The Kneebone Boy by Ellen Potter tells the story of the Hardscrabble children, Otto, Lucia and Max, whose mother disappeared several years before the book begins.
The book is narrated by one of the Hardscrabbles but the narrator refuses to tell us which one. The oldest brother, Otto, has not spoken in years and wears a scarf all the time, winter, summer, day and night. He looks different from his siblings, too, having blond hair while their hair is dark. Perhaps, he is the narrator?
Their father is an artist, painting the portraits of lesser aristocracy and fallen royalty. He travels quite a bit but brings home the best sketches and wild stories of the people he meets.
One of the children intercepts a letter from an aunt they barely know threatening to do something if the father doesn't tell them the truth about their mother. Then their father is called away to do another portrait and he sends the three children to spend time with this aunt. But she is not expecting them and they are on their own.
Which turns out to be fine, actually. These books are always far more satisfying if the children have to find their own way. The aunt lets them stay in the "folly" or playhouse right outside Kneebone castle and it is here that they learn about the mythical Kneebone Boy.
Every generation, the Kneebone family produces a child who is horribly deformed - or so it is told. The castle is supposed to be abandoned but the Hardscrabbles know it is not and they are determined to save the Kneebone boy from isolation and deprivation.
The playhouse is huge - as big as a regular house - with gadgets and trickery galore. And there is an ominous local who spends far too much time in the surrounding woods - as do Otto, Lucia and Max.
The ending ties everything up very neatly, and if I was ten or eleven or twelve, I'd accept it without question. After all, parents do things for unfathomable reasons, right? So, read
The Kneebone Boy. When you do, I'd like to know. Did you even for one second, expect it to end the way it does?
Ellen Potter's retelling of the classic The Secret Garden goes on sale this week: The Humming Room. To celebrate we put together a little blog tour! be sure to check out these blog tour stops for some Q&As with Ellen and guest posts written by Ellen, and find out more about Ellen Potter and the world she created in The Humming Room!
Monday 2/27 http://bunburyinthestacks.blogspot.com/
Tuesday 2/28 http://janasbooklist.blogspot.com/
Wednesday 2/29 http://www.missiontoread.com/
Thursday 3/1 http://redhousebooks.blogspot.com/
Friday 3/2 http://www.kidlitfrenzy.com/
Monday 3/5 http://www.greatimaginations.blogspot.com/
Tuesday 3/6 http://www.wordforteens.com/
Wednesday 3/7 http://vvb32reads.blogspot.com/
Thursday 3/8 http://www.thebookrat.com/
I’m happy to report that my master plan for world domination is well under way.
Yes, I’ve got Vermont!
Yes, Kentucky too!
And now, at long last, Oklahoma is mine! All mine!
BWA-HA-HA-HAAAA!
Three states down, 47 to go. I feel like Alf Landon in the 1936 elections, staring up at the big board as the electoral vote trickled in. How’d that work out for old Alf, I wonder?
Answer: He lost to FDR, 8 electoral votes to 525.
This Alf might have fared better.
Seriously, what an honor to be nominated. It’s so great when you throw a book out into the world and something positive bounces back. (Imagine, I just griped about this the other day.)
I received an email from Christopher Elliott, which said:
Congratulations!! You have been nominated for the Oklahoma Library Association’s Sequoyah Book Award. The Sequoyah Book Award program is one of the most prestigious of the state student choice awards in the nation.
<snip>
I am pleased to notify you personally that your book “Bystander” has been nominated for the 2011-2012 Intermediate Masterlist. I am attaching a list of this year’s nominees. You have been nominated for the 2011-2012 program that will be promoted from May 2011 until the voting deadline of March 31, 2012. Votes will be counted in early April, 2012 and the winning author(s) will be notified by April 30, 2012.
The OLA Conference will be held either late March or early April 2013. If your book is selected as a winner, I look forward to contacting you to arrange for your trip to Oklahoma to accept the Sequoyah Award from Oklahoma students.
Here is a list of the Nominations for the 2011-2012 Intermediate Award. Remember the students of Oklahoma will choose the winner.
Chasing Lincoln’s Killer, James Swanson
Darkwood , M.E. Breen
Watersmeet, Ellen Abbott
The Girl Who Threw Butterflies , Mick Cochrane
Closed for the Season, Mary Downing Hahn
The Brooklyn Nine, Alan Gratz
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice , Phillip Hoose
The Amaranth Enchantment, Julie Berry
Positively
What am I reading now? The Danger Box by Blue Balliett
Non-fiction has a bad wrap. The genre has been categorized as, quite simply, boring, and rightly so. For years, the approach has left much to be desired. Alas, that has all changed.
The credit for this shift goes to a handful of innovative minds. A select few that dare to think outside the box and, by doing so, they have done what their predecessors didn’t. They made children’s non-fiction fun.
An ingenious formula that includes creativity and imagination has led throngs of young readers, and me, to their books. Of course, these innovators took advantage of colour and graphics, who wouldn’t. But, most importantly, they offer the reader the opportunity to participate. To be part of the learning process as a driver and not a passenger. That, my dear readers, deserves our recognition!
Don’t miss these exceptional titles:
How to Build Your Own Country by Valerie Wyatt | Kids Can Press
Learn to Speak Music by John Crossingham | Owlkids Books
Spilling Ink: A Young Writer’s Handbook by Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter | Flash Point
0 Comments on The (Re)Invention of Non-Fiction as of 1/1/1900
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[...] Something Strange and Deadly is supposed to be a curvy gal–it concerns me that so many covers fail to portray the characters accurately. Why do you think this is? My only guess is marketing teams think more copies will sell if the girl [...]
Ironically, once you mentioned the piece in Tablet Sunday before last, things about size and covers and fiction have all collided coincidentally in my head. I remember reading Tucker Shaw’s Flavor of the Week, and sort of marveling in my head that it was the first book where the male character was outside of the cultural norm in size, and he was in love… but the cover copped out and showed a chocolate dipped strawberry, even though a great deal of the plot hinged on him being overweight.
I was – and have been, repeatedly, disappointed…
Oh my! That is good timing. I’m just mad with myself for not reading this before I wrote my own piece.
Check out the evolution of the cover for Paula Danziger’s THE CAT ATE MY GYMSUIT.
My own beloved copy from the 70s had the top cover seen here: http://jezebel.com/359726/the-cat-ate-my-gymsuit-a-pocket-full-of-orange-pits. The current cover, I believe, is a drawing of a cat.
Interestingly, this 2008 article explains that Danziger was opposed to having her MC on the cover: http://www.printmag.com/Article/Cover_Girls.
The really depressing part is that it seems like half the time the representative object in question is going to be food. Even when that food hasn’t got much to do with the story itself. It’s like someone skims through the book’s description and decide between “Oh well, let’s just put a skinny model on the cover anyway” or “Hmm, what can I use as cover art. Obviously since this character is overweight, the ONLY POSSIBLE OPTION is ice cream.” Either way it’s marginalizing.
Interesting topic! I love the cover that my YA novel, VINTAGE VERONICA, received when it came out last year (and which is the same on the about-to-be-released paperback edition), but it is definitely in the inanimate object camp (a drawing of a dress, based on the fact that the plus-sized heroine is obsessed with vintage clothing and draws pictures of her favorite pieces).
With the exception of HUGE by Sasha Paley (which now has a cover featuring the actress from the short-lived TV show), I can’t think of a book that has dared to break this particular taboo. Carolyn Mackler’s THE EARTH, MY BUTT AND OTHER BIG ROUND THINGS had the title embroidered on the back pocket of a decidedly petite pair of jeans (a good book and a cute cover, but still…).
Even Judy Blume’s BLUBBER, I seem to recall, has never featured a truly fat girl on it (feel free to tell me I’m wrong). The one I remember best had a round-faced girl at the blackboard in a loosefitting dress with her classmates laughing at her… the current cover has a tiny whale motif that looks like in belongs on a polo shirt.
HOLES pops to mind, too. Not just because the cover doesn’t show much of Stanley (only his head, on the hardcover), but because they didn’t even attempt to make Shia Labeouf appear heavier at the beginning of the movie! I feel like it’s key to Stanley’s character that digging the holes, and suffering for it, made him fit enough and determined enough to carry Zero up the mountain.
I’m a writer and a teacher, and I once read a draft of a story to a group of fourth and fifth grade girls. The protagonist in the story (which a friendship/mystery story; the character’s weight was not part of the plot) was described as being “a little bit fat and very pretty, with wide green eyes and wavy hair”. Though the girls loved the story, they told me that I should change the description, because nobody would want to read about a fat girl. One of the most outspoken of the readers was herself, “a little bit fat”. I was trying to write about someone who looked like her–but she was emphatic about not wanting to read about a fat girl.
Another time, after reading about about the Japanese pearl divers, I tried to explain that one of the reason why the deep sea divers of Japan were often women was because women had more body fat than men, and the extra fat helped them cope with the extreme cold of deep water. The children were visibly embarrassed, and one child told me I was being sexist, to say that women were fatter than men. It was clear to me that “fat” did not mean, “more flesh” or even “extra flesh” to them. It had powerful negative connotations–it meant ugly or even obscene.
I’m not saying that publishers are right to “correct” or obscure the figures of heavier protagonists. What they are doing is part of the problem. But the prejudice against fat in this country is all pervasive, and has grown much stronger during my lifetime. I have no doubt that publishers sell more books when they don’t put fat characters on the cover.
Nice post, Betsy. I think I told you I recently had an essay on fat kids in kidlit killed. I think whenever you say that anti-chunk bias is harmful to kids, you wind up freaking people out. The “fat is bad” meme is so ingrained that merely pointing out that fat kids experience a ton of bias puts you in perceived advocacy territory.
I’m going to rework it as a reported piece and try again to place it.
Thanks, Anonymous, for your experience from the trenches. I wish I were surprised at your students’ “no one wants to read about a fat girl” feelings. While there are positive portrayals of kids who are fat in YA (tho they’re rare) and cute images of chubby cartoony kids (and badgers, lemurs and infinite other cute visual stand-ins for kids) in picture books, middle grade books seem MUCH more likely to demonize fat kids. And when fat teenagers appear in YA, they DO often — not always, but often — wind up losing weight when they gain control over their lives or get happier. Real life doesn’t tend to work that way.
Erica, as a fat devotee of vintage, I’m very much looking forward to reading Vintage Veronica! I’ve had it for a year but since I always have to prioritize explicitly Jewish books for work, I haven’t gotten around to it. (I did just read When Life Gives You OJ with my kids — no fat, but lots of Jewy — and we all really enjoyed it!)
I’m somewhat torn about this, because I actually really hate covers with pictures of people on them. So I prefer the object covers to the people ones. But if there is going to be a person on my book, I want the person to look like they’re supposed to.
The title of your blog post will most likely be the words written on my tombstone