CORAL ISLAND and the Childlit Mentor

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For those of you just joining the conversation, my wife and I are currently team-teaching a children's literature course.  Last week's book was R. M. Ballantyne's 1857 adventure The Coral Island.  Instead of summarizing the plot[1. 1. Three boys get shipwrecked on the island. They get along splendidly. Then some pirates come and ruin everything. Also, cannibals.] or discussing its literary significance[2. 2. Coral Island is considered by many to be the first boy's adventure novel; it is also the book that provoked William Golding to write The Lord of the Flies (as a rebuttal)], I thought instead I could talk about a certain character relationship that the book depicts -- one that traces back to Homer's Odyssey and lives on today in books like Harry Potter.   It is the relationship between a boy and his mentor.

The Mentor in The Coral Island.  In the second half of the book, fifteen year-old Ralph gets kidnapped by pirates.  He spends many days on this ship, surrounded by cutthroats and monsters.  Among the crew, however, he finds a man named "Bloody Bill":

This man, although he was always taciturn and often surly, was the only human being on board with whom I had the slightest desire to become better acquainted. ... Once or twice I tried to draw him into conversation, but he always turned away after a few cold monosyllables.

Ralph soon befriends Bloody Bill and learns the true nature of his character -- namely that Bill is a sensitive man, wracked with guilt over his wicked deeds.  The relationship between these two only spans a few chapters, but it acts as the emotional center of the novel.  Without Bill, this would just be another book about some kids surviving on an island.

I find this child/mentor dynamic particularly compelling as an adult reader of children's books.  It forces me to question whether the adults in my own life were so deeply invested in me -- people that I once perceived to be cold and indifferent.  Usually after reading such books, I have an overwhelming desire to call my parents and teachers[3. 3. This is no accident.  The word "mentor" actually comes from the character of the same name in Homer's Odyssey.  In the poem, Mentor is a wise old man who looks after Odysseus' son in his absence.  In English today, it is a word for someone in a role that is equal parts parent and teacher.].

The Mentor in Contemporary Children's Literature. To be honest, child/mentor relationships were on my brain long before I picked up The Coral Island.  It all started when I read D. M. Cornish's "Foundling" trilogy over Christmas[3. 3. A special thanks to Betsy Bird and her wonderful Factotum review for putting these books on my radar!].  Cornish seems to compulsively render the child/mentor dynamic between his young hero Rossamund and ... every adult character in the series:

Well, maybe not every adult character.  But shades of this trope show up repeatedly.  (I don't blame Cornish for repeating this dynamic -- he writes it very well.)  With both The Coral Island and the "Foundling" books, I'm not just talking about a pairing of an old character with a younger one.  Rather, it's about the layers of understanding going on between those two characters.  In both texts, I see a consistent theme of a young person struggling to comprehend an older caretaker.

When I think of other contemporary examples of this dynamic, my mind goes straight to Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore:

To my thinking, this relationship stands out as being the real story in the "Harry Potter" series.  Each volume moves Harry closer toward understanding just how much this enigmatic old wizard cares for him -- even when he appears distant.  At the end of every adventure, Harry receives a "reward" in the form of a conversation with his mentor, who reveals the ways in which he has been watching and helping from a distance.  These conversations are the climax of personal growth ... just as they are for Rossamund Bookchild and Rover Roger.

The Mentor in Adult Literature. With the above examples in mind, I tried to think of some child/mentor relationships that predate children's literature.  The only thing I could come up with was Thomas Mallory's Le Morte D'Arthur.  My friend Doctor Comics is publishing a book on Arthurian legends, and so I asked him about the relationship between King Arthur and Merlin.  He told me that the original Arthur texts don't really capture the dynamic I was looking for -- in fact, it wasn't until T.H. White's depiction in The Sword and the Stone in 1938 that Merlin-as-mentor really emerged.

 

So it wasn't until Arthur was re-written for children that the child/mentor dynamic really came through?  Huh.  With this new revelation, I started to wonder whether the relationships that I find so moving are actually unique to the genre.  Maybe there is something about children's literature  --  which is meant to be read by both children and adults -- that captures this child/mentor relationship in a way that adult literature cannot?

I have no idea whether this is true.  But a part of me suspects it may be so.  In the meantime, I'm sure I've forgotten a lot of great child/mentor relationships from children's books.  You should let me know in the comments.

UPDATE: I wanted to give a special welcome to any readers visiting from Fuse #8! I like to think of the comments section as that "reward" that Harry (me) gets to have with Dumbledore (you) at the end of an adventure -- in which wise readers tell me why I'm wrong about this or that thing.  So please, pull up a chair, grab some butterbeer, and join the conversation!

Last Call for THE CORAL ISLAND ...

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Just a short post reminding readers that I'll be discussing R. M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island on Monday[1. 1. I'll be trying my best to connect it to Harry Potter and D. M. Cornish's Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy ... we'll see how it goes.]. If you were hoping to read along, now's your chance. All this week, I'll be posting quotes from the book in the Marginalia Box (in the right column). Also, I've included an excerpt from the preface to whet your appetite:

"If there is any boy or man who loves to be melancholy and morose, and who cannot enter with kindly sympathy into the regions of fun, let me seriously advise him to shut my book and put it away.  It is not meant for him."

Did I mention the book has pirates? And a shark? You can read it for free here.

THE CORAL ISLAND Quote #1

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The opening paragraph:"Roving has always been, and still is, my ruling passion, the joy of my heart, the very sunshine of my existence. In childhood, my boyhood, and in man's estate, I have been a rover; not a mere rambler among the woody glens and upon the hill-tops of my own native land, but an enthusiastic rover throughout the length and breadth of the wide, wide world." - R. M. Ballantyne The Coral Island

Don't Shoot the Messenger

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The other day I was having trouble with a script and so I took a long walk. We have a dollar theater about eight miles from the house, which is a perfect distance (provided you have a ride home[1. 1. I tend to prefer walking all my miles in a straight line ... which invariably results in my phoning Mary to pick me up. The woman is nothing if not patient.]). I love dollar theaters because they stop me from being picky: how can I resent a movie that only cost a buck? Even when the movie is terrible, I can at least spend the time productively by analyzing why the movie is terrible ... Which is exactly what I did while watching The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Over the years, I have had a very love/hate relationship with Lewis' fantasy series[2. 2. I have long harbored an irrational hatred for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe ... The Magician's Nephew, however, is one of my favorite stories of all time.]. One of the books' most divisive elements is its use of Christian imagery ... some might even say allegory. I've spoken with countless friends who still remember the day they realized that Lewis had woven covert religious themes into his narrative. At ALA last month, Neil Gaiman reminisced about this moment in his own life. Laura Miller wrote a book about it. Phillip Pullman wrote several.

I'm starting to think that the discovery that the Chronicles of Narnia are about something is the bookish child's version of learning that [SPOILER ALERT]  there's no Santa Claus. It is the moment when we discover that authors aren't just nice men and women trying to entertain us with a story; instead they're trying to communicate some lesson to us -- which makes them no different than every other bossy adult in our lives. Perhaps even more important, it is usually a discovery we make on our own.

I have re-read (and now watched) The Chronicles of Narnia with this question in mind. And the more time I spend with these stories, the less I think that the outrage is justified. Certainly Lewis has created Narnia as a moral universe -- where every new place and challenge is a proving ground for personal integrity. But what good story doesn't do that? Why do we roll our eyes at the heavy-handed moralizing of Eustace's avarice, but thrill at seeing Ofelia approach the table of the Pale Man? Or seeing Harry Potter discover the secret of the mirror of Erised?

I suspect that the anger concerning The Chronicles of Narnia is less about Lewis' specific message and more about the fact that he has a message at all. It is outrage at the very notion of authorial intent.

E-Books: A Few Extra Thoughts ...

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I wanted to write a short followup on last week's pro and con posts on the coming e-book apocalypse. Three things:

1) Betsy Bird just posted a link to a School Library Journal article giving a rundown on the various conversations at the Digital Book World summit. It's worth checking out.

2) A reader, Lisa, asked  me how I thought Google Books fit into the piracy equation. I thought I'd take a crack at it here: Presently Google Books does not frighten me. Though their scan-first-get-sued-later approach is worrisome, they seem to be pretty careful about not sharing full documents from the private domain -- only showing what is allowed under fair use laws. (Of course, for older open-domain books you can find the whole texts, which is a boon to scholars and society alike[1. 1. I firmly believe that after an appropriate amount of time, those texts are the property of society and should be freely available to anyone (I'm talking to you, Disney)].) Even if Google Books went evil, I still wouldn't worry too much about them; the second they start giving away copyrighted material, every publisher in the world will start suing. Rather, my fears of piracy are all connected to the file "sharing" model in which individuals are the perpetrators. When file sharing becomes normal for books, there will simply be too many complicit in the crime for publishers or authors to protect themselves.

3) Speaking of file sharing, a good friend of mine, Kirby Fields, recently wrote an amazing article for Pop Matters magazine that chronicles his own life as a file sharer. It's more of a memoir than an opinion piece ... he takes us from his childhood recording jingles off the TV to his adult days swapping Mp3's. It's an engaging, slightly nostalgic look at piracy. Go read the piece -- then give Kirby a book deal.

UPDATE: Author and friend Ernessa T. Carter left a really great rebuttal to my "books aren't CDs" argument in the comments section ... check it out here.

Book Review: The Grimm Reader

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I wanted to give a special "howdy" to any visitors from 100 Scope Notes; welcome to The Scop! Anyway, on with today's post ... Between the two of us, Mary and I get a lot of free books. Most of mine are galleys and ARCs from meetings/conferences. Mary gets books sent to her from various academic publishers hoping she might incorporate their text into a syllabus[1. 1. It usually works out that Mary reads my free books and I read hers (something about the grass being greener, I'm sure.)]. The other day she came home with a copy of The Grimm Reader: the Classic Tales of the Brothers Grimm, edited by Maria Tatar. I stole it from her desk and read it last week.

Here's the rundown:

The Forward: The forward was written by A.S. Byatt, who I guess knows something about children's books[2. 2. On top of writing The Children's Book, Byatt also penned an incendiary op-ed in the New York Times attacking Harry Potter ... I can't resist a contrarian!]. Like most forwards, it's less about hard facts and more about general reflection -- which isn't a bad thing. Some favorite quotes/observations:

"Everything in the tales appears to happen entirely by chance -- and this has the strange effect of making it appear that nothing happens by chance, that everything is fated."

"I inhabited stories with characters in a way I never inhabited true fairy tales ... I fell in love with Sir Lancelot and held long conversations with Robin Hood ... But I never loved or was loved in the context of a fairy tale. Dickens claimed that he wanted to marry Little Red Riding Hood, which to me is a category error. Either he had seen a pretty actress in a red hood in a pantomime, or his hugely animating imagination could even insulate itself into the closed box of finite gestures. Character feels wrong in folktales."

"I am not sure how much good is done by moralizing about fairy tales. This can be unsubtle -- telling children that virtue will be rewarded, when in fact it is mostly simply the fact of being the central character that ensures a favorable outcome."

The Introduction: Tatar's introduction is lengthy and enjoyable[2. 2. Mary has informed me that her name is pronounced "Tuh-tar" ... and that she's kind of a big deal]. She makes some general observations about books and then does a brief rundown of her personal connection to a number of specific stories. Here are some thoughts that I really liked:

"Magic happens in nearly every one of these tales, but the real wonder is that no one ever feels that slightest shock. A girl meets a wolf in the woods and is not at all astonished when he engages in a conversation about her grandmother."

"With the Bible and Shakespeare, the Grimms' collection ranks among the best-selling books of the Western world. 'In an old-fashioned household,' Baron Munchausen reports, 'Grimms' fairy takes occupied a position midway between the cookbook and the hymnal.'"

"Those who expect to find role models for children in fairy tales will be deeply disappointed. Parents will look in vain for so-called family values in stories that show us a widower wooing his daughter, a woman lacing up and suffocating her stepdaughter, and her father turning over his daughter to a greedy king. But these stories all meet one important requirement for a good children's book: they show the triumph of the small and meek over the tall and powerful."

The Children's Tales: Nothing much to report here. A translation of a number of Grimm tales -- specifically ones that worked their way in the the Brother's later collection, Children's Stories and Household Tales. One thing I did like was Tatar's wording of birds' the rhyme in "Cinderella:"

"Roo coo coo, roo coo coo, Blood is dripping from the shoe: The foot's too long and far too wide, Go back and find the proper bride."

The Adult Tales: This is where the book gets interesting. Tatar spends some time in her introduction talking about how after the Grimms' first publication was a success, they set to making a version more suitable for children. In that spirit, Tatar includes some more adult stories that didn't make the cut. After each one, she includes about a page of analysis. She points out how closely the story resembles earlier folktales and postulates why it might have not been considered acceptable to contemporary readers. Among the most shocking is the amazingly-racist "The Jew in the Brambles" which must be read to be believed.

Bonus Features: In back of the book are a few nice resources. First, a fascinating 10 page biography of Jacob and Wilhelm, which gave me a lot more information than any Wikipedia page ever could. Following that is the original preface (written by the Brothers) to the first edition of Children's Stories and Household Tales. Lastly, there is a collection of favorite quotations about fairy tales that Tatar has amassed over the years. Below are my two favorites:

"Perhaps it is only in childhood that books have any deep influence on our lives. In later life we admire, we are entertained, we may modify some views we already hold, but we are more likely to find in books merely a confirmation of what is in our minds already. ... But in childhood all books are books of divination, telling us about the future, and like the fortune teller who sees a long journey in the cards of death by water they influence the future. I suppose what is why books excited us so much. What do we ever get nowadays to equal the excitement and revelation in those first fourteen years?" - Graham Greene

"I used to be Snow White, but I drifted." - Mae West

What I Liked: There is no shortage of Brothers Grimm collections out there. A few too many people are still trying to shock readers with the revelation that "these ain't your Uncle Walt's fairy tales!" -- a super-cool piece of trivia when I was nine years old ... now, not so much. That said, I did learn some new things in Tatar's collection, especially with regards to how the Grimms decided to edit and sanitize their own previous publication. That and the resources in section three of the book make it a welcome addition to our Fairy Tales Shelf.

What I Didn't Like: As I mentioned earlier, Tatar follows each of the adult tales with a bit of editorial analysis. This is great for a reader like me who has trouble learning in a vacuum. I really, really, really wish she had been able to include this sort of information after the Children's tales, which makes up the bulk of the collection. So, really, my only complaint is that I wanted more!

Other Reading:

You can read a review of the book at The New Republic here.

Also, check out Maria Tatar's blog, which is pretty swell.

E-Books round 2: Run For Your Lives!

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Yesterday, I talked a bit about some e-book fears that no longer worry me. Today, I'd like to talk about one outstanding issue that does frighten me. A lot. We already discussed a few ways in which publishing shouldn't be compared to the music industry, but there is one aspect where the comparison does work: piracy.

Book piracy is nothing new. In the 19th century, America had very few rights protecting authors. Charles Dickens famously made a personal crusade out of slapping the wrists of adoring fans who had purchased unlicensed copies of his books. Even back then, American readers were incredulous: We gave you fame! Why are you complaining about money?

I think this attitude is coming back with the younger generation [1. 1. said the cranky old man in his late-20's].  Screenwriter John August recently posted a link to composer Jason Robert Brown's website, in which Brown documents a debate he had with a teenager girl who was pirating his music. The conversation is fascinating and infuriating. You should go read it right now. I'll wait.

Are you back? Are you terrified?

For those writing MG and YA fiction, "Brenna" is our readership; her opinions on the subject are ones that will directly effect our ability to provide for ourselves and our families. After reading that exchange and many others like it, I spent a few days being consumed with fear. So far as I can tell, it is an issue that no one in publishing wants to deal with. At ALA last month, I talked to a number of people in publishing who were all about e-books. Publishers are more than happy to speculate about how these devices will "change" their industry ... but no one seemed willing to engage on the subject of piracy. The most I could get was some quiet muttering about DRMs ... as though this technology could somehow protect books where it had failed with software, music, and movies.

It is unrealistic for publishers and authors to rely on tech companies to protect their interests.  The fact is: Apple and Amazon will only protect the rights of authors for as long as it is profitable -- because making profit is what businesses are designed to do. Similarly I think the ideological battle against a culture of piracy is un-winnable. Too many people in our culture have already bought into the "information wants to be free" philosophy[2. 2. Malcom Gladwell has a very engaging book review on this subject here].

The problem with the “information wants to be free” model is that it’s not capitalist. It’s a great model ... in a world where artists and thinkers are not expected to live off profits from their ideas. But that would require substantial support from the government or private benefactors[3. 3. Let it be known that I am open to patronage; all interested rich people should contact me through the comments box.]. Until that happens, though, the government has a responsibility to enforce the rights of content creators. Which they don’t do.

So where does that leave content creators?

No  clue.

E-Books Round 1: Why I'm Not Worried ...

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I thought I'd take the next two days to reflect on e-books and The Future of Publishing. Many writers, agents, and publishers I've talked to view e-books as an existential threat. Today I'd like to play devil's advocate and discuss a few reasons why I think (or hope) that e-books aren't really a big deal. (Tomorrow I'll be talking about the things to do scare me ... a lot.) Let's look at a few common complaints:

1) Reading an e-book isn't reading!

This objection is pretty much limited to young readers. The fear seems to have been sparked by two recent newspaper articles about the rise of "enhanced" picture books[1. 1. The first was a New York Times piece discussing troubling trends in the sales of picture books; A few weeks later the Wall Street Journal wrote a piece about how publishers are poised to start creating "enhanced" picture books for e-readers.]. Many people have wondered whether these e-books are really be more like video games or cartoons than books. Illustrator and artist  Meghan McCarthy wrote a great piece on her blog talking about how the "enhanced" edition of P.D. Eastman's Go, Dog. Go! makes a point of not showing words at key points of the story -- creating an experience that is not much different from watching television.

I agree with her comparison, but not so much her conclusion. I do not think that these e-books present a new challenge to literacy. Converting picture books into television has been going on for decades ... just ask LeVar Burton. Millions of children (myself included) watched Reading Rainbow and still learned to read. As with television, this is much more a question of parenting than publishing: the same kids who are allowed to watch too much TV are the same ones at risk of "reading" too many enhanced books[2. 2. which begs another question: who the heck lets their five year-old have an iPad?].

2) There's just something better about ink on paper!

I wholeheartedly agree with the above statement -- no glowing screen will ever compare to the look, feel, and smell of words on a physical page. That said, I think e-books have some very real advantages over traditional books. Not only are they more portable and ecologically responsible, but features like searchable text, instant definitions, hyperlinks, and clickable footnotes give them an undeniable edge[3. 3. Just ask any undergraduate English student forced to slog through Chaucer one word at a time ... not that I'm still bitter or anything]. For society as a whole, e-books are without question the better path forward.

So where does that leave us physical book lovers? I think that in the future, people who buy and read physical books will be very similar to people who listen to music on vinyl today. There is still a market for vinyl records, but it is a smaller one that is limited to collectors and fetishists. Frankly, I'm okay with that.

3) E-books will destroy the publishing industry!

Just a second ago, I compared people who collect books to people who collect music. Similarly, a lot of people have looked at what happened to the music industry as a sign for Things To Come in publishing. This usually leads to the following (terrifying) comparison:

physical books = compact discs

A friend recently pointed out a logical fallacy in this equation: books, unlike recorded music, don't require an apparatus to enjoy. Recorded music is beholden to whatever technology a person owns (be it tape deck or iPod), and like all technology, those devices are bound to become more advanced and replace their predecessors. This point is not minor, as it reveals what the true books/music comparison should be:

e-books = all forms of recorded music

In the above scenario, the future of physical books looks suddenly brighter. In fact, it's Amazon and Apple who need to fear what's to come. The Kindle and iPad will inevitably be replaced by something newer. Physical books, however, will remain unchanged ... as they have for over 600 years.

So that's three e-book fears allayed. This post was largely me talking myself off a ledge. Feel free to let me know why I'm wrong, or any other points I may have missed. Tomorrow, I'll be taking the other side of the debate and discussing the one looming change that I do think could destroy publishing. Until then . . .

UPDATE: you can read my followup post here.

What My Wife Thinks of Socrates ...

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Scanned from my Winter 2011 journal ...

The other day Mary and I were having a conversation with a friend about the Socratic method. Our friend was remarking on how difficult it was to get his undergraduate students talking. This was particularly puzzling to him because the group of students in question were a pretty smart bunch. I observed that part of his problem may be in the fact that a good discussion requires people who are willing to state the obvious -- and who wants to do that? This is what followed:

What's the moral of the story? Apparently, I'm no Socrates.

Little Goody Two Shoes

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So this week in our children's lit class, my wife and I taught The History of Little Goody Two Shoes [1. 1. The book was published in 1765 by John Newbery (heard of him?). There's debate about who authored the book; among the contenders is Oliver Goldsmith]. I wanted to put down a few thoughts and reactions that came up in discussion.

If you haven't read the book, let me save you the trouble: Little Goody Two Shoes follows a recently-orphaned girl who rises above oppression by being an exemplar of moral and social virtue. She's rewarded for her hard work by a wedding proposal from a rich old man -- which I guess was a good thing back then.

Little Goody Two Shoes was written at a time when children's literature was almost entirely limited to educational and religious primers [2. 2. To prepare students for the assignment, we read a few early excerpts from Patricia Demers' From Instrustion to Delight]. It's sort of shocking to think that this book would have once been perceived as entertainment. To a modern reader, it feels like a series of straightforward moral lessons.

Still, children's literature had to start somewhere, and there is no question that Little Goody Two Shoes had a huge influence on books that came after it. I thought it might be fun to look at how elements from this book show up in later works of children's literature:

1) It's an origin story

This book popularized the term "goody two shoes,"  but the phrase had been around long before it. In the book, a small orphan girl named Margery Meanwell only owns one shoe. But then a rich man buys her a complete pair, and Margery is so delighted that she runs around the village, exclaiming: "Two shoes, ma'am! See, two shoes!" The nickname follows soon after.

It seems like Little Goody Two Shoes was trying to create an origin story for a phrase that was already in the culture. It reminds me of the "How the X got its Y" structure from Kipling's Just So Stories. An even more direct comparison might be Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, where the author creates a secret underground society comprised of the "Jacks of All Trades"[2. 2. Unrelated: at ALA, Neil Gaiman noted that his book was meant to be in conversation with The Jungle Books ... which promptly made me feel like an idiot for not noticing the fact].

2) Silly Character Names

Little Goody Two Shoes is full of characters with loaded names: Margery Meanwell, William Dove, Timothy Gripe, Farmer Graspall (can you guess which ones are villains?). Nothing much to say about this other than the fact that this technique later became inseparable from Charles Dickens. I also think Roald Dahl is pretty dang good at it ...

[3. 3. These BFG illustrations were drawn by Rebbaz Royee -- it's a bold man who decides to take on Quentin Blake!]

One big difference between Little Goody Two Shoes and books that came after it is that the former plays it straight. There's nothing particularly funny or playful about the names -- they're just meant to highlight the moral lessons. It's nice to know we've evolved beyond that.

3) Animals save the day!

Little Goody Two Shoes spends a lot of time saving animals. The middle chapters of the book are a series of animal-rescue adventures. She saves a few birds, a dog, and a lamb. She teaches them to "speak and spell." This pays off in later chapters when her dog, Jumper, rescues Goody and her students from a collapsing schoolhouse.

Again, not much to say on this. But there's a pretty clear connection between this book and later stories like Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Also, Cat Lassie ... We must never forget Cat Lassie ...

4) My two favorite parts

There are two awesome bits from Little Goody Two Shoes that I wish had made it into pop culture. Here's hoping I can make them stick:

At one point Goody befriends a raven that she names Ralph and a dove that she names Tom. She teaches both of these birds to spell by using alphabet blocks. Ralph-the-Raven loves spelling things with the uppercase letters; Tom-the-Dove spells things with the lowercase letters. Soon, the schoolchildren begin to referring to capital letters as "Ralph's alphabet" and lowercase letters as "Tom's alphabet." Awesome, right?

Later in the book, a man walks into Goody's schoolhouse and sees her surrounded by animals. He points at her, screaming, "A witch! A witch!" Goody, without missing a beat, points right back and exclaims "A conjurer! A conjurer!" I think this rejoinder could have saved some lives in Colonial Salem.

That's it for Little Goody Two Shoes! Next week our class is discussing RM Ballantyne's The Coral Island. (I recently got called out for dismissing boys' adventure novels as "escapist fluff" -- my Coral Island post will probably take the form of a long apology.) See you then!

FLY BY NIGHT Quote #4

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My favorite image:"Mosca saw ... a woman in a tattered black cambric shawl who had spread across her lap a dozen pigtails, all crudely severed. ... Mosca guessed that she must be one of the notorious scissor women, who would snip the locks off unguarded children to sell to wigmakers. The pigtails lay like fat, silken ropes, their sad little ribbons still attached." - Frances Hardinge Fly by Night, ch. XVII

(more quotations here)

PETER NIMBLE in Korea ...

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Mary brought back the mail today. In the pile was a contract from my agent for a Korean edition of Peter Nimble and his Fantastic Eyes! The publisher will be Sodam & Taeil. I have exactly one friend living in Korea. He teaches English and runs a popular K-blog. Maybe he'll make his students buy copies? In the meantime, here's an awesome monster attack from the 2006 movie The Host. Warning: contains a monster.