goodbye Madeleine L'Engle

According to Publishers' Weekly, Madeleine L'Engle died last night at the age of 89.

While I'd read a ton of books before picking up A Wrinkle in Time, and certainly had favorites, A Wrinkle in Time was the first one that hit me on many layers. It was the first one I could read more than once and find something new in. It was an anchoring type of book in my life as a writer. I knew Grosset and Dunlap published Nancy Drew, but as far as a book by a "real" author, it was the first such publisher I was aware of. (And FSG was the first publisher to send me a personal rejection as well, so I have doubly warm feelings towards them.) It was the first book that made me have positive feelings towards science as well (alas, unlike Meg, I have never been gifted in math and science. But looking through her eyes I could see something elusive and wonderful about it. As long as someone else was doing the math.)

In ninth grade civics we had to write to two people who worked in a job we wanted to do someday. I wrote to Madeleine L'Engle and Gordon Korman. I didn't expect to hear anything back. I did. A short note, true, but it was a paragraph written in her hand on a flyer about her books.

Thank you, Madeleine. Rest in peace!

Playmobilland

If you're looking for an amusement park to bring your under-10-year-olds in Germany, I can recommend Playmobilland. We went there as a last-gasp-of-the-summer event (school starts Tuesday). Here's what it has going for it:

It's cheap for an amusement park. Only 9 Euro per person, as opposed to something like Legoland or Disneyland. Okay, so we aren't going there every day, but for an uncommon event it was all right. (Plus, you have to exit through the very large store, so I'm sure they make more money off the visitors than just the entrance fee.)

You can go on a rainy day. Some of it is under a roof.

There are essentially no lines, and your entrance fee gets you onto everything. Okay, so they aren't fair rides, but at this age the kids are actually happier doing things that require doing, not sitting strapped to a seat.

Nearly everything involves climbing! Also exploration. Huge slides, rope ladders, climbing tunnels, platforms, place to throw balls at "bottles" on the wall of an old west saloon, hula hoops, rafting (my three older kids navigated a raft all by themselves with paddles and a pole), and even panning for gold. They had a sand pit where they'd flung gold nuggets into it, and you could sift for it. We picked up quite a lot. One of the kids has a thing about gold and jewels, so this was great for him. There was a water section where you could play with Playmobil boats in all kinds of water troughs. Actually, there were a LOT of water things, so presumably on a hot summer day (which is wasn't), you could have a LOT of fun accidentally getting wet. Each section of the park is based on some Playmobil toy, so there was a life-sized castle (complete with a throne that played a fanfare when a kid sat there), a pirate ship, a grotto, a farm (you could "milk" the cows and water came out), etc.

The food was all kid-friendly, AND nutritious. Fruit, quark (kind of like yogurt), noodles, chicken nuggets, salad, etc. And because it was Germany, there was also a bar at the side (in case the adults had had enough and needed something a lot stronger??) Then in the middle of the food area they had various Playmobil toys set up in giant buildings like the toys--castle, Viking ship, house, etc. And inside were the actual toys. A zillion kids were just playing. We were there for hours. Daughter #1 made a friend and they went around to all the places together. In the background, they had extremely restful music (like Pachelbel's Canon and other such soothing, baroquey stuff) playing--fun with calmness. And every five minutes all over the park the loudspeaker came on to announce another missing child, either one they'd found, or one they were looking for. "If you have found this child, please bring him to the administration office." Right, like a kid will go with a total stranger who announces he's lost and should go with said stranger. Keeping track of people was difficult, but at least we didn't lose anyone.

Anyway, if you go on vacation somewhere cool, and all your kids want is to find a good playground, I can definitely recommend Playmobilland!

soulless books

Okay, I think I've isolated one thing that makes some fantasy books with a huge promotional push so soulless. (Not all of them are. Some are completely delightful. But others would not be selling so much if they didn't have $$$ behind them.)

Info dump.

It's in the world-building. The prose can be perfectly functional, even lovely. But if back story is falling like a blizzard and every time I turn around I'm finding more back story shoved under the door and through the windows and in between the cracks, I don't have time to feel for the character. Of course you have to fill in the worldbuilding and back story. But there's a difference between talking to me as a reader, going over the head of the character, and coming to me through the character. Often this upload of information straight to the reader is done through the pluperfect--he'd read all about it on the internet, she'd told him and told him not to follow the rats, etc. That tense is just fine on its own, but it's not okay to use as a tool for dumping emotionless information at me without the filter of the character's prejudice.

So, stop telling me stuff and let me feel and experience it for myself.