By Katherine Paterson

Transcript Episode 81 RAR 81 – Katherine Paterson works of hers are her essays where she shares her thoughts on reading and writing books for You’re listening to the Read-Aloud Revival children. Unfortunately, those essays of Ms podcast. This is the podcast that helps you make Paterson’s are out of print. You can still find used meaningful and lasting connections with your copies. You want to look for titles like, A Sense of kids through books. Wonder, The Invisible Child, and Gates of Sarah: Hello, hello, Sarah Mackenzie here. Excellence. I have high hopes that Penguin will You’ve got episode 81 of the Read-Aloud Revival. decide to reprint Invisible Child -- maybe if This is an episode I have been waiting for. I have enough of us make noise they will. I really think to tell you that I got to talk to somebody who is that Katherine Paterson’s essays are exquisite. one of my heroes and the reason why is because One in particular is a masterpiece. Now, we had a she has written some of the most exquisite fantastic conversation, I really enjoyed my time essays and pieces on reading and writing for with her. But one of the things I kept doing was children. When it comes to somebody who really quoting from one particular chapter in A Sense of understands the spirit of a child and the heart of Wonder the one I think is a masterpiece. It’s a child and what a child gets from reading stories called, Yes, But is it True? You know when you and encounters when they read stories, is read a story to your children and they ask you Katherine Paterson. I have a copy of her book afterwards, “Is it true?” Well, maybe we should here called, A Sense of Wonder and it is dog- think twice before we tell them “No, the author eared to the max. Now there’s some bad news made this one up.” Instead of trying to just parse and some good news; the bad news is her out my favorite parts of this essay I got collections of essays are out of print, the good permission from Katherine Paterson to read the news is you’re going to get some goodness chapter in its entirety to you here on the podcast. today on the podcast, and I can’t wait to share it We’re going to kick things off today by me with you. Before we dive in I want to remind you reading that chapter aloud, then you’re going to that if you have not gotten the Read-Aloud get to hear my conversation with Katherine Revival booklist you definitely want it. Over Paterson. If you’d like a transcript of this episode 70,000 families trust the Read-Aloud Revival (and I have a hunch once you hear this chapter booklist. This is the best place you can go to find you’re going to want a transcript) go to out what to read next with your kids and make ReadAloudRevival.com and look for this episode sure it’s a win. Get it for free at RARbooklist.com. with Katherine Paterson, it’s episode 81. OK, you ready? Katherine Paterson is the two-time winner of the National Book Award and the Newbery Medal. 3:52 Yes, But is it True? by She’s authored many of the books you are Katherine Paterson probably familiar with from your own childhood. Like, Bridge to Terabithia, Jacob Have I Loved, A friend sent me recently a Miss Peach cartoon The Great Gilly Hopkins, and others. My favorite strip. At the left is a huge hand-lettered sign that works of hers are not actually her books for says “Arthur answers the eternal questions” with children (don’t tell her I said that!), my favorite a large arrow pointing toward Arthur who is being READALOUDREVIVAL.COM Page 1 Transcript Episode 81 questioned by a ponytailed seeker of wisdom. proof of what Kipling says, “We need only to look “Arthur,” she asks, “is there anything worthwhile at our own Biblical heritage and find that in the in life but truth and beauty?” “Yes,” he replies, beginning there was a story.” Perhaps the more “there is love. Also Chinese food.” I do not need Orthodox among us would hesitate to say that it to tell you that the reason my friend sent me this was the story that shaped the truth but surely it cartoon is unrelated to my devotion to truth, has been the vehicle for the truth for as long as beauty, and love. I am, in fact, distinctly the human race can remember, and such a uncomfortable in the face of eternal questions, delightful vehicle. It is almost a truism that the yet, there is one eternal question which, I as a most exciting words in the English language are writer of fiction for children and young people, am once upon a time. But for those of you who are often asked by children and never asked by suspicious of delight let me remind you of the adults. “Is it true?” the child asks, “is your story practical value of the story. Bruno Bettlehiem in true?” “Ha,” you say, “we adults don’t ask that his book, The Uses of Enchantment advances the question because we know you write fiction and idea, which, though not original with him is one fiction is the act of feigning or imagining that that he is a psychiatrist eloquently champions, which does not exist or is not actual.” Ergo fiction that the child who hears fairytales is able to face by definition is not true. I’m being unfair. Some of the dark and wild side of his or her nature and to you are wiser than that. Although you may never comprehend on an unconscious level the voice a question to the writer you will come to incomprehensible adult world. Moreover, the one of my novels, or to anyone’s novel with that fairytale gives the child hope that he will succeed, same question, is it true? And my answer for you overcoming the giants within and without, that he is the same answer that I give the child who asks. will live happily ever after. Bettleheim does not “I hope so, I meant for it to be true, I tried hard to feel that other kinds of stories have the same make it so.” I’m a graduate of a small elemental power as the traditional fairytale. This Presbyterian college. We had a college president is a point I would want to argue but the who was a brilliant man full of affirmisms for inarguable point is that stories will not have any every occasion. One of Dr. Liston’s affirmisms power if they are never heard or read which has stuck with me through the years. It is this: brings me back to a concern about education. when the Greeks decided to get practical they Why in places of higher learning is the reading of began running restaurants and shining shoes, by fiction considered some kind of aberration? A which, I think he meant that civilization as well as recent issue of Psychology Today told about a education takes a downward spiral when it student at Princeton University who finally ceases to ask what is truth and concerns itself transferred. He felt he was socially ostracized at primarily with what is measurable. In the Princeton because in his free time he would read beginning of all things was God. And in the novels. You mustn’t embarrass college students beginning of human consciousness was the much less college graduates by asking them story. In an address to the Royal Society of what novels they have read in the past year, and Literature Kipling once said that, “fiction is truth’s yet, for those who are seeking truth, which is elder sister.” Obviously, no one in the world knew nearer the truth? Stone and Churches statistically what truth was till someone had told a story.” For READALOUDREVIVAL.COM Page 2 Transcript Episode 81 factual description of the average adolescent girl never gotten up the steep slope of Mount Doom or Tolstoy’s picture of Natasha at the ball? had the faithful Sam not flung us on his back and carried us up crawling at the last. We know, too, 8:19 ’Eavesdrop on her soul’ that we never would have parted with the baneful ring of power had the piteous Gollum torn it from Fiction allows us to do something that nothing our bleeding finger and, in the effort, fallen else quite does. It allows us to enter fully into the screeching into the abyss, clutching his damned lives of other human beings. But, you may argue, treasure and ours. When we read fiction that is these are not real people they are fictitious, true we do not say, “There but for the grace of merely the figments of one writer’s imagination. God, go I” rather, “Here I am.” For in such writing At this point the other side of the brain takes over. we recognize our naked selves with a shudder or There is nothing mere about Natasha. We know a laugh, sometimes quite wonderfully with both. with what Walter de la Mare calls ‘the compelling Over 20 years ago a college English professor inward ring’ that Natasha is true. She is more real said something that has bothered me ever since. to us than the people we live with everyday He wondered aloud if it was possible to describe because we have been allowed to eavesdrop on Christian experience effectively except by fantasy her soul.

Load more