Tag Archives: Treasure Island

The Illustrated Novel

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Denslow Oz

I’ve always loved the illustrated novel. While the heyday of the illustrated novel was the nineteenth century, it exists today, if it exists at all, almost exclusively in novels for young people. I think it adds enormously to the reader’s pleasure. Consider the original Tenniel illustrations of Alice in Wonderland, Denslow’s Wizard of Oz, Shepard’s Wind in the Willows, or Wyeth’s Treasure Island. I read these books as a kid and cannot think of the texts without thinking of those illustrations. Good text and good art, together, make great books.

City of Light, City of DarkI often ask that my novels be illustrated, but only rarely get my wish. The great exceptions are the Poppy novels, so splendidly illustrated by Brian Floca. I may have written those books, but when I imagine the characters I think of his art. Floca  has become a major illustrator in his own right (and write) but I’m proud that his first work was in our graphic novel City of Light City of Dark.

Paul O. Zelinsky’s first illustrated novel was my Emily Upham’s Revenge.

Traitors’ Gate was illustrated like a Victorian novel, with more than sixty illustrations by Karina Raude.

The most beautiful edition of Crispin is a South Korean edition.

Publishers will tell you the illustrated novel is expensive to create and difficult to produce. No doubt. They also say young readers don’t want them, a claim I do doubt very much. I so wish the illustrated novel would come back into favor—and into the hands of young readers. What’s your favorite illustrated novel?

Can writing change the world?

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Dayanara, of Quincy, Illinois, wrote:  “. . . my dream is to become an author someday. My dad would never approve of it though. He wants me to become someone who can change the world, but he doesn’t understand writing can change the world.”

Go Dayanara!

Sophia's WarBut . . . can writing change the world? Having just been emerged in the world of the American Revolution so as to write Sophia’s War, the evidence is clear that such writing as Tom Paine’s Common Sense, and “We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . “  changed the world. But since Dayanara wrote to me, perhaps, it’s fair to ask if fiction can change the world? More specifically, can writing for young people change the world?

I am struck by how many adults vividly recall books they read as young people and with an enthusiastic memory for detail that is striking considering the years which have passed. I’ve noticed, too, how many people recall, in particular, a teacher who read a lot to a class. I’ve often been told by older women that, when younger, they read The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle many times. Only rarely however, did they tell me what they did because of that reading. 

And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry StreetSpeaking for myself, I do believe And To Think that I saw it on Mulberry Street, opened my imagination. The Wind in the Willows gave me a new awareness of the natural world.  Treasure Island, informed me what a boy (Jim Hawkins) could do.  

Beyond all else, however, I believe reading taught me how to think. And what I read was, of course, writing.

A map to explore new worlds

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Treasure Island, 1883

Treasure Island, 1883

Like many readers, maps in books have always fascinated me. I once knew someone who collected books only with such maps. One of the most famous maps, the treasure map found in Stevenson’s Treasure Island, was drawn first, and the story written around it. One of my own early books, Who Stole the Wizard of Oz?, a mystery, has, as its primary clues, maps from well-known childrens’ books, The Wizard of Oz, Winnie The Pooh, Treasure Island, Through the Looking Glass, and The Wind in the Willows. My book was inspired when I came upon an atlas of fantasylands. What a book by which to travel! This comes to mind because my forthcoming book, Sophia’s War, will have not just one map, but two. Such maps not only illuminate the story, but seem to give a singular sense of reality to a narrative. In a very special and literal way, maps provide a way of following a story. Or perhaps the best stories follow a map to explore new worlds.