There's something about stories intended for children that resonate with me far more strongly than stuff written for adults, however brilliant it may be. This is particularly true with things I read in my youth. It is the reason that to this day authors like Bruce Coville, J.K. Rowling, Susan Cooper, Dr. Seuss, Tamora Pierce, and others remain such favorites of mine. I think these authors themselves would speak to the power of their words for all ages.
Shopping the other day at the thrift store, I saw a number of books from my childhood. I picked up three of the Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper, three of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede, The Skull of Truth by Bruce Coville, and Escape to Witch Mountain by Alexander Key.
I never read Escape to Witch Mountain as a child, but I was insanely in love with the two movies. I remember scenes from each, and the powerful feeling watching them instilled in me. A brief, relatively spoiler-free summary for those who haven't read or seen:
Tony and Tia are brother and sister. They are orphans, and they can do amazing things. Tony can move objects with his mind and visualize places he's never been. Tia can open any lock, has a perfect memory, and can speak with animals. A greedy man chases them to use for his own profit as they try to find out who they are and where they came from.
I read the book over the last couple of days. It's a tiny thing, 180 pages with large type, a quick read. Yet it still brought up in me the sense of awesome that the old movies did.
Quick note, a trailer to yet another remake of Witch Mountain aired during the Superbowl. It's called Race to Witch Mountain, stars the kid that raped the role of Will Stanton, and you would have to pay me quadruple digits in AMERICAN CURRENCY to get me to see it. (Just from the preview I've already seen Tony phase through solid matter and stop a truck by letting it crash into him. In other cases those italics might stand for excitement. In cases where my childhood is getting stomped into the pavement it indexes sharp pointy rage.)
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
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Oh man. I loved those movies so much. But I was a dyslexic young child and kept leaving the library deeply confused, my nose tucked into a copy of Witch World.
ReplyDeletePatricia C Wrede is awesome. And though not all of her stuff is for kids, Tanith Lee's Black Unicorn is one of my all time favorite young adult books (the sequels were okay too, but that one was best).