Katherine Rundell
Sep. 14th, 2024 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithKatherine Rundell is her generation’s J.R.R. Tolkien
LONDON — Dragons never go out of style; so naturally, one of them arcs across the cover of Katherine Rundell’s “Impossible Creatures,” wings unfurled for maximum glory. That seems to have done the trick: The novel, newly available in the States, was an instant bestseller when it came out in Britain last year. It would be easy to overlook the little guy at the bottom left of the illustration — a baby griffin named Gelifen. He is the last of his kind and the true heart of Rundell’s story, in which two kids, Mal and Christopher, must save a magic realm from environmental catastrophe. Griffins are “joy birds,” a scientist tells them. “Cornucopial life admirers.”
That also describes Rundell, a fellow at St. Catherine’s College at Oxford and the latest in that university’s celebrated tradition of scholar-fantasists — C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Philip Pullman. She is a high-spirited evangelist for her various passions (in no particular order: children’s fiction, Renaissance literature and the natural world). Her first book for adults, “Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise,” from 2019, was an essay-length retort to the colleagues who claimed that her talents were wasted on the genre. “I felt that that was so shortsighted, so ludicrous,” she said, when we met over the summer. “A really great children’s book can hook a child. It can put a fish hook through their imagination and root them in the world of books for the rest of their lives.”
It's important for children's books to have some interest for adults, because it is adults who typically buy them for children, and often read them to children.
LONDON — Dragons never go out of style; so naturally, one of them arcs across the cover of Katherine Rundell’s “Impossible Creatures,” wings unfurled for maximum glory. That seems to have done the trick: The novel, newly available in the States, was an instant bestseller when it came out in Britain last year. It would be easy to overlook the little guy at the bottom left of the illustration — a baby griffin named Gelifen. He is the last of his kind and the true heart of Rundell’s story, in which two kids, Mal and Christopher, must save a magic realm from environmental catastrophe. Griffins are “joy birds,” a scientist tells them. “Cornucopial life admirers.”
That also describes Rundell, a fellow at St. Catherine’s College at Oxford and the latest in that university’s celebrated tradition of scholar-fantasists — C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Philip Pullman. She is a high-spirited evangelist for her various passions (in no particular order: children’s fiction, Renaissance literature and the natural world). Her first book for adults, “Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise,” from 2019, was an essay-length retort to the colleagues who claimed that her talents were wasted on the genre. “I felt that that was so shortsighted, so ludicrous,” she said, when we met over the summer. “A really great children’s book can hook a child. It can put a fish hook through their imagination and root them in the world of books for the rest of their lives.”
It's important for children's books to have some interest for adults, because it is adults who typically buy them for children, and often read them to children.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-09-14 08:11 pm (UTC)Many of the best children's books are like that: there is a level for adults too. Cartoons, like the old Looney Tunes were like that too.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-09-15 08:16 pm (UTC)Yes ...
Date: 2024-09-15 08:27 pm (UTC)However, there are some books written for children that still surpass what is made for adults. You want to learn any science? Get the Golden Guide. You need to jumpstart civilization? Get all of them you can find.
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2024-09-16 03:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-09-16 12:37 am (UTC)Yay!
Date: 2024-09-16 02:30 am (UTC)