| The InSide Story: A Conversation with Margaret Atwood |
by Kristen Switzer
Ingram Library Services recently caught up with internationally acclaimed author Margaret Atwood for the following conversation:
K-12: Many of your readers--including countless librarians--who read Cat's Eye and The Handmaid's Tale in college or as adults will read Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda to their children. What is that like for you to have adults and children as fans?
Margaret Atwood: Comfort with reading begins in childhood, when parents or other loving adults read to children. It creates a “safe” place where--nevertheless--dangers can be explored. (And, in children's books, hopefully, overcome.) My first children's book was called Up in the Tree. I illustrated it and lettered it myself because it was cheaper that way, and that was important in those early days of Canadian children's publishing. I made that book when my child was very young, so it is a little kid's book--very simple, and it rhymes, and has a crisis and a rescue. Groundwood Press has just done a facsimile of it, with the original strange two-color printing. Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut began as a story I used to tell my child when she was older, and had long curly hair that took some time and doing to wash and comb. The other alliterative books followed on from that.
I think my children's books function as protected spaces for me. I look at darker things quite a lot, but the kind of children's books I write are light, and have happy endings.... That's a relief, when I can manage it.
K-12: You use alliteration in Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda as well as in your previous children's book Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes. Why did you use alliteration, and how does it challenge you as a writer?
MA: I used alliteration first in the Princess Prunella book because children think it's funny, and it allows you to use bigger words that the child might not know--but does know then, through the story. It's also a game--the adult may stumble when reading an alliterative text, and kids think that's pretty funny, too. I also like to put in horrible and unlikely food items. And they're somehow even more unlikely and horrible when alliterated.
K-12: Bashful Bob has been raised by dogs--and thinks he is a dog. How did this idea come to you?
MA: I've had dogs. Some of them are very attentive to children. But also it's a very basic fantasy--that we can have animal friends, that we can understand their language. Just think of Bashful Bob as a kind of proto-Tarzan.
K-12: What were some of your favorite books as a child? What about them appealed to you?
MA: Childhood comes in many stages. Early on it was Beatrix Potter (cannibalism barely escaped--very gripping), and then The Wind in the Willows (many adventures, naughty Toad, lovely dwelling interiors), and then things like Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and A Christmas Carol (second chances--we love those), and The Lost World, and the Curdie books, and Anne of Green Gables, and The Sword in the Stone.... I loved the E. Nesbit books, too, and Grimms, and all the Andrew Lang books. The Freddy the Pig books. Charlotte's Web. Essentially, I'd read anything.
There's one book I read that I've never come across again. It's about a poor girl who has a potato, and the potato runs away--the refrain goes: “Potato! Potato! Come back! Come back! Or my mother will beat me, Alas! Alack!” I remember that much, but not how it ends... any clues?
K-12: You wrote the Afterword for L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables almost 15 years ago. What is it about that book, as well as Anne of Avonlea, that captivates young girls? What would you compare from today's children's books to Anne of Green Gables? Do you feel there are comparable books, or has children's literature moved in another direction?
MA: I liked the first Anne book best. Orphan is despised at first, then overcomes--it's a Cinderella story, and we never tire of those.
There's a tremendous amount of good reading for children now. I wouldn't know where to start. (And yes, I liked Harry Potter, and His Dark Materials, and the Lemony Snicket books, and...) They talk about children “reading up,” but people like me also “read down.” A good children's book can be read on many levels.
K-12: What projects are you working on now? More children's books? A new novel?
MA: A deep dark secret. But I do have a book of poems coming out in fall 2007. It's called The Door.
K-12: Do you have a favorite library moment you'd like to share with us?
MA: I once dreamt that I resurrected up through the lawn of the Victoria College Library in Toronto and walked into the library, where I did my studying. I was decomposing and covered with mud, but the librarian, Miss Honey, did not bat an eye. Librarians--always ready for anything.
K-12: Anything else you'd like to add?
MA: I had a library card from the time I was nine. I used it a lot. There is really--still--nothing to equal that hopeful, excited feeling of opening a book to the first page. (And, by the way, the brain activity when you're reading is second only to the real thing....)
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