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The Emperor of Any Place
by Tim Wynne-Jones
High School   Candlewick   328 pp.
10/15   978-0-7636-6973-7   $17.99

“So much of grief is unlearning,” observes Wynne-Jones in this perceptive and 
multi-layered page-turner. When Evan’s single father, Clifford, dies suddenly, the high-schooler must work through his own grief while dealing with Clifford’s estranged father Griff, a military man who Clifford had claimed was a murderer. Griff’s also a control freak and is somehow tied to the strange book that was sent to Clifford just before he died. As Evan reads the book — the translated journal of a WWII Japanese soldier stranded on a mystical island with an American Marine plane-crash survivor — he experiences a strange sense of déjà-vu. Wynne-Jones skillfully weaves the World War II journal into Evan’s own story, building suspense and keeping Griff’s part in the proceedings just obscure enough to create a cracking mystery. The author’s conversational tone provides occasional comic relief when things start to get too sinister, and the immediacy of his writing leads to some evocative descriptive passages (such as when Evan and his father listen to Miles Davis: “A night breeze stole into the room and was doing a slow dance under the jazz. Evan could feel it on the back of his neck, the sweat on him cooling. He shivered”). There’s a whole lot going on here: Evan’s and Griff’s shared heartbreak, exhibited in very different ways, and their own increasingly complicated relationship; the stark contrast between the mainly nondescript “Any Place” of Evan’s suburban Ontario and the horror of the desert island; and the unlikely friendship between enemy soldiers in the story-within-a-story. All these seemingly disparate parts come together in fascinating ways, resulting in an affecting and unforgettable read.

From the November/December 2015 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

The post Review of The Emperor of Any Place appeared first on The Horn Book.

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At the start of Tim Wynne-Jones’s The Emperor of Any Place (Candlewick, 14 years and up), Evan, reeling from the death of his single father, has no choice but to contact his paternal grandfather, Griff — whom Evan’s dad called a murderer. A gripping story-within-the-story unfolds about a WWII Japanese soldier stranded on a haunted island. How Wynne-Jones weaves these strands together is elegant, surprising, and exhilarating.

1. How much did you know about WWII Japan and Japanese folklore before writing this book?

TWJ: Very little! I’ve had the good fortune to travel in Japan, and loved it, but I cannot claim any particular prior knowledge of Japanese culture or folklore. For years I had wanted to write a World War II book to honor my father, whose experience of the war in Europe scarred him. What we would call PTSD now, but which he did not acknowledge as more than “shell shock,” haunted him and had an effect on us, his children. War does that: spirals down the years and decades, affecting generations. Whenever I tried to write myself into the war, so to speak, I found it impossible, and only after a great deal of time did I come to the realization that the European war was my father’s war. Which left me with the “Other War,” in the Pacific Theater, the one I knew next to nothing about. That gave me the freedom to research deeply, to dig and imagine and finally find a corner of the war that I could inhabit, fictionally.

As I was getting to know Isamu Oshiro, I realized he would have grown up with the folklore of his people just as I have grown up with the folklore of mine. And as soon as I started reading up on that, I knew it would be an integral part of Kokoro-Jima. I have played with the idea of the jikininki, giving them a unique back-story. This is what Bram Stoker did with Dracula: take an existing folktale and breathe new life into it. It has happened down the ages and was one of my favorite parts of writing this book.

2. Did you write the different threads of the story one at a time or were you working on them all at once?

TWJ: Oh, the threads. The threads were a complete schmozzle! There were so many threads — far more than made the final cut. At one point I had thirteen point-of-view characters all clamoring to tell their stories. “Me, me!,” they shouted until my head hurt. What really came first was the story-within-the-story, that of Isamu’s adventures on the island of ghosts and monsters. Then there was the very lengthy task of finding out who else was going to make their way to that mysterious place and how it would all play out and how those people were related to the contemporary characters. I drew a whole lot of family trees!

3. Did you make Griff up? Or is he based on someone you know?

TWJ: Griff grew out of my research and wide reading about the war, but with aspects of various people I’ve met, including my father. War shapes a man, whether he wants it to or not. A lifetime of fighting wars has shaped Griff. There was a whole novella-length part of the book that I eventually took out, about when Griff was a young man, Evan’s age, stationed in Iceland, before he was shipped over to the Pacific after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It was, among other things, a love story. He alludes to that in the novel, but originally I had the whole story as part of this book. That was when the novel was over six hundred pages long and…well, something had to go. But I’m so glad I wrote his story. It really helped me to get to know him and see that he wasn’t always like he is now. Once he was young and in love, with his whole life before him.

4. This book is: realistic family story; fantasy; mystery; ghost story; historical fiction; war story; contemporary fiction; story-within-a-story; and more. How’d you make that all work?

TWJ: Phew! Put that way, I’m not sure! It took a long time, I’ll say that much. I usually spend a year or so writing a novel. This one took more than three and a half years. There were so many parts of the story I wanted to tell, and I juggled all that in such a way that there were many, many versions. Gradually, the stories that needed to be there stayed and the other parts fell away. Along with the Griff novella, there was another whole novella telling us Hisako’s story as she lived through the invasion of Sampei. I think it was only when Evan rose to the top as my central character that I knew what I could include and what had to go, no matter how interesting it was to me in and of itself. This is, in the end, Isamu’s and Evan’s book, and there is nothing in it now that doesn’t shore up their stories and, hopefully, weave them together: the Emperor of Kokoro-Jima and the Emperor of Any Place.

5. Do you believe in the afterlife? (Or the beforelife, in this case?)

TWJ: Do you want the long answer, the short answer, or the truth? The afterlife has been a part of human culture — the Human Mind — for so many millennia it’s not something one can simply dismiss. I don’t believe in heaven as a place, per se, so much as a deeply rooted concept, but I do believe that the idea operates on us and through us while we are alive. So in a way it does exist as we live in a world with this unanswered and persuasive question hanging over our heads. It was only after a long time of writing this novel that I came up with the idea of preincarnation, and I loved the poetry of it. I quickly learned that there are other definitions of this word out there, but my own definition and its appearance on Kokoko-Jima captivated my imagination. I love the idea that there was — is — this magical island in the largest of our oceans where the future waits in ethereal form and recognizes us for who we are, if we happen to wash up on the shore there. I suppose that even if heaven is only a metaphor, it’s a particularly powerful one. And I take metaphors very seriously. A metaphor is how we describe something we have no description for. Sounds like heaven to me!

From the November 2015 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.

The post Five questions for Tim Wynne-Jones appeared first on The Horn Book.

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Was so very happy to be there, among the Bank Street writers and thinkers. This is our panel—Vicky Smith, Tim Wynne-Jones, and Daniel Jose Older (and me).

We read a few pages from each of our books in the early part of this video—Daniel reads Shadowshaper, I read from One Thing Stolen, Tim reads from The Emperor of Any Place. And then we answer the truly thoughtful, provocative questions provided to us/for us by Vicky Smith of Kirkus Reviews.

A treasured day.

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You know how I adored the Bank Street conference. You know how much I think of Tim Wynne-Jones's new book, The Emperor of Any Place (and Tim himself). And you know what a rock star Tim is, Tim who is practically the King of Canada, he's so good, who has won more awards for his wide-ranging books than I have the brain cells to count.

And look, just now, here is Shelf Awareness, reaffirming what we all already knew.

So you can imagine how very happy I am that Tim took the time, not long ago, to read This Is the Story of You. He taught me something new about the book. He shared these words. They will grace the book, alongside Dana Reinhardt's gorgeous kindness when it comes out next spring from Chronicle Books.

It is the book that finally answers that age-old question what if you were a castaway thrown up on the shores of your own life. Isn't it amazing what a storm blows in: memories and mysteries. So much lost and then something found amidst the shattered flotsam -- something you couldn't have even known you were missing. A beautiful story. — Tim Wynne-Jones, Officer of the Order of Canada and award-winning author of The Emperor of Any Place, among many other titles 

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Some day I'll be too old for this. This insistence (within myself/for myself) that I live each minute, see each place, feel each thing I can find my way to.

But I'm not there yet. I'm still the woman who arrives mid-afternoon to New York City, checks into a hotel with her husband, and starts to walk. This time to the Columbia University campus, which I had never seen (that old library, now the administration building, soars). To the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Past the fruit vendors on upper Broadway.

Then a subway ride to Columbus Circle and the Museum of Arts and Design (where an exquisite Wendell Castle show is in place). Then a walk-run (to the extent possible) through Times Square, and then more underground tunnels to the World Trade Center, where we were stopped by the power of those two pools, the remembered names, the roses and calla lilies left in respect and honor. Art can speak, and this art does—the down and the down of the water, the sound of that water, the return of the water, and the light behind the names.

It was the hour of the gloaming. The stone buildings burned red-orange inside the blue glass of the new tower, and that big Calatrava bird, soon to be the World Trade Center Transportation Center, was already soaring.

We walked a long length of Greenwich, then, met our son for dinner, watched him take off in an Uber for a date, made our way all the way back to 103rd Street, where all night long we listened to the trash trucks, the buses, the NYC talk just outside our window. I rose in the dark, put on a dress, and as soon as the sun was up I was walking again—finding a French bakery, buying an almond croissant, and working my way toward Central Park, where the early dog walkers were out and about and I could see the river just beyond them.

By 8:15 I was dancing with the extraordinary educator/advocator Susannah Richards in the lobby of Bank Street. Dancing, yes. I swear we danced. (Susannah is especially good at the twirls.) At Bank Street, a remarkable cast of writers, illustrators, educators, librarians, and book people were convening for what, in my book, is the best gathering of storytellers ever anywhere. Here the conversation circles around Thoughts as opposed to Marketing Platforms. The forum encourages conversation, consideration, a maybe this or a maybe that. This is hardly accidental. This reflects the good work of those who assemble this program, moderate the panels, conduct the keynote (thank you, Rita Williams-Garcia), and say yes. I bow down to you, oh Bank Street, with thanks especially to Jennifer Brown and Cynthia Weill, and then to my fellow panelists Daniel Jose Older and Tim Wynne-Jones—the three us led toward greater understanding about narrative risk by the exceptionally thoughtful questions of Vicki Smith of Kirkus Reviews. And with thanks to Chronicle Books, who said yes to the event.

When it was done, when I hugged my old and new friends goodbye, I was running again, to the subway, to the PATH, and toward my husband and son, where we walked some more, had an early dinner, and watched the lights of the World Trade Center blink on.

(Can I just thank here the little boy on the incredibly crowded train who must have read the panic of this claustrophobe on his face and said, "Miss? Do you want my seat?")

We drove home in the dark. I slept. I actually slept. The sleep of a satisfied woman.

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A few months ago I received an invitation from one of my very favorite people in all of young people's literature, Jennifer Brown. If our friendship has evolved over time, my respect for Jenny was immediate. As a Shelf Awareness reviewer, prize adjudicator, discussion leader, Bank Street visionary, and all-around children's books advocate, Jenny's opinions have mattered. She has welded intelligence with kindness and become a force. Today she serves as vice president and publisher of Knopf Books for Young Readers at Random House Children's Books—a position that is such a perfect fit for her myriad talents (and soul) that one imagines it was waiting for her all along.

Before Jenny took on that new role, she designed the 2015 BookFest@Bank Street and extended the invitation I noted above. Featuring Rita Williams-Garcia in a keynote, the day will include insights from scholars and writers Leonard S. Marcus, Adam Gidwitz, Elizabeth Bluemle, Cynthia Weill, Christopher Myers, Shadra Strickland, Raul Colon, Sara Varon, Joe Rogers, Jr., Laura Amy Schlitz, Jeanne Birdsall, Kat Yeh, Liz Kessler, and Monica Edinger. BookFest will also feature a panel titled "Pushing Narrative Boundaries in Teen Literature," moderated by the reliably smart and provocative Vicky Smith, the reviews editor of Kirkus.

I'm thrilled to be joining Tim Wynne-Jones and Daniel Jose Older on that boundaries-pushing panel. I was thrilled even before I'd read their new novels, The Emperor of Any Place and Shadowshaper, respectively. But now, having spent the last few days immersed in both, I'm even more eager. This will be a conversation. The kind of conversation that I crave like I crave a perfect peach or a ripe Bartlett pear.

The Emperor of Any Place is a work of supreme art. A nested story within a story (and, one might suggest, within another story) that carries the reader in and out of history. There's the present-day reality of a teen named Evan who has lost his father and must now endure (within the knot of his grief) the arrival of his once-estranged grandfather. There is, as well, the story inside the book Evan's father was reading when he died—the diary of a Japanese soldier stranded on a small Pacific island during World War II. The soldier is not the sole inhabitant of that island, nor is he the only one who ultimately writes inside those diary pages. As Evan reads the book, many mysteries emerge. Why was his father obsessed with this story? Why is his grandfather obsessed, too? And what is the truth inside these diary pages that were annotated, later on, by another visitor to that island?

Emperor is grounded in the fear of war and the haze of solitude and the ingenuity of survivors, both contemporary and historic. It is wholly conceived and executed, yet it trembles with mystery and a touch of magic. It is brilliantly structured but its power does not rest on its conceit. Tim may have pushed the narrative boundaries but he has not taken a single short cut, not expected the readers to follow just because he's feverently hoped they will. Every element adds to every element here. There are rewards for those who ponder, and, indeed, you could ponder all day and never find a fault line in this complex novel's execution.

Shadowshaper casts its own marvelous spell, builds its own mystique, is the sort of original work you would expect from an author who is also a musician who is also an EMT who is also a commentator on social order and disorder. Daniel has built a book about a young girl who discovers within herself a legacy power—and who must learn to harness it for a greater good. Sierra Santiago is a painter who can see, within the art of others, shadow lives and shapes, art that fades, murals that shed real tears. She is a daughter and a granddaughter in pursuit of hidden grace. She chases, and she is being chased. She rises to the challenge.

Sierra does all this within language steeped in salsa rhythms and Brooklyn gaits. She does this while pondering the color of her skin, the explosive nature of her hair, the discrete borders inside the border lands of race. Daniel is not just weaving a magical story here. He is telling his readers something about how it feels to live today within the fractures of society. About how it is to hope, despite the noise of now.

Authors of books that break the rules must know, to begin with, what the prevailing rules have been. They have a special obligation to steer their projects toward a higher grace, so that the strange ultimately does collide with a deep emotional truth, so that the fiction feels real, so that the experience of reading the story goes beyond admiration and straight into embrace. Fiction comes from a human place. The best fiction elevates the idea of the humane.

We'll talk about this and much more, I'm sure, at Book Fest. I'll learn; I'm sure of that, too.

Registration information for Book Fest is here.

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Trees are so much a part of our daily lives, whether we take them for granted or find ourselves fighting for their survival: so it is perhaps unsurprising that there are many stories from all over the world that feature trees, woods or forests as a central theme or ‘character’… … Continue reading ... →

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#78 Zoom at Sea by Tim Wynne-Jones, illustrated by Eric Beddows (1993)
26 points

This is far and away my favorite picture book. It did come out in the States but I don’t think it got wide distribution so this is likely its only vote. Even though it has black and white pictures, and I typically prefer color, this book is the perfect imaginative and an engaging book for pre- readers. What an adventure! I don’t consider this to be an early reader, the words and story are more complex. - Christine Kelly

That’s what I love about this list.  Every once in a while the Canadians will join together and promote one of their books.  And who’s to say no to them?  After all, this is not the first time this book ended up on the list.  Last time I took a poll it ended up at #75.  Now it slips three places to #78 but remains pretty consistent.  This book, the first in its own picture book trilogy (the other two are Zoom Away and Zoom Upstream), is clearly beloved by a certain sector of the North American continent.  Not that it didn’t come out in America as well, mind you.  But perhaps its distribution was selective.  Whatever the case, I’m willing to give it props.  If the Canadians say it is good, we should probably seek out a couple copies and see if they’re right.

The plot as described by BookList is, “A young domestic cat with sailors among his ancestors, Zoom tries paddling in the kitchen sink and sailing in the bathtub, but nothing satisfies him until he discovers a mysterious message from a seafaring uncle. Following directions, he enters a house, and there a lady magically calls up the sea. Zoom quickly builds a raft, sails away for a short jaunt, and soon returns.”

I’ve learned from my mistakes.  There was a bit of confusion last time around because Zoom at Sea seemingly has two illustrators.  In some places you’ll find it’s by one Eric Beddows.  In other places it’s credited to Ken Nutt.  What to believe?  Well, due to the fact that Eric Beddows and Ken Nutt are the same person (thank you again, Debora Pearson) a couple things are cleared up.

Want to know more about it?  Check out this review of the book in the CM Archive.  And when it came out in Canada in 1983 (I’ve included the American publication date beside the title here) it won the Amelia Howard Gibbon Award for illustration.

Publishers Weekly said of it, “Beddows’s intricately detailed black-and-white drawings convey just the right sense of mystery as the world created by both author and illustrator seems to hover tantalizingly between reality and fantasy, and the plucky hero has an adventure any child would envy.”

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a novel by 10 authors

What a book. What a beautiful, thought-provoking book.

I will say that I didn't like the last two stories of the book, which was frustrating. All of the stories use metaphor and symbolism to varying degrees (some intentionally, some not) and I didn't care for the taste of the final two. I don't want that to discourage you from reading the book - the rest of the stories are wonderful, and perhaps you'll even enjoy them all.

It is a remarkable little book. On the surface, it contains ten stories; but there are stories within stories. It gives you this feel of depth and magnitude. Each story made me feel differently, and they all made me think. One even made me ache a little, it was so good.

This would be a great pick for a book club. There's loads of discussions in here waiting to happen. Oh - and it made me want to take up photography. Perhaps I will.

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So. I just got back from a weeklong trip that took me to Somerville, Nova Scotia and environs, and the Manchester/Hooksett New Hampshire area. You can see some photos. This is what I did there.

• I went to a brown bag lunch with the Dalhousie students which I mentioned a few days ago. It was really a good time. It was the first brown bag lunch session of the year and there was a big group of first and second year students there, as well as a few faculty members. People had done their homework and had really interesting questions to ask me from many different facets of what I do. We had a nice talk.
• I helped Ryan Deschamps kick off the Learning 2.0 program he is doing at Halifax Public Libraries. I gave a talk on Learning 2.0 called Smart Tiny Tech and hung around for some of the other activities. The Learning 2.0 program is such a fun and non-threatening way to get people really digging under the hood learning some technology topics, I love seeing it being rolled out.
• I gave a talk at NSLA about Library 2.0 topics, a little more “big picture” and a little less specific. I like doing this talk because I can always take the general outline and add local 2.0 examples so it doesn’t look like all 2.0 development is at Ann Arbor District Library and a few other techie-seeming places. My favorite new find was the Natural Resources Library of Canada (Ottowa) and their del.icio.us links.
• Sunday I came home to the states, but not quite back to Vermont. Today I went to the NHLA Everything You Always Wanted to Know About 2.0 workshop where I presented with Andrea and Lichen. I gave a talk about Flickr and del.icio.us and one about Open Source Software which was a modification of Eric Goldhagen’s open source talk that I linked to here (direct link to his ppt). Then we stuck around for the gadget session and the geek session where we actually got a significant amount of hands-on time with the things we had been talking about. This was a really great and often-overlooked thing to be able to do.

Now I’m home and I’m uploading pictures and digging through backed up email and getting ready to start my work week tomorrow after some serious time off. Thanks to everyone who made the trip not just possible but enjoyable. update: Lichen has links to her talks and notes from the day up as well.

delicious, flickr, gadgets, geeks, halifax, l2, library2.0, me, nhla, nsla, talks

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