SLJTeen Talks with Catherynne Valente
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Amy Cheney - Alameda County (CA) Library
Catherynne Valente's latest novel, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Feiwel & Friends, 2011) is my new favorite book—and one with an interesting backstory. In Valente's adult novel Palimpsest, the protagonist has a favorite childhood book, but its identity is never revealed. Fairyland, which was originally offered for free online, chapter by chapter, was written in response to readers who wanted to know what the favorite book was. Already being compared with The Wizard of Oz, The Phantom Tollbooth, and Alice in Wonderland, Valente's new novel has also been called "divisive" by School Library Journal blogger Elizabeth Bird, as well as "ungapatchka" by Marjorie Ingall in an article titled "Paradoxical Storytelling for Children" in the New York Times Book Review. On the other hand, the book's many fans include Neil Gaiman and Peter S. Beagle, it's received all of those starred reviews, plus the 2009 Andre Norton award, which honors outstanding sci-fi and fantasy novels for young adults. Recently, I got a chance to play fangirl and talked to Cat about her first young adult novel.
Fairyland is full of word play and book play, which had my synapses firing. Is your life as vibrant as your writing?
I like to think so! I live on an island off the coast of Portland, Maine, an island full of ghosts and secret festivals in ruined military forts, lighthouses and frozen tides and accordion players and amazing history. I live on the edge of a deep, dark woods. I have a wonderful husband, and I love my city. I have a house full of animals—a German shepherd, a golden retriever, a Maine coon cat and a tabby stray that's stuck around, along with six gorgeous chickens. I am lucky enough to travel a lot and have made friends all over the world due to blogging solidly for the last 10 years. I knit and spin and blow glass, and I cook like crazy. I often tour with a wonderful singer-songwriter who has done albums based on my books, and we put on circus shows of singing, reading, acrobatics, fire spinning, and dancing. I think it's important when you make your living being imaginative and whimsical, in interpreting experience into story, to feed your heart as much as possible on just being alive and doing things.
How did you acquire such a wonderful vocabulary?
I've been a voracious reader since I was four years old. I had two parents and two stepparents, all of whom had very different reading habits, and I tore through all of their collections—horror and classic literature and murder mysteries and nonfiction. I also did my undergraduate work in classics, Greek and Latin—and let me tell you, that will build up your vocabulary until you're boxing OEDs. Sixty percent of English vocabulary comes from Latin, and another sizable chunk from Greek. This is a useful thing for a writer
Were you an imaginative child?
Oh, very much so. I was telling stories very early on. I've seen video of five-year-old me on Mount Rainier babbling about the wizard who lives under the mountain and his treasure and his dragon. I read a lot of books and didn't really have any friends, so I lived in my head. The woods and trails and swamps behind my house—I grew up in Washington State—were, as far as I was concerned, one part fairies, one part dinosaurs, one part ninja spies, one part witches, and maybe half a part trees and birds and dirt and such.
Your book engages all of the senses, as many great books do. But it seems to me that the wonderful words you use sing in my head. As a writer, is that what you're aiming for?
I love to read aloud. I read all my chapters to my husband as I finish them. I started out as a poet, so the rhythm and sound of language is so important to me. And as a classicist, I know that Homer and the other great poets were oral storytellers. I always want my books to have that sense of a good friend sitting next to you by a roaring fire and telling a story. But I also have a very strong visual imagination. I've always said that if I could draw at all I'd have been a painter. I see each scene in my head, in full color and in great detail. I'm always trying to perfectly transfer it from my head to the page.
Where do librarians fit in your own life?
I think of librarians as a kind of warrior priesthood, preserving the written word and protecting it from the ravages of budget cuts, bringing those words to the world and teaching children about how important they are. When I see a book of mine on a library shelf, I feel like it is profoundly real—a real live book that gets to live in a library with the best books ever written.
Back when monasteries and convents were a more vibrant part of the community, people used to send their sons there to be educated and made ready to take their place in the world. I feel like that's my relationship to librarians. I send them my children—my books—and they grow up in the library, with kindly priests to evangelize for books and learning, who deliver my little ones safely into the hands of readers.
Do you read your reviews and readers' comments?
I do. I shouldn't, but I do. Sometimes, with my adult books, I have to stop at one point or another, and not listen to the cacophony of opinion if I ever want to have the courage to write another book. But everyone has been remarkably kind and enthusiastic about Fairyland. Some of the things people have said just about stop my heart with wonder. I'm so pleased and grateful that the book has found an audience and that people seem to want to hold onto it so tightly. That's the best any writer could ever hope for.
I was at a Neil Gaiman presentation, when an audience member asked, "Boxers or briefs?" So I'll end with the same question.
A couple of years ago, they started selling "boy briefs" for girls, and I love them. Neither uncomfortable lacy things nor granny panties, just perfect and comfortable. Always black.
VALENTE, Catherynne. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. Illus. by Ana Juan. Feiwel & Friends. 2011. Tr $16.99. ISBN 978-0-312-64961-6. CD $29.99. ISBN 978-1-4418-7760-4. Playaway $79.99. ISBN 978-1-4558-1350-6.
This article originally appeared in School Library Journal's enewsletter SLJTeen. Subscribe here.<
