Thursday, July 29, 2010

Any old rubbish?

Thank you to 100 ScopeNotes for directing me here: Twilight Saga: how to write a children's best-seller By Philip Womack.

Read the whole article, it will help with the "cat" thing.

Successful children’s books tap into a child’s hunger for the safe made strange. They rejuvenate ancient folktales of order rising out of chaos. They speak to a child’s subconscious and form its collective experiences. Rowling and Meyer do all this, with enough metaphorical cats killed between them to fill a small cemetery. Whatever their literary merits, the books act as forerunners to a bewildering grown up world, where evil is dressed as glamour and where ordinary people are called to be heroes.

4 comments:

tanita✿davis said...

...um, yes. I did need help with the metaphorical cats. Because, honestly, "Wha???" was my reaction.

NOt much changed AFTER reading it, but whatever. These Brits...

tanita✿davis said...

I love how Forks is in EASTERN AMERICA, too. Eejit.

David T. Macknet said...

See, the thing is, the Telegraph is sort of like an ugly hybrid of The Star and the Los Angeles Times. Let's hope it can't reproduce.

There's a lovely Scottish phrase which could describe many of their writers: Tumshie-Haed *. And many of their readers as well, no doubt.

* (For more on "tumshie", see our post on the term.)

Camille said...

Oh my gosh, The term tumshie-haed is now a permanent part of my vocab. I love numpty too.

Also laughed at the idea of Washington state as Eastern America...