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Volume 40 Number 2 Spring 2018 ISSN0708-594X IN THIS ISSUE • I@ABCDEFG@H EIGJ SKLB • SLFC@D CKN@FLO – Gillian O’Reilly • TKL CSARN ML@ACBOKGY PBCHBNI – Sylvia McNicoll Plus all of our regular features Logo variation by Barbara Hartmann Introducing… Emil Sher By Heather Camlot “Sometimes you can feel old-sweatshirt comfortable with someone you just met and two- left-shoes awkward with people you’ve known for ages,” says T—, the protagonist in Emil Sher’s Young Man with Camera, describing how he feels about his new school librarian. I feel the same way about Emil. I had met Emil a year ago at the Forest Festival of Trees party in Toronto. As these things go, we spoke long enough to establish that we were both from Montreal. But when I contacted him last summer to discuss his participation in CANSCAIP’s Packaging Your Imagination (PYI), we quickly learned just how much in common we have, from living blocks apart, to our fathers growing up in the same neighbourhood, to our favourite place on earth—our parents’ cottages in the Quebec Laurentians, some 30 minutes from By the time we re-met at PYI, I felt old-sweatshirt each other. comfortable, like I had known Emil my whole life. And by the time I finished interviewing him for That makes a lot of sense. The world isn’t full of this profile, our commonalities grew so large that happy endings, so why do we disproportionately he commented on Twitter: “If our small world gets need them in our fiction? The back cover quote by any smaller it’ll fit into our hands.” author Gary D. Schmidt, whom we both (not It’s a captivating phrase that exemplifies the surprisingly) adore, reads: “It reminds us that Art poetic beauty of Emil’s writing, regardless of always confronts, and sometimes confounds, whether he’s crafting a novel, a picture book, a Darkness.” Emil smiles. “I love that quote. To have poem, a play, a film, a radio drama—or a tweet. an author whose work I love affirm my And for his writing, he has intentions… he got it.” accumulated numerous honours, “I think part of the including a Canadian problem with bad writing Into the darkness Screenwriting Award, a gold medal for children is it’s too black Darkness seems to be a common at the New York International and white. I write in the thread in Emil’s work. With the Festival and a Governor’s General greys…We underestimate exception of his musical adaptation nomination. of Roch Carrier’s picture book The Emil has a way of turning a a child’s need to confront Hockey Sweater and to a lesser phrase and playing with words that and ultimately understand extent the children’s play Bluenose, reminds me of Norton Juster and that there is darkness in his oeuvre on the whole is quite his classic novel The Phantom this world… Books can serious, with topics ranging from Tollbooth. They both write with an help us navigate through the Holocaust to mercy killing to unapologetic love of language. the darkness.” bullying. While not all of these “After I started getting stung works are for children, he says that with names, I twisted their sharp ends into writers shouldn’t be afraid of the darkness and something too round to cut,” T— says in Young shouldn’t draw a line between older and younger Man with Camera. “In the first grade I turned audiences. Moron! into Morondo. In fifth grade, Retard! “I think part of the problem with bad writing became Retardo. Adding an o softens things. for children is it’s too black and white. I write in Otherwise we’d say ‘Hell’ every time we answer the the greys. And they inherently know that life is phone.” grey,” he explains. “We underestimate a child’s Emil and I start our conversation with Young need to confront and ultimately understand that Man, the young adult novel that Emil says he paid there is darkness in this world, and that’s okay. a price for. The ending angered many people. It That’s the joy of writing. Books can help us made me mad the first time I read it; it made me navigate through the darkness.” That said, mad the second time as well. “I think for every kid children’s literature should never be part of a who makes an active choice that will affirm solution to a problem, but a doorway into something within us as readers, there are probably understanding who we can become, he says. half a dozen who don’t make those decisions. The “We’re all works in progress, and literature can decision that T— makes is rooted in who he is. It’s inch us further along that road. We are complex, a true decision. I don’t regret making that truth,” we are fallible, we are layered. And books can help Emil explains. “But ask yourself, why am I so us discover this.” frustrated with T—? Why am I so angry with T—? The best place to see the darkness is from the I would rather provoke anger or dissatisfaction margins of society: T— is marginalized because of than indifference.” his scars, Hana Brady in Hana’s Suitcase is 2 marginalized because of her religion. If you’re in characters he wants to invest in. He points to the middle of things, Emil explains, you can’t see Hana’s Suitcase by Karen Levine and the beautiful the big picture, but staying on the edge and relationship of a brother and sister sent to writing from that edge gives one an invaluable Theresienstadt concentration camp in perspective into human nature and how we treat Czechoslovakia; to The Boy in the Moon by Ian and mistreat one another. He finds the people on Brown and the journey of two parents to raise a the margins quite compelling—why are they severely disabled son; to Edward the “Crazy Man” there? By chance? By circumstance? by Marie Day about a boy’s attempt to help a man He says, however, that he with schizophrenia. They don’t would never dwell in the have to be loveable, or even darkness. There has to be likeable characters, but if he’s enough light to give readers going to spend time with them, hope and to show us that we he has to be touched by their can get through this. If you go company. beyond the margins, there is an He also likes to work with absence of light; too far in and themes. The Hockey Sweater is you’re blinded by it. about identity, Hana’s Suitcase is about hope. A theme helps From page to stage guide the challenge of preserving and transforming The funny thing is, Emil is the world of the story. The incredibly funny. His is a self- theatrical production must be a deprecating humour, a well- different experience, but one crafted one-liner. When I that is hopefully as meaningful emailed him from Montreal as the original experience. while attending The Hockey In Hana’s Suitcase, Emil includes a screen Sweater: A Musical, he replied, “I’ll be thrilled if projection. In the stage direction, he writes: “A you hang around for the second act.” The play single name—an inmate at Theresienstadt— received a standing ovation. And get this: Emil was appears then fades on the screen. Another name a warm-up act for Jim Carrey at a Montreal appears, then fades. The names appear and fade, comedy club. We list other people who write dark one at a time.” but are hilarious in person, like director Atom The people are here, then they are not. Egoyan and author Michael Redhill. “Humour is “Some audience members will get it in a far more challenging to pull off, and it isn’t taken moment, some will get it weeks later, some may as seriously. Maybe that’s why I’ve resisted,” Emil never fill in the blanks, but I absolutely want says. “When humour fails, it fails miserably, when subtext, I want the reader or audience member to drama fails, it’s not as deep. But I probably should. fill in the blanks as they choose to. Or they may It would make for a more compelling balance.” He not,” Emil says. certainly pulled off humour with The Hockey He’ll read a book several times and highlight Sweater, with lines like “God loves everyone. Even what he finds theatrical about it, what works in the Maple Leafs” and the surprise reveal of what terms of character, what specific lines of dialogue the priest wears under his cloak (I’m not telling). are gorgeous, what aspects of this written world he Which brings about the discussion of turning wants to preserve on the stage, which can also be books into plays. The first thing Emil looks for is 3 depicted visually, through set, costume and A world of his own direction. “It’s like clay,” Emil says. “I have to shape His own story ideas come from various places. The it into something else.” picture book Away, recently named to the 2018 He begins the structure by writing scenes on USBBY Outstanding International Books List, tells post-it notes and then rearranging those post-its the story of a child who refuses to go to sleep-away in terms of moments, which he does with his camp, all conveyed through post-in notes. It was fiction as well.

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