Alternate Histories in Children’s Literature

An email appeared late last week regarding an entry at the Academic Call For Paper Database seeking scholarly papers on the subject of alternate history in the children’s literature genre:

Historical fiction as a genre within children’s and young adult literature has been traditionally viewed by some as unpopular. Alternate History is fiction where something has changed in the historical timeline: take a known and tweak it. The resulting story can be about that change or the backdrop for a story, where the “what if” is less about the Changed World Event and more how that Changed World Event changed the world, people, culture and their points of view. It can also be great fun for the person who is familiar with the history, to find references to famous people, places, and things that are now just a bit different.

"House" at 40 Fan Art: Here it is Lewis: Barnavelt’s Folly

The House with a Clock in its Walls (1974, Dell)

In addition to The House with a Clock in its Walls being Bellairs’ “first book for young readers,” it was also his first book to hit paperback. Ace first released The Face in the Frost in 1978, but it was still four years after Dell released House. The edition, on Dell’s Yearling imprint, featured all of Edward Gorey’s interior artwork but enlisted a different illustrator to create the cover.

Bombing Around with Cats

The bombing with cats is a difficult matter
As the history of warfare is blurry
First strap on firepower and light with a spatter
And hope toward your foes will it scurry.

My apologies.  But two things came to mind reading this recent article entitled "Cat Bombs More Prevalent Than Previously Thought": the image looks like a spacey sci-fi cartoon from the 1980s (even though it's centuries old), and this is one of the dumber ideas our species has had.

But wait.  They did it with birds, too.

Review: Treasure "Kiddos...Will Love These Stories"

Book review: The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn

Secret Witness

We were curious when references to Secret Witness began popping up in our inbox recently and it turns out it was because of this book's connections to John's hometown of Marshall.  The subtitle to Blaine Pardoe's book gives us the gist of the plot - "The Untold Story of the 1967 Bombing in Marshall, Michigan" - but not being familiar with the story we dug around a little more and found the synopsis:

Edward Gorey: Therein Illustrated His Honour

Something About the Khaki Mailboxes

Drab, drab! I am the olive-colored mailbox.

"House" at 40 Fan Art: Keep Calm and Find That Clock!

What's What: Fusebox Dwarf

For Christmas Uncle Jonathan created something called the Fuse Box Dwarf, a little man who popped out at you from behind the paint cans in the cellarway and screamed, “Dreeb! Dreeb! I am the Fuse Box Dwarf!” [The House with a Clock in its Walls; 121].

Something About the New Zebedee Waterworks

Spouting water in many pipes.

What Think You of These Page, My Lord?

AdWeek's GalleryCat blog posted a chart mapping page lengths in fantasy series not too long ago:

The chart illustrates the reader’s unofficial maxim: “the books of a fantasy series tend to get fatter.” They also noted: “I actually made this a few years ago, which is why there are a few books missing. Found it crawling through old files on my computer! Unfortunately I don’t have the source, and can’t be bothered to update it.”

We reflected briefly on the word count analysis that a fan presented us a few years ago, and thought we'd do our own page count comparison of the Bellairs series.  Here goes.

BiblioFile: The House with a Clock in its Walls (UK)

A mere five years after The House with a Clock in its Walls was published in the United States it was unleashed in the United Kingdom by Hutchinson and Company, the first of three Bellairs titles so released. This would be the first of six Bellairs titles that would surface "across the pond" between 1978 and 1987.

25 Points About "House"

A. D. Jameson offered readers of his blog 25 points about The House with a Clock in its Walls.  Some are well-known to established readers, others are his observations about plot points.

Alert: La casa nella bruma

We don’t know much more at this point other than it seems artist Alexander Daniloff is at it again for Happy Planet Books. The Italian publishers released the original Lewis Barnavelt trilogy not too long ago with Daniloff providing artwork for La figura nell'ombra (The Figure in the Shadows).  A number of Bellairs titles have been mentioned on their website since then but it is only now they appear to be considered for released.