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A Giant is Gone: Ray Bradbury Dies

 

Today I learned that Ray Bradbury had died.

From the day I snagged a library copy of Fahrenheit 451 (due to a school board election in which one candidate ran on the platform of removing it from the curriculum), Ray Bradbury had me hooked. It’s funny how his short stories sneaked in to the most unusual of places. I found  “The Flying Machine” and “A Sound of Thunder” in my middle school English textbook, and my junior year, after reading “The Fall of the House of Usher”, my American Lit teacher stuck a photocopy of “Usher 2000” in my hands. There were anthologies edited by Martin Greenberg that had his stories within, and somewhere in my days as the librarian for the science fiction society I belonged to in college, I acquired a used hardcover copy of  three of his anthologies bound together- The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles, and Dandelion Wine.  I just read a short essay on Bradbury criticizing him for not having written anything of note since the 1960s, but I completely disagree- although these are probably still my favorite stories, I love his writing for making me think.

I heard Bradbury speak once, on a double bill with Douglas Adams. I have to say that Douglas Adams, as much as I love his writing, was not a great speaker. Bradbury, however… Even in a wheelchair, mere days after a stroke, he was compelling and fascinating. Age, and even illness, did not stop his agile mind.  Just this year, I discovered the “official” graphic novel of Fahrenheit 451, with an introduction by Bradbury, where he wrote about how, as time passed, he had been able to reflect and recognize the origins of the book. Which has, ironically, been the target of censors many times, including his own publishers. If not for libraries, this book could never have been written- it’s a true dime novel, written on a typewriter in the basement of a library, at the cost of ten cents per half hour. You can find it at your library and check it out today, knowing that libraries have not only defended the book, but also allowed for its creation in the first place.

Bradbury resisted having his books come out as ebooks, but they did recently come out in that forrm. If you’ve never read his work now is an excellent time to start, and you have all kinds of choices.  A giant of literature, with the talent to create compelling, disturbing, and sometimes terrifying visions of the future present, he will be missed.

 

 

Posted on June 6, 2012 by , 1 comment

Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012

It wasn’t just because I learned of the death of the great illustrator and author Maurice Sendak yesterday that I was thinking of Where the Wild Things Are. I have a little boy who sometimes acts very much like Max in his wolf suit, and even runs around at home in a dragon costume. Yesterday afternoon at the park he really was a Wild Thing, and when we got home I sent him to his room. Eventually, he came out, ate dinner, and hugged me. All Wild Things need to know that they’ll be fed and loved.

I had it off the shelf this morning, because I volunteered to be a guest reader in his classroom this afternoon, and my daughter asked me to read it. We read it through and then went back and looked at the pictures, which tell the story more than anything else. We read “That night a forest grew in Max’s room…” and we turned the pages, looking at the room as the walls fell away to the forest and the night sky. When I read this book to children, I always ask them if they think his room really became a forest. She said yes. For children aged 4, 5, and 6, much of the time this is a real journey. Sometimes it’s a scary one, and sometimes it’s liberating, and sometimes a little of both. In the safety of storyhour when you tell kids to roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth, it can be fun to get carried away (not for everyone, some kids are truly frightened). It’s one I love to read out loud. It’s a story that’s so much a part of the inner being and outside actions of so many kids.

Here’s a snippet I found online, courtesy of FridayReads, that expresses so well the way kids engage with Where the Wild Things Are. When most of us think of books, even picture books, we think of reading- the written word, or, if we’re reading out loud, the verbal experience. Sendak’s work can’t be fully appreciated with just a reading, though, or even through the incredible artwork that tells so much of the story wordlessly. For some kids, it’s an immersive, emotional book- something they live, not just something they read, as with the child in this story Sendak shared with Terry Gross at NPR:

Sendakquote

Sendak’s work, and his life, are a gift to us all, if not an easy one.  Rest in peace, Mr. Sendak. But not too much peace.

Posted on May 9, 2012 by , Reply

William Sleator Dies

Lois Duncan (Down a Dark Hall) and Mildred Ames (Anna to the Infinite Power) terrified me first but when I think of the first truly creepy, crawled-inside-my-head, book that I read, it’s always House of Stairs by William Sleator. The viciousness of what even children will do to each other in desperate situations, the trapped claustrophobia, the idea that adults would experiment on children so cruelly… it left a permanent mark. I’ve read many of his other books- Blackbriar, Fingers, Interstellar Pig, The Green Futures of Tycho, Singularity… I remember waiting anxiously for The Boy Who Reversed Himself. My middle school book discussion group read Fingers and wrote him a letter, and he wrote us back from Thailand. And as a teen I was lucky enough to take part in a one day writing workshop with him. He’s tagged as a science fiction writer a lot of the time, but the very human darkness and, sometimes even evil, that pervades so many of his books is what left its mark on me. Whatever genre you want to assign his books to, William Sleator was a brilliant writer. A quarter century after I first read House of Stairs (which was published originally in 1974) those books are still on my bookshelves. And I still read them.

This great author of YA fiction died Tuesday at age 66. I am glad he wrote so many books. I know he touched many lives with his writing. I hope his books will stay in print, and that libraries will stay in schools, so the teens of today and tomorrow will have the chance to discover them, just as I did, in my school library.

Posted on August 4, 2011 by , Reply
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