better answer.
I remember loving the names in The Hobbit and just giggling whenever my father said Bilbo
Baggins because the alliteration was so fun. But I don’t remember my sister and
I ever pretending to be characters from The
Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings
or engaging in the kind of fantasy play that I know many children do with
Tolkien.
I have had students who have ring tattoos, and who claim to
be fluent in Elvish, and of course, I love the way Stephen Colbert geeks out
about Tolkien, but sadly I never did that myself.
We'd love to know about the editorial letter and highlights
of the revision process after the contract was inked
for JOHN RONALD's DRAGONS. (Normal English on
that contract, we presume . . .)
Getting JOHN RONALD'S DRAGONS published by Roaring Brook/Macmillan was kind of surreal. I did not have an agent, but a friend in my critique
group, Betty Hicks, to whom I am forever grateful, loved the story and thought
her editor at Roaring Brook, Kate Jacobs, would love it. She told her about it
and asked if I could submit it to her. In a few weeks Kate called and said she
wanted to acquire it. At the same time, I had sent it to some agents. The
agent I had submitted to at Andrea Brown was not interested, but showed it to
another Andrea Brown agent, Jennifer Mattson, who was. So in a couple of
weeks I sold the book and got an agent. Kate didn’t send an editorial letter, but a copy of the manuscript with a couple of questions inserted about the
ending, trying to make sure that the ending captured the theme. I have
struggled much more with JACK and
WARNIE'S WARDROBE, and she sent me several editorial letters about that.
I feel like sometimes you get a book right, right off the bat, and JOHN RONALD'S DRAGONS was like
that.
How did you know/ponder/wrestle what to leave out?
Tolkien’s father died when he was three and his mother when
he was just twelve, leaving him an orphan. His mother’s death was so sad
and so terrible I was worried about sharing it with children, but I couldn’t
explain who he was without including this formative experience. I left
out though that she had been abandoned by her family for joining the Catholic
Church, and that Tolkien viewed her as a martyr.
I also felt it was really important to go into his World
War 1 experience. The images of the front and the destruction of the
landscape help to explain his love of trees and hatred of mechanization. What
I did not go into was how two of his best friends from school, who had served
as a substitute family for him, an orphaned boy, were killed in the war. The
third friend, who was not killed, he met up with after the war. Their friendship,
without the other two young men, could not be re-ignited. I have a blog post about
this, which older readers might find interesting.
In essence what I tried to focus on was his imagination. So
I left out some of the events and details too painful for younger readers and
some of the academic, political, and religious controversies he was involved
in, which would distract and not hold a young reader’s attention.
A hint at the magic. Eliza Wheeler's tree cover,
JOHN RONALD'S DRAGONS
Comment for a chance to have a copy, below.
Any practical tricks to share, in organizing your Middle
Earth-sized mine of resources and materials?
Research is never wasted. It is always there in the
texture and shape of the book, if not overtly in the text. Also, go to
the primary sources. The genesis of this book was in Tolkien’s essay, “On
Fairy Stories.” He writes: “The dragon had the trade-mark Of Faërie written plain upon him. In
whatever world he had his being it was an Other-world. Fantasy, the making or
glimpsing of Other-worlds, was the heart of the desire of Faërie. I desired
dragons with a profound desire.” I read this line and I immediately
wanted to write about this desire and how it shaped him.
As far as organizing, I am a very disorganized,
old-fashioned, and technophobic scholar. Anyone who is going to take tips
from me on managing their research should probably beware. I Xerox
articles by the boatload and throw them into messy, sagging, overloaded
folders. More seriously, researching and writing are pretty organic processes
for me. I was lucky with this project because the book grew out of
research I did to teach a class. I was really nervous because I was taking
students abroad and teaching them there, and I couldn’t take all of my books
and sagging piles of folders over with me. So I made a bunch of power
points. This probably helped me to synthesize my ideas. When I got back
from England I kept reading (Tolkien’s letters, which are super fun and made me
feel like I knew him), researching and tweaking the manuscript. I can’t
separate the researching and writing into distinct parts of the process.
Hey, Caroline, I understand you! And yes about Power Points, too.
For vivid sharing in class and other talks, they collect the baskets of treasures
that a picture book biography author amasses.
You are an experienced guide for students to
the Oxford literary world and area. What should a
Tolkien traveler not miss, especially in lanes or nooks
less known, to visit places connected to his imaginative
life?
Perhaps you'll write a guide to Tolkien's Shire?
I highly recommend visiting some of the early medieval sites
in the area—the white chalk horse and Wayland’s Smithy. Also in Birmingham the
history museum has a wonderful trove of golden Anglo-Saxon artifacts a local
farmer dug up in his field. It’s called the Staffordshire Hoard.
When Tolkien describes mithrail and the skillful metalwork of the
dwarves, he is working from descriptions of metalwork like this in Anglo-Saxon
texts. He spent so much of his professional life with his head in
the Anglo-Saxon period that you need to try to take your head there too.
I also think
Tolkien’s visual imagination was very much informed by William Morris and
Edward Burne-Jones so try to see as many tapestries and stained glass windows
as you can. When I was in Oxford the last time there was an enchanting
exhibit at the Oxford Museum of Modern Art of some William Morris Arthurian
tapestries. Everyone knows the Ashmolean Museum, but this museum is smaller,
more intimate and really interesting, and it hosts talks.
Another cool
thing is the bookstore, Blackwell’s, holds events. Before you go, look on their
website and see what is coming up. I got to hear Philip Pullman and a bunch of
Oxford professors talk about William Blake.
Finally, since I
took my students during Jan. term, there was a panto playing. Tolkien
talks about hating pantos in his “on Fairy Stories” essay so we went to find
out what he hated. Pantos are important to the British culture of the child,
and they only exist in England so particularly if you have children in tow,
take one in.
The Eagle and
Child is a bit touristy. You have to go there, but I don’t personally get any
kind of frisson of authenticity. The Trout in Wolverton has better food
and is a lovely walk. Read Tolkien’s letters and you will discover that they
drank at all of the pubs. Make a list and try to go to each one he
mentions, but not all in one night.
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