'Mansion' Inspired by The Black Cat?

A fan named Matthew shared his thoughts with us on what he thought we some of Bellairs's purported inspiration for The Mansion in the Mist:

Myriad references to THE BLACK CAT (a 1934 horror film from Universal Studios, starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi) exist in THE MANSION IN THE MIST.  Wasn't John Bellairs a Karloff fan?  (Karloff is (subtly) alluded to too.)

That tidbit popped into mind when this was posted to CraveOnline recently:

Desire To Raze The Sanctuary That Was Tamarack Hall

There isn’t a lot to say about John Bellairs’s teaching days in Gary, Indiana, which occurred now over half a century ago. What little we’ve heard paints a pretty comical portrait of a brand-spanking new teacher taking his first steps in the world of academia.

Dickens, Schuler & Bellairs II

We’re celebrating the 200th anniversary of celebrated author Charles Dickens’s birth this year. Born February 7, 1812, in Landport, Portsmouth, England, Dickens created a plethora of memorable characters with whimsical names across a dozen major novels and numerous short stories.

Bibliofile: Lewis Barnavelt Series

We recently came across a rather unique set of covers for the 12-book Lewis Barnavelt series. We’re not really sure the publisher or the format (for all we know these could be another slew of e-books...hooray) except they’re void of a lot of clutter. It’s a weird color scheme: titles labeled in light black on a dark black background with some sort of light black colored pictorial representation of something from the book. It’s sort of nice to see these – more so, to know they exist. After years of pen-and-ink hash marks and ornate color paintings, these simplistic two-tone covers are a refreshing back-to-basics approach that is both cute and clever.

Ouch. We said cute. Sorry 'bout that. Anyway...

Interview: Corey Mallonee

How close do you pay attention to the language that an author uses to weave together his or her story? Enough to catch every idiosyncrasy? Freelance writer and aspiring author Corey Mallonee has John Bellairs – and Lewis Barnavelt especially – to thank for making him a reader and it’s Mallonee’s reflections on John’s use of language that brought him to our attention. Originally from Bangor, Maine, a smallish town not entirely unlike New Zebedee, though with considerably fewer evil warlocks to its history (he’s never run up against any of the Windrow clan to our knowledge), Mallonee has been an accidental sports reporter, worked in the book publishing industry, and currently lives in upstate New York.

Who’s Who: F.C.F. Childermass

Marcus Childermass, a professor of literature, named his four sons for characters in the novels of Tobias Smollett [The Chessmen of Doom; 6].

Memoriam: Atha Tehon

Atha Tehon Thiras, credited professionally as Atha Tehon, was the award-winning children’s book designer and art director at Dial Books for Young Readers from 1969 to her retirement in 2001.  She died Feb. 15.

Alert: Johnny Dixon & eReads

We’ve discovered the four additional books in the Johnny Dixon series have been released by eReads. The Drum, the Doll, and the Zombie and the three titles written by Brad Strickland - The Hand of Necromancer, The Bell, the Book, and the Spellbinder and The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost - all have colorful covers similar to the other titles in the eReads editions of the series.

Who's Who: Marius Ambrose

When Anthony and Miss Eells stumble upon an all-too-familiar mansion in New Stockholm, Wisconsin, they discover its former owner, Marius Ambrose, disappeared mysteriously in the mid-1930s [The Mansion in the Mist; 105].

Memoriam: Laurie Main

Australian actor Laurence "Laurie" Main died February 8. He was 89.

Dickens, Schuler & Bellairs

We’re celebrating the 200th anniversary of celebrated author Charles Dickens’s birth this year. Born February 7, 1812, in Landport, Portsmouth, England, Dickens created a plethora of memorable characters with whimsical names across a dozen major novels and numerous short stories. In a 1983 autobiographical sketch, John Bellairs confessed to being quite a fan and "read[ing] and re-read[ing] Dickens" often, as well as mixing "the everyday and the fantastic" into his own books: "...the common ordinary stuff - the bullies, the scaredy-cat kid Lewis, the grown-ups, the everyday incidents - all come from my own experience."

Time Capsule: Feb. 1952

February, 1952: Come one, come all! Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire beckons you to visit the quintessential New England village, complete with the prominent town common and twelve surrounding homes all on the National Register for Historic Places.

Bibliofile: Das Gesicht im Eis

When you think of foreign language editions of John’s work the first thing that doesn’t come to mind is The Face in the Frost. The adventures of Lewis and Johnny (and Anthony, once) are the usual tales translated for overseas readers, not the escapades of Prospero and Roger Bacon, the two main characters in a story that seemed crammed with wizards because they were wizards. This was rectified with the publication of Das Gesicht im Eis in 2009.

Who’s Who: Simon Legree

In an attempt to persuade Anthony to become a library page, Miss Eells assures him that she is no Simon Legree [The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn; 18].

Time Capsule: 1962

1962: We all know Bellairs was fond of awkward architecture...this year we’re celebrating fifty years since the completion of one of the craziest cathedrals to ever have been dreamt up.