Month: September 2015

  • Two Summers by John Heffernan and Freya Blackwood Analysis

    Two Summers by John Heffernan and Freya Blackwood Analysis

    Two Summers by John Heffernan and Freya Blackwood is a sobering Australian picture book about farming during drought. I have a special interest in stories about drought (due to the fact I’ve written one myself). Perhaps because of this, I’ve given thought to ‘subject matter for young readers’ and ‘picturebook endings‘ and ‘juvenile capacity for […]

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  • Thirteen O’Clock by Enid Blyton Analysis

    I have conflicted views about Enid Blyton, but Thirteen O’Clock story is relatively free of the problems I (and many others) have taken issue with in these slightly more enlightened times. We still have a story in which a young patriarch-in-training helps an older female character out by tending to her minor injury and finding a lost cat, […]

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  • The Influence of Edith Nesbit

    A handful of children’s authors of the late nineteeth to early twentieth centuries were experiementing with innovative forms of story with radical content: Oscar Wilde, P.L. Travers, J.M. Barrie, Astrid Lindgren, John Masefield and E. Nesbit. These storytellers were pushing the boundaries of what people considered acceptable for children, and we have them partly to […]

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  • Aaron’s Hair by Robert Munsch Analysis

    Aaron’s Hair is not Munsch’s most popular book. That would be Love You Forever, which Munsch wrote just as a family story for a long time, after two of their babies were born dead. That book has sold 20 million copies, even though the publisher only hoped for 30,000 to break even. This book hits the […]

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  • The Bus To St James’s by John Cheever Analysis

    I bought The Collected Stories of John Cheever as a salve to heal my Mad Men withdrawals, and this is one of Cheever’s stories that absolutely reminds me of Mad Men. Stephen Bruce is a Don Draper character; his daughter is a Sally Draper type. Matt Weiner has cited Cheever as one source of inspiration for Mad […]

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  • How To Write A Tall Story

    How To Write A Tall Story

    The ‘Tall Tale’ is a legitimate genre of story – not necessarily an insult. Maybe it sounds like one because as kids we were told to stop telling ‘tall tales’, when in fact we just thought we were ’embellishing’ real-life happenings. (If you’ve always been a writer than I expect you might identify with that!) […]

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  • Harry and Hopper by Margaret Wild and Freya Blackwood Analysis

    Harry and Hopper by Margaret Wild and Freya Blackwood Analysis

    Dogs commonly feature in pet-death stories. Probably because goldfish are bastards. WHAT HAPPENS IN THE STORY A boy’s best dog friend dies while he is at school. Harry comes to terms with Hopper’s absence gradually, first by trying to distract himself and not think about Hopper at all, then by imagining his reappearance, and finally by imagining […]

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  • The Housebreaker of Shady Hill by John Cheever Analysis

    The Housebreaker of Shady Hill by John Cheever Analysis

    Is “The Housebreaker of Shady Hill” ultimately a story about fernweh? The main character wants to be somewhere else, for sure, and wants to be someone else. Ultimately he finds peace by ditching his temporary persona as a thief and returning to his honest, family-man status. You get a strange feeling like when you leave […]

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  • Just One More Time by John Cheever Analysis

    WHAT HAPPENS IN THE STORY From the New Yorker synopsis: The Beers were shoestring aristocrats of the upper East Side. They were elegant and charming but had lost their money. Alfreda took a number of jobs in the thirties & forties to help their finances. They did some unsavory things but managed to get by […]

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  • School In Children’s Literature

    School In Children’s Literature

    SCHOOL AS THE WILD WEST School itself must be so different these days than it was when you were in school. Certainly, having kids helps, but is that ever an issue for you when you’re writing? I was reading about this phenomenon in television and film writing, which is that the references to school are […]

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  • The Golden Ages of Children’s Literature

    The Golden Ages of Children’s Literature

    We are now in what’s known as The Third Golden Age of Children’s Literature. Naturally the First and Second Golden Ages came before.

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  • It’s The Bear! by Jez Alborough Analysis

    It’s The Bear! by Jez Albrough  is one of our daughter’s favourite picture books. She loved it when she was three, and still loves it even though she is now seven. It’s The Bear! is the second of Jez Alborough’s three hugely successful bear books from the 1990s. Published in 1996, It’s The Bear came […]

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