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Mint
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Art in children's books comes of age
Sasha was blue all of December—her best friend, Naisha, who had been with her since nursery, had shifted from Gurugram to Mumbai. 'We tried distracting her with dance and theatre workshops and playdates but she couldn't get over Naisha not being at school with her every day," says the seven-year-old's mother Radhika Chopra, a Gurugram-based freelance human resource consultant. A month later, Sasha chanced upon the book Afo and I on Pratham Books' Storyweaver website by author-illustrator Canato Jimo. The story shows a young boy racing home from school to catch his sister, Afo, just before she leaves the village for the city. Jimo's illustrations create a metaphor between the changing fabric of the child's life and the changing landscape of his village—dense forests giving way to stumps of trees, bulldozers rendering lush hillscapes barren. What appealed to Sasha was the way the illustrator captured the sense of loss of a companion. 'It's like he understood me," she says over the phone. 'The boy in the story realises that no matter how much he will miss his sibling, he can continue sharing moments with her through letters. I am also doing that with Naisha." Chopra was impressed with how Sasha created her own version of the story by seeing in the illustrations both a coping mechanism and a way of maintaining a connection with her friend. While Jimo created the visuals in the context of the changing topography of his home state, Nagaland, Sasha based the visuals in her school. Chopra shared the book with Naisha too. 'She is now working on her own version," she says. Books capture such big-small moments in children's lives. Stories about anxiety, coping with change, loneliness, the feeling of being one-of-a-kind in a crowd, and more, can help children explore emotions and topics they don't have the vocabulary to discuss with adults. And visuals go a big way in making these complex topics accessible to children of all ages, from pre-nursery to teenagers grappling with a web of emotions. A survey of the changing landscape of illustrations in children's books is fascinating, and somewhat riddled with envy for a person like me, who grew up in the 1990s on a very Western aesthetic of kids with blond-brown hair living in honeysuckle-covered cottages. Illustrations in books such as Famous Five and Hardy Boys showed term breaks spent camping on cliffs and moors, while I was at the gharial sanctuary in Lucknow during the annual visit to my grandmother's house or visiting echo point after echo point during a family vacation in Mahabaleshwar. Or there would be a gaggle of girls playing lacrosse in Malory Towers. With no Google around, we couldn't even search for what the game was. Also read: Isn't it time that Snow White learnt stranger-danger? One could only imagine what festive tables laden with roasts and pies would taste like while reluctantly eating roti-sabzi on returning home from school. Of course, these visuals from books imported from the UK or the US, or the exquisite oil works in Russian books, opened up windows to faraway worlds and cultures, but it was hard trying to find ourselves in them. Where were we—the kids living in Delhi, Mumbai, Mysuru, Dibrugarh, Madurai, Surat, Indore—in these books, which were for children like us but didn't reflect our context? For an 'Indian" visual aesthetic, we had only comic books such as Target, Tinkle, Amar Chitra Katha, Chandamama or books by the National Book Trust. Things began changing at the end of the 1990s when Tulika Publishers, set up in Chennai in 1996, started publishing picture books for 3-8-year-olds in nine languages, including English, Hindi, Tamil and Marathi. Around the same time, Tara Books, an independent publishing house in Chennai, too started experimenting with visual storytelling in terms of form, design and production techniques. When I came across Tara Books' Catch that Crocodile , authored by Anushka Ravishankar and illustrated by Pulak Biswas, in 1999, I was much older than its intended audience but I was captivated by its visual design. A handful of words—Snap! What! How! Why! Which!—looped around images in black, white and green to tell the story. It was a whimsical book with a 'subtle message on conservation'. It went against the cliche that images in children's books had to be elaborate and rendered in vibrant pop colours, or that they needed to be a literal take on the text. From a handful of books with nuanced illustrations, the number has steadily grown in the last 15 years, be it picture books, illustrated publications or wordless books. Within the pages of children's books, there is now space for diversity of communities, geographies, body types, regions, ideas and concepts. Illustrators bring their creativity to build layers into a story, perhaps through abstraction, use of inverse images, telling a story simply through shadows or employing anthropomorphic characters to show transformation. In Nani's Walk To the Park (2019), author-illustrator Deepa Balsavar moves beyond the cliches of Mumbai as a bustling metropolis with its skyline, beaches, Art Deco buildings and cinemas. She creates detailed storyboards of neighbourhoods that Nani and her grandson Venki walk through. Each lane has a quirky name, Lane of Dreams, Lane of Magic, Lane of Friendship, so on and so forth, featuring a vibrant carpet of flowers on the road, the school library, homes of dear friends, to reflect elements that make those areas special to the duo. 'At first, I had imagined a giant jigsaw with each frame being a piece of the puzzle. When the story is over, the pieces are placed to form a map of the neighbourhood," writes Balsavar in an article on the Pratham Books website. Also read: How to talk to kids about the Constitution The ecosystem of publishers, authors and illustrators is no longer afraid of showing things that many still believe kids should be shielded from. 'Life is unfolding around them in all its complexity and they are observing everything. If they don't find a reflection of that in books, there will be a huge dissonance," says Richa Jha, author and founder, Pickle Yolk Books. There is a lot of information online that is inaccurate and unsafe. Books are a safe way to make sense of issues children might not be comfortable asking adults about. 'There is a growing consensus among creators that everything that touches a child's life at all stages should be shown in books. We still have a long road ahead, but there is now an honest intent among creators—including illustrators—to address matters that kids feel strongly about. And they are not doing it out of tokenism," says Jha. In recent years, illustrators are being recognised for their role in the storytelling process. In 2022, the estate of abstract artist Mehlli Gobhai, who illustrated children's books such as Lakshmi the Water Buffalo Who Wouldn't , instituted the Mehlli Gobhai Award for Best Work in Children's Book Illustration. Bengaluru-based visual storyteller Rajiv Eipe was the first recipient of the award for Chitty: A Dog and Her Forest Farm , written by Serow and published by Kalpavriksh. Then there is the Big Little Book Award from the Parag Initiative of Tata Trusts to recognise significant contributions of authors and illustrators to children's literature in Indian languages. The award was first presented in 2016, and has since honoured artists like Atanu Roy, Proiti Roy, Nina Sabnani, Priya Kuriyan, Rajiv Eipe and Deepa Balsavar. Jha is one of the organisers of an ongoing exhibition at the India International Centre in Delhi, which looks at the evolution of art in children's books in India over the last 130 years. On view till 6 May, Becoming features 100 illustrations by artists such as Atanu Roy, Canato Jimo, Bhajju Shyam, K.G. Subramanyan, Lavanya Karthik, Priya Kuriyan and Satwik Gade. The work of these 75 artists and illustrators has been published over the years by 25 publishers, including Art1st, Children's Book Trust, Eklavya, Jugnu Prakashan, Kalpavriksh, Karadi Tales, Little Dipper, Zubaan and Room to Read. To walk through the show is to be reminded of India's history of art for children and the changing contours of the sensibilities and styles of illustrations in children's books from pre-independence to contemporary times. It takes one back to Abanindranath Tagore's Khirer Putul (1886) in Bengali, one of the first printed children's books in India for leisure reading, or the illustrations from Sandesh , a children's magazine started by Upendrakishore Raychowdhury. Also read: What artists' childhoods can tell us The show is a reminder of the fact that children's books are no longer meant to force-feed moral lessons or add merely to character building. Rather, the stories and the visuals are focused on children's lived experiences. One of the highlights of the show is art from the book, Laali (2024), written by Mamta Nainy, published by Room to Read India and illustrated by Suvidha Mistry. It shows a young girl peeking over her shoulder to see her white kurta stained with menstrual blood. Even today, advertisements for sanitary napkins shy away from showing the colour red. But the image by Mistry normalises the staining of clothes during menstrual cycles and takes away the shame associated with it. Illustrations start conversations about complex topics such as identity, neurodivergence, queerness and mental health. And parents are actively seeking out such books, more so after the covid-19 pandemic. 'Fifteen years ago when I started AA's Book Nerds book club for children in the National Capital Region (NCR), I struggled to find titles featuring substantial work by Indian illustrators, barring seven to eight names. Today, there are so many more doing great work. It has become a project of discovery," says Noida-based Archana Atri, who has closely followed this change. Shailaja Menon, consultant with the education theme of Tata Trusts, described an earlier era when illustrators were called in after a story was written to help visualise it. They often ended up drawing a faithful sequence of events as depicted in the text. For example, if the text read, 'She fell in the mud", the image would likely show a child flat on the ground and splashed with brown. In contrast, over the past few decades, picture books from the West have started influencing Indian children's publishing. 'The intent is that the text and picture together tell the story. Take the book, Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins, first published in 1967, in which a hen goes for a walk around the barnyard, mill and pond and comes home. She is unaware that a fox is following her. Nowhere in the text is the word 'fox' mentioned, but the reader can see it in the images. The pictures add another level of meaning to the text," says Menon. Illustrators add details that expand the child's imagination, such as bringing to life the vibrant sensory experiences of being at a mela by adding details that might not be described by the text. Often children notice these details in images that adults miss. Menon references a piece written by Goa-based educator Sujata Noronha in the book, Children's Books: An Indian Story . Noronha, who runs the library Bookworm, says children described a title as 'a rich man's book", pointing to the tiled floor in the visual, which they associated with affluence. So, the group went around the library, finding class markers in illustrations in children's books. 'Illustrations always carry a lot of meaning, both intended and unintended to readers, who interpret pictures based on their own prior experiences and connections," says Menon. 'As children's books have become more illustration rich, this carries both higher potential and deeper dangers—if a given issue is not tackled with enough sensitivity and awareness." Also read: How to talk to a child when a parent is sick Both readers and publishers are looking for stories about inclusivity and authentic lived experiences. For Bijal Vachharajani, author and editor, Pratham Books, the inspiration comes from conversations with educators and children during visits to schools and literature festivals. An example is the book Reva and Prisha (Scholastic India, 2001) authored and illustrated by Shals Mahajan, who brings their context of being a queer feminist, with both humour and practicality, to this story about an alternate family with two mothers and twins, Reva and Prisha . Caste is addressed in a new perspective in certain books. The illustrations by Nidhin Shobhana for Yogesh Maitreya's B.R. Ambedkar: A Life in Books (Pratham Books, 2022), for instance, sets the legendary leader's early life against a background of the stacks of books he loved to read, making the point that the foundation of his education became his tool to fight discrimination. 'When the steering wheel is in the hands of someone who understands a particular emotion or experience, you get imagery that is far more real," says Vachharajani, who is based out of Bengaluru. In When Adil Speaks, Words Dance written-illustrated by Lavanya Karthik (Puffin India, 2020), a child who is hearing impaired is shown making friends in the classroom. Then there is Vibhuti Cat (Duckbill, 2020), written by Shikhandin and illustrated by Shubham Lakhera about Magesh, who speaks in one or two words and twitches when he gets upset. It is cats that make him happy—he loves to draw them. The book has illustrations of cats in all shapes, hues and sizes to bring depth to this story about a boy who often feels misunderstood. Though he may not verbalise his emotions, through the artwork, you gain insight into the workings of his mind. A vibrant book, which addresses issues of human-generated garbage and its impact on the ecosystem, is Go Go Flamingo . Published in April by Tulika, the title has been authored by Devashish Makhija and illustrated by Priya Kuriyan. The layout is quirky with delightful images that loom larger than the text, drawing in kids of all age groups. Yet the theme underlying Go Go Flamingo is about debris and garbage clogging the environment and adversely impacting biodiversity. 'Their beaks now STUCK and their feathers WRAPPED," is accompanied by visuals of flamingos stuck in plastic water jars, and with surgical masks, mops and cutlery adorning their heads. '(It is) a thought provoking and timely tale about the hazardous reality that awaits these birds once they make their long journey southward," states the publisher's note. 'The drawings are inventively interspersed with photographs of real objects, creating a powerful three-dimensional effect." Atri says it is a positive trend to see themes of disability, difference and queerness being addressed visually in children's books. Guthli Has Wings or Guthli Pari Hai (2019) by Kanak Shashi visits gender identity with a child protagonist, who would rather wear a frock than 'boy's clothes". '(The) reality echoed in the flatness of the vibrant cut-out illustrations—Guthli's sparkle and sadness, her family's confusion, the big question mark that hangs over them all," reads a note about the book. The Hindi story was published by Muskaan, and its English version by Tulika. Also read: Children's Day 2024: Books about empathy towards the self and the world According to Atri, even with such books as aids, it is still difficult sometimes to get schools and parents to discuss such issues. She points to the book Ritu Weds Chandni , written-illustrated by Ameya Narvankar (Puffin India, 2022) about same-sex relationships and meant for children aged 5 and above. 'A parent said she didn't want her child to read it as she didn't know how to answer questions about same-sex relationships. I asked her why she presumed the book is about physical intimacy when it is about love," says Atri. On the other hand, she says, a nine-year-old who has been part of the book club from the age of 5, remarked, 'Ma'am, even if Ritu and Chandni's wedding is stopped, the love in their heart will remain. Can anyone stop that?" Atri points out that children are ready for such books and themes, at the right age. 'When children see two women standing side by side, hugging each other or raising kids together (in a book), it gets normalised, which wasn't the case earlier," she says. 'A child who belongs to such a family structure does not feel singled out." A lot of effort goes on behind the scenes to make sure representation of regions and communities from across India is accurate while going beyond the cliches. 'At Pratham Books, it has been crucial for us to create books that underscore the many Indias that exist. When I was a journalist, Zubaan, Duckbill or Tulika Publishers were opening up doors to many creators. Today, I can't put a number to it, but we are seeing so many more visual creators from different parts of the country— perhaps because of a lot more design and visual arts courses being offered," says Vachharajani. According to Sayoni Basu, editor, Hook Books, early readers from Duckbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House, a lot of conversations are taking place between publishers, authors and illustrators about inclusivity and representation. Sometimes, the author and the illustrator may have different visions. 'A lot of authors have a definite vision of how they see their books, which might not give enough scope to the illustrator's visual imagination. So we often act as intermediaries between authors and illustrators. We give as many visual references, facts and research material as possible to the illustrator to make sure they are equipped to add textural and visual layers to the story," she says. Some illustrators make every effort to get the representation right. They don't need to be from that region but should be familiar with it. 'For example, Zooni's Alarm Clock was set in Kashmir and illustrated by Pankaj Saikia, who hails from Assam. But I had seen his work, his familiarity with Kashmir was apparent and it comes through in the detailing," says Basu, who is based in Gurugram. Also read: What's new in the vibrant world of children's picture books? In the world of children's storytelling, there are many meaningful and repeated collaborations between illustrators and authors who have created a comfortable working relationship. Artist Rajiv Eipe and author C.G. Salamander have worked together since 2015 and their books include the ongoing Maithili and the Minotaur series (Penguin Random House India, 2021-) and the recent Song of the Asunam (HarperCollins). Both Eipe and Salamander are fascinated with mythological creatures that transcend the mainstream religious realm. Song of the Asunam features creatures lost to public imagination, such as a music-loving beast with rainbow scales and sharp talons, which inhabits a prehistoric world in southern India. 'Working with fantasy allows both of us to have a connection with the idiosyncrasies of the contemporary world. Salamander puts in a lot of references from Tamil movies and pop culture. So you will see a strange fantastical creature carrying a tiffin box, which is straight out of our school days. As an illustrator, I find it interesting to create monsters dancing to Tamil film lyrics. The result is weird, funny and endearing," says Eipe. Author Sowmya Rajendran and author-illustrator Niveditha Subramaniam have been friends from their college days in Chennai in the mid-2000s, studying English literature. They co-authored the well-loved Mayil series (Tulika, 2011-2018) which explores the dilemmas and questions of a curious pre-teen who grows into a young adult across the books. 'At the time, there weren't Indian children's books that discussed gender issues in a conversational, accessible way," says Subramaniam, who now lives in Rotterdam, Netherlands. 'We wanted to write for a young audience, whose gender constructs weren't fully formed, so they could start engaging with these issues earlier than we did." The characters and milieus in the books are informed by the writers' growing up experiences and middle-class Chennai upbringing. Originally, they pitched a fiction + nonfiction resource book that could be used in classrooms to discuss genderrelated issues. 'Radhika Menon of Tulika suggested that we rework it in the form of a diary," says Subramaniam. 'The intimate first person narrative meant that readers could connect to the character much more easily. We didn't want to be preachy; we wanted to open up conversations and are happy to have done that with this series." Rajendran has collaborated with other illustrators too. For the Hindi/English book Aana and Chena (Tulika Publishers, 2009), she worked with artist Renuka Rajiv on a story about an elephant who does not like the way he looks. He complains that his nose is too long or ears too small. 'The story came from the Malayalam word, aanachandam , or the 'beauty of' an elephant, which is of great cultural significance in Kerala. Also, each person's idea of beauty is extremely subjective. Renuka interpreted it by making his trunk several metres longer than what it ought to be. It is a beautiful way of showing that our flaws get exaggerated in our minds," says Pune-based Rajendran. Inspiration can come from anywhere. For The Weightlifting Princess (Pratham Books, 2018), it came from Rajendran's daughter who asked why all princesses in books and films, including the progressive Frozen , were thin. So Rajendran came up with the idea of Princess Nila, who is eager to win the Surya Championship, a weightlifting contest in her kingdom. The visuals by Debasmita Dasgupta are stylised, drawing elements from traditional art and using the eyes to convey emotions. Multiple subnarratives take place on a single page, adding depth to the storytelling. Eipe, whose art has tackled themes as wide-ranging as manual scavenging in a short 10-panel comic Scavenger Hunt , and life of an urban garbage collector in Anand to climate change and fantasy, says adding details keeps the reader's gaze on the story. With limited attention spans, texture and detail are ways of arresting the reader's eye. Often, a character from a previous book appears in a scene in another book. 'The sanitation worker, Anand, for instance, appears in a book about a street dog in Dugga . You don't see his face, but if you have gone through my books, you will find these cues," he says. Karthik, author and illustrator of the Ninja Nani and Dreamer series apart from When Adil Speaks, Words Dance , finds inspiration in the sights and sounds of Mumbai. She turned to writing and illustrating art while growing up on books by Manjula Padmanabhan and Pulak Biswas. 'For me, art and text work very closely together. I look for a style that is related to the subject and use elements from it to keep it engaging for the kids," she says. For instance, for The Boy who Loved Birds: Salim Ali , from the Dreamer series, Karthik turned to Mughal miniature painting, which Dr Ali himself was very fond of. 'The detailed borders were really interesting. I would add details in the foreground, and let them interact with one another. The colours were inspired from Mughal miniatures as well. The book is set in Mumbai, with a lot of humorous details, actual landmarks, the beach finding their way into the visuals. In one image, you can see Salim Ali flying, which is taken from the miniature style of showing a person transforming," she explains. One of the highlights of my reading list last year was Ogin Nayam's When the Sun Sets (Pratham Books). This wordless book invites readers of all ages to embark on a journey with the sun once she sets and goes home. In most mythologies, the sun is shown as masculine, but in this book, Nayam turns the representation on its head by portraying her as a hardworking woman, who casts aside the day mask of the solar deity and takes on the duties of a householder later. The elements are borrowed from the rich legends of Arunachal Pradesh and everyday sights from the state. Nayam's journey into the world of children's book illustration happened when Pratham Books chanced upon his Instagram page. His first book with them was Tine and the Faraway Mountain (2018), written by Shikha Tripathi, about a girl from Arunachal Pradesh, who became the first woman from the Northeast to climb Mount Everest. Also read: Books kids can curl up with all summer In 2024, he worked on his own book, When the Sun Sets . The underlying idea was about being alone but not lonely—something that stems from his own experience. Nayam was sitting in a cafe and daydreaming when the idea of a two-dimensional universe came to him. 'I started populating that universe with clouds in cosy sweaters. You know, how some people, like my sister, are always cold even in summer. So, I showed the clouds, which start crying when the sweaters go missing, and that's how rain happens. As an illustrator, I am not trying to offer tokenistic representation. I am just telling a story and all these elements are fitting into it," says the Itanagar-based artist. For the house that the sun lives in, he imagined an architect coming to Arunachal Pradesh from abroad and studying the houses in the state. He envisioned the man going back and making a house for himself that had elements from the East and the West. 'I am forever in love with watercolour. I sketched for a long time till 2012, but realised I was not evolving as an artist. I went to a bookstore, found watercolours and started experimenting with them," says the 35-year-old, who studied biotechnology in Bengaluru, followed it with a master's degree in mass communication, and then headed home. There are challenges to getting representation right, especially under deadlines. 'When you work within a specific time frame to represent a place that you are not from, and if you are not given enough research material, you can not do a region or community justice," says Rishita Loitongbam, 23, who studied communication design at National Institute of Design, Andhra Pradesh, and lives in Imphal, Manipur. She started illustrating children's books in 2023—Loitongbam's first book was The Child Who Played with Spirits published by Niyogi Books in the same year while she was in college, followed by a book for Pratham Books as part of her graduation project. Earlier this year she worked on Hook Book's Wrestling Day , written by T. Keditsu, a modern tale of a traditional sport from Nagaland. 'In 2021, I was going through some of my old school books and I found a chapter, Who will be Ningthou? It was riddled with inaccuracies about Manipuri attire and way of living. It must have been funny as a child, but when I grew up I realised just how misrepresented the state was. That really bothered me," she says. Loitongbam was clear that if she ever took up illustration, she would try to be better at representation. It is after she started working on projects that she realised how big a responsibility it really was. These illustrators are just as vibrant as the imagery they create, hailing from the worlds of technology, medicine, advertising, some are self-taught, others trained, but all of them are united in their vision to tell a meaningful and engaging visual story. Chitwan Mittal, founder, AdiDev Press and author of the book, Are Your Emotions Like Mine, worked with Shruti Hemani, an architect, for the illustrations. 'I liked her way of using traditional line art in a contemporary style. She did not use typically bright colours but subtle hues. The idea is to show a child, who goes through different emotions through the day, and allow moments of pause and reflection. She has achieved that with great skill," elaborates Mittal. Today, with social media becoming a platform for showcasing talent, she is able to connect with Indian illustrators from Ireland, Canada and the Caribbean, who are bringing different lived experiences to their art. They are adding nuance to ideas of home and belonging in the storytelling. Ultimately, stories need to speak to everyone—from that gregarious kid in class to the quiet one who fears being judged by peers. The text and the visuals go a long way in normalising differences and empowering children. Take Wings to Fly , based on the story of paralympian Malathi Holla, in which a little girl in a wheelchair dreams of plucking ripe mangoes off trees and chasing hens and chicks. The whimsical rendering of visuals by Arun Kaushik don't make disability a subject to be pitied but give the protagonist agency. Or The Boy Who Wore Bangles illustrated by Shruti Hemani, which takes the young reader through the sweet-sad emotions of Bhargav, who has been forbidden by his father from wearing bangles. The visuals—the contrast of the vibrant Navratri festivities and the swirling vortex of emotions that Bhargav is feeling—add depth to the conversation between the young child and his grandmother about gender norms. 'This kind of storytelling will not just impact kids' lives right away but will shape a lot of their views for the future," says Jha.
Irish Independent
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Rick O'Shea: I wouldn't want to live in the world of Strumpet City but I keep going back there
James Plunkett's novel makes utterly real the small aspirations and awful inequalities of the years before the Easter Rising I'm taking you to dark, less comfortable places this week, and with good reason. Every year I throw an eye over my reading list to see where the gaps have been, and to see if I'd like to nudge the balance a bit. Some years this meant adding in a few thrillers, or some older books that I'd always wanted to try; in recent years it has meant seeking out more writing in translation. When I was growing up, everything I read was for escape – the Famous Five, Three Investigators, the Hardy Boys and a lot of science fiction. I graduated into graphic novels when I was a teenager. Watchmen, V For Vendetta and Alan Moore's Batman series The Dark Knight Returns scratched itches I didn't even know I had. When I was in college, the escape was to America – I tried Joseph Heller, Bret Easton Ellis, and Tom Wolfe. You could say the same about the films I went to, the music I listened to, the TV I watched.
New York Times
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Rick Atkinson Doesn't Want to Stand on a Soapbox
In an email interview, the Pulitzer Prize winner welcomed more writers onto his turf and revealed a 'soft spot' for one character in 'War and Peace.' SCOTT HELLER What books are on your night stand? Leo Damrosch, 'Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World'; Ada Ferrer, 'Cuba'; Ron Chernow, 'The Warburgs'; David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts, 'Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare From 1945 to Ukraine'; Brian Capon, 'Botany for Gardeners: An Introduction to the Science of Plants'; and, for grandchildren sleepovers, Maurice Sendak, 'Where the Wild Things Are.' How do you organize your books? My 'books to get' list for 'The Fate of the Day' exceeded 2,500 titles, of which I own almost half, including 19 volumes of 'The Papers of George Washington.' Those books snake through my home office and up through the third floor, alphabetically by author. Titles that I won't need for the final volume in my American Revolution trilogy are consigned to the basement, the garage or a storage locker in Rockville, Md. In the living room I've got a built-in case for books by my former Washington Post colleagues. Bob Woodward alone occupies a long shelf. What kind of reader were you as a child? Ardent and middlebrow. In grade school I devoured the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift, then as a young teen discovered the enchantment of books like 'The Complete Sherlock Holmes' and 'Ivanhoe,' as well as the magical rhythm of our language in poems like Alfred Noyes's 'The Highwayman' and Longfellow's 'The Wreck of the Hesperus.' Reading William L. Shirer's 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich' when I was about 15 put ideas in my head. What's the last great book you read? Hilary Mantel's 'The Mirror and the Light,' the final volume of her dazzling trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII. I read it very slowly before bedtime while writing 'The Fate of the Day,' hoping for inspiration. Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? I've got a soft spot for Pierre Bezúkhov from 'War and Peace.' What's your favorite book no one else has heard of? 'Conquerors' Road: An Eyewitness Report of Germany 1945,' by Osmar White, an Australian journalist who bore witness with a conviction that, in his words, 'the living have the cause of the dead in trust.' As a former war correspondent, I find it extraordinary that White had trouble getting the thing published. While generously praising 'The British Are Coming,' Joseph J. Ellis maintained that you are 'less interested in making an argument than telling a story.' Do you agree? Absolutely. If you believe your calling is to be a storyteller, don't regret not being a polemicist. I've also been called an antiquarian, a pointillist and a scribbler. Guilty on all counts. What are the challenges in writing the middle volume of a trilogy? You can't presume that the reader has read Volume 1, so a bit of back story must be stitched in without being tedious. Recurrent characters like Washington and King George III reappear in the narrative, but I can't backtrack excessively as we watch them grow, evolve or devolve in the second volume. Perhaps most important for a narrative writer is the need to brachiate, like a gibbon in the treetops, using momentum to keep the story moving. What was the most useful advice your editor offered on this book? I've had the same editor, John Sterling, since 1987, for all eight of my books. I distilled his wisdom into a four-word injunction that I keep on a sign next to my writing desk: Get On With It. Tell me about a supporting character in the book who deserves even more recognition. Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene is familiar to readers of military history, but should be known to all Americans. A lapsed Quaker from Rhode Island, he was second only to Washington as the Continental Army's indispensable man. Along with crediting 'a hundred or more' archivists, librarians and historians, you offer some thanks 'for corralling misbehaving electrons.' Explain. I can break a computer just by looking at it. I'm grateful to those who fix them. What impact might government cuts have on your ability to research the next volume? Covid was bad enough in constricting archival research and library visits for a couple years. Let's hope, for the sake of scholarship, that there's no shortsighted squeezing of the National Archives, Library of Congress, national battlefield parks and other cultural troves. If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? John Hersey's 'Hiroshima.' It's short. Which subjects do you wish more authors would write about? At the risk of encouraging talented competitors, war. The more lyrical voices that capture and convey it, the better the chance of readers comprehending, viscerally, how grotesque it is. You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite? Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Edward Gibbon, who was a member of Parliament during the American Revolution even as he was writing 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'
New York Post
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow' review: Netflix's Broadway play is an assault on the senses
Theater review STRANGER THINGS: THE FIRST SHADOW Two hours and 45 minutes, with one intermission. At the Marquis Theatre, 210 West 46th Street. The Mind Flayer has come to Broadway. I don't mean the giant, spider-like creature of Netflix's science-fiction series 'Stranger Things' — though that nasty fella is here, too — but the entire beastly play 'Stranger Things: The First Shadow.' The non-musical show, which shrieked open Tuesday night at the Marquis Theatre, is supersized and monstrous. My mind? Flayed. Nothing is left unscathed. Jump-scare noises blow out your eardrums. Blinding lights and raining sparks make you crave Anna Wintour's indoor sunglasses. And there's so much billowing haze that on the evening I attended, a family in the front row sprinted up the aisle after five minutes as though their house had caught fire. Of course, if you're in the market for watching (fake) animals being mutilated onstage, run don't walk. Some of the blaring special effects in director Stephen Daldry's dizzying and sometimes nauseating production from London are impressive, though they're nothing you haven't seen before. The coolest one, when a huge ship materializes magically, unfortunately happens in the first 10 minutes. Prime rib for the appetizer, lettuce to follow. 5 Louis McCartney and Gabrielle Nevaeh star in 'Stranger Things: The First Shadow' on Broadway. Evan Zimmerman Many others are theme-park-ride cheesy. At one point in Act Two, I half-expected to be sprayed by water canons. But all of the expensive visuals are in service of a throwaway play in which the real villain ain't Vecna — it's the writing. As you become increasingly bored of the cruelly stretched plot, in which what should've been a 20-minute TV flashback is padded out into a nearly three-hour schlep to the inevitable, you're waterboarded by the stagecraft. Series writer and producer Kate Trefry's freshman stage drama is a prequel that gives Henry Creel — the baddie from Season 4 — the Darth Vader treatment. The question: How did a well-intentioned boy become 'One,' the freaky forefather of Millie Bobby Brown's 'Eleven'? 5 The coolest special effect occurs inside the first ten minutes. Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman Henry's journey starts when his troubled family, including his dad liquor-guzzling Victor played by T.R. Knight, moves to Hawkins, Indiana, in 1959. As soon as the loner (Louis McCartney) arrives in the sleepy town, local pets start getting violently offed. Psychic and telekinetic Henry is a bit of a male Carrie White — Stephen King's supernatural classroom outcast — except weirder with fewer layers and no hope. Bloodshed? About the same. Curious as to what killed the cat, Joyce (Winona Ryder's character, played by Alison Jaye apparently with the same bangs for 30 years), Hopper (Burke Swanson) and Bob Newby (Juan Carlos) investigate the gruesome crimes like hyped-up Hardy Boys. All the while, Henry's powers — and hormones — get supercharged. He starts crushing on Bob's sister Patty (Gabrielle Nevaeh), and their flirtation forces the audience to endure a mystifying Vegas showgirl dance number with pink feathers. It's the strangest thing. 5 The show is an origin story about young Henry Creel. Matthew Murphy Speaking as a longtime fan of the Netflix series, the boy's sad story and dull subplots surrounding it are not vigorous enough to sustain such a long sit on Broadway. And if you don't know who Dr. Brenner or the Demogorgon are, beware the Marquis escalator. Trefry, who thankfully has trimmed about 20 minutes since I first saw it in 2023, tries to bring some lightness to the drear with a cringy play-within-a-play maneuver. Joyce and the theater kids put on a silly show, in part, to trap the animal murderer, like we're watching 'Hamlet' and not just hams. These over-excited high-school students behave like they're in a bus-and-truck tour of 'Grease.' Though our refrain is definitely not 'Tell me more! Tell me more!' 5 The teens of 'Stranger Things' act like a bus-and-truck tour of 'Grease.' Matthew Murphy What lifts 'The First Shadow' out of the Upside Down is the fully devoted and altogether enthralling performance from the gifted newcomer McCartney. He takes a creepy part that's a lot of twisting and shouting and turns him into a terrifying psychological case study — a 'lil Hannibal Lecter. McCartney, a young star, seems genuinely anguished as he writhes like an electrocuted ballet dancer. The script prevents the character from ever being a likable person, but thanks to the 21-year-old from Northern Ireland, he's a hypnotically watchable one. 5 Louis McCartney is the No. 1 reason to see the show about the origins of 'One.' Matthew Murphy But there's only so much one actor can do, no matter how talented. The material, screechy and heartless, bares little resemblance to its warm source. Part of what makes the series work, by the way, is the alchemy of its casting. Without the original kids and their 1980s garb and sweet bond, the soul of 'Stranger Things' is missing. What's mostly left is dumb and Duffer.
CBC
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Amateur ghostbusters Luke Hutchie and Matthew Finlan are back with Season Two of Ghosting on CBC Gem
Official Trailer | Ghosting with Luke Hutchie and Matthew Finlan 1 hour ago Duration 1:10 What is Ghosting about? Ghosting with Luke Hutchie and Matthew Finlan is back for Season 2 and this time they're crossing the country with a new set of guests and ghost-worthy locations. Described as " The Adams Family having a cocktail party," in each episode, actors Finlan and Hutchie invite their famous friends to a famously haunted location and attempt to get to the bottom of the mystery: Is this Canadian locale truly haunted? Using real history and folklore, Finlan argues that their ghostly experience is real, while Hutchie remains skeptical. In a spirited final deliberation at the end of each episode, they reveal their verdict — haunted or not? What qualifications do you need to host a show about ghost hunting? None at all With their love of horror and unnerving haunted locales, Ghosting is a little bit Hardy Boys, a little bit Ghostbusters and always a wild ride that guarantees a rollercoaster of laughs, scares and supernatural tricks. Watch as Hutchie and Finlan prepare to unleash a demon in the season opener. Luke Hutchie and Mathew Finlan prepare to unleash a demon in Season 2 of Ghosting 1 hour ago Duration 1:28 Along with guest star Priyanka, they break upon a box to anger an alleged poltergeist at Hamilton's Tuckett Mansion. Which celebrity guests will appear in Season 2 of Ghosting? Ghosting features horror actors turned amateur ghostbusters Luke Hutchie (EZRA) and Matthew Finlan (Hell of a Summer) with a new celebrity guest for each episode. This season, they'll be joined by Priyanka (Canada's Drag Race), Percy Hynes White (Wednesday), Joel Oulette (Trickster), Veronika Slowikowska (What We Do in the Shadows), Nikki Roumel (Ginny and Georgia), Humberly González (Tarot), Jordan Connor (Riverdale) and Krista Nazaire (The Hardy Boys). Is there a trailer for Ghosting, Season 2? Yes, scroll to the top of the page to watch it! What famous haunted locales will Luke and Matthew visit in Season 2? Tuckett Mansion, Hamilton, Ont. Craigdarroch Castle, Victoria, BC The Caribou Hotel, Carcross, Yukon Bell Island Mines, NL Lunenburg Academy, NS Fulford Place, Brockville, Ont. Fort Henry, Kingston, Ont. Kawartha Settlers Village, Bobcaygeon, Ont. Where can I watch Ghosting, Season 2? Season 2 of Ghosting drops on CBC Gem and CBC's YouTube channel Friday, March 21. Catch up on Season 1 now.
