MYTHPRINT The Monthly Bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society VOL. 48 NO. 1 JANUARY 2011 WHOLE NO. 342 MYTHPRINT The Monthly Bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society VOL. 48 NO. 1 JANUARY 2011 WHOLE NO. 342 Table of Contents FEATURES: David C. Downing. Looking for the King: An Inklings Novel. Cover Art: Gandalf and Bilbo (sketch), by Santi Chatterjee. Reviewed by Sarah Beach....................................................5 © Santi Chatterjee. Russell Celyn Jones. The Ninth Wave. Reviewed by Discussion Groups .................................................................... 7 Alana Joli Abbott ..................................................................6 Andrzej Sapkowski. Blood Of Elves. Reviewed by Jason Easter ...........................................................................8 REVIEWS: Howard Shore’s Score of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. David Rudd. The Routledge Companion to Children’s Literature. Performance reviewed by Jessica Burke ............................9 Reviewed by Ernest Davis .............................................. 3 Allan Zola Kronzek and Elizabeth Kronzek. The Sorcerer’s Beth Bernobich. Passion Play. Reviewed by Companion: A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter. Berni Phillips Bratman ..................................................... 4 Reviewed by Jason Fisher..................................................10 Reviews, discussion group reports, news items, letters, art work and other submissions for Mythprint are always welcome. Please contact the editor for details on format, or Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a send materials to: nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, Jason Fisher especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Editor, Mythprint Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes 1915 Province Lane three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and Dallas TX 75228 sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for [email protected] fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups. Send other Correspondence to: Membership and Subscriptions Edith Crowe, Corresponding Secretary [email protected] Mythopoeic Society membership: $12/year includes an electronic subscription and $25/year includes a paper Deadlines for receiving material for each issue of Mythprint subscription to Mythprint; either entitles you to members’ rates are the 1st of the preceding month. on publications and other benefits. The Mythopoeic Society also publishes two other magazines: Postage and Non-member Subscription Rate Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature (subscription $25/year for Members Institutions/Non-members U.S. Society members) and The Mythic Circle, an annual First Class U.S. Included $25/year magazine publishing fiction, poems, etc. ($8/issue for U.S. Canada/Mexico (air) + $7/year for postage $32/year addresses). Subscriptions and back issues of Society Rest of world (air) + $16/year for postage $41/year publications may be purchased directly thorough our web site (using PayPal or Discover card), or you may contact: The number in the upper right hand corner of your mailing label is the “Whole Number” of the last issue of your Mythopoeic Society Orders Department subscription. Checks should be made out to the Mythopoeic Box 71 Society. Foreign orders should use U.S. funds if possible; Napoleon MI otherwise add 15% to the current exchange rate. Back issues of 49261-0071 Mythprint are available for $1 each (U.S. postage included.) Visit the Mythopoeic Society on the web at www.mythsoc.org. ISSN 0146-9347, © 2010 Mythopoeic Society 2 David Rudd, ed. The Routledge Companion to Children’s there is a strong emphasis on recent books — post- Literature. Routledge, 2009. xvi + 320 pp. $32.95 (sc). 1950 and even post-1995 — as opposed to earlier ISBN 978-0415472715. Reviewed by Ernest Davis. books; on books for adolescents rather than for younger children; on books in English rather than hildren’s literature has at least a half-dozen other languages. The two series most often men- C Companions, as well as several Encyclopedias tioned are Harry Potter and His Dark Materials. Many and hundreds of Guides. “Companion” is a vague important genres and issues are omitted or nearly so. term, encompassing books of quite different kinds. There is no discussion of adventure stories or of ani- For example The Oxford Companion to Children’s Litera- mal stories, even though the editor, David Rudd, ture, by Humphrey Carpenter and Mani Pritchard, is himself wrote an article on animal stories for the actually an encyclopedia, with articles on authors, Cambridge Companion to Children’s Literature. There is books, characters, illustrators, and many other topics. no discussion of the role of religion in children’s lit- But it is indeed a beloved and well-thumbed compan- erature. There is an article on “Picturebooks, comics, ion, remarkably comprehensive and well-written, and graphic novels”, but no discussion of illustration, equally valuable for consulting as a reference and for and no mention anywhere in the book of classic illus- pleasant browsing. trators such as Shepherd, Wyeth, Tasha Tudor, etc. The Routledge Companion to Children’s Literature, (Sendak is discussed several times, mostly in connec- by contrast, is essentially a textbook for an under- tion with Where the Wild Things Are. Howard Pyle and graduate course on postmodern critical methods as Arthur Rackham are each mentioned once, in the part applied to children’s literature. It is divided into four II articles on “phallocentrism” and “orientalism” re- parts, plus a bibliography of 750 items and an index. spectively. Beatrix Potter is included in the timeline.) Part I is a collection of eleven essays, each 12 or 13 The most interesting of the essays in part I is an pages, on topics of critical interest. Each essay con- article, “Sidelines: Some neglected dimensions of chil- cludes with a short annotated bibliography for fur- dren’s literature and its scholarship” (i.e. neglected in ther reading. Part II is an encyclopedia of articles up the critical literature) by Evelyn Arizpe and Morag to 3 pages long on terms and persons that arise in the Styles with Abigail Robison. These dimensions in- critical literature. Any term that is the keyword of an clude autobiography, literature written by children, article in part II is displayed in boldface in the texts of writings by parents for their own children, oral tradi- the articles in parts I and II, like cross-references in tion, poetry, and plays for children. The authors are Wikipedia. This alerts the reader to the existence of properly indignant that poetry has ended up in this the article, if she wants more list of also-rans, given the large information, but it is also a dis- quantity and high quality of traction; I am not sure it is a children’s poetry. This essay is good idea. Part III is a timeline. all too brief, but is full of inter- Part IV is a two-page list of re- esting leads in these many areas. sources: journals, organizations, The article “Picture-books, and online discussion groups. comics, and graphic novels” by Readers, like myself and, I Mel Gibson, makes some inter- expect, most of the readers of esting observations about the Mythprint, who are more inter- relation between graphic style ested in children’s literature and content in graphic novels. than in its criticism, and who Unfortunately, this article is pick up this book in order to much less useful than it could learn something about chil- have been, because there are no dren’s literature, will be disap- illustrations, here or anywhere pointed. Except in the timeline, else in the book; the publisher the texts discussed were chosen was too lazy or too cheap to in order to illustrate aspects of bother getting the rights. critical methods. Preference To her credit, Victoria seems to have been given to Flanagan in her article “Gender texts that are familiar to current studies” does not waste much college students. Accordingly time decrying sexism in classic 3 children’s books, which would be shooting fish in a barrel. Instead, she discusses books (almost all very recent) that she considers make an honest effort to deal with gender issues sensitively and helpfully. Aside from these, there is an article on realism that argues that all realistic fiction is didactic; an article on fantasy from a psychological (essentially Freudian) perspective; an article on media adaptations which traces the various media in which His Dark Materials has appeared; an article on racism and colonialism (though, interestingly, none on classism); an article on narratology (narrative structure and literary de- vices); an article on young adult fiction and the “crossover phenomenon”, the astonishing fact that adults read children’s literature; an article on Theory; and an introductory overview. Some of these I found doctrinaire and wrong-headed, others I found open- minded and harmless; but I did not find any of them particularly informative, insightful, or thought- provoking. Part II is in encyclopedia format; a collection of (by my quick count) 114 articles, arranged alphabeti- cally by topic, in double column, by various authors. 43 of these are critical terminology, 46 are persons (contributors to critical discourse, not authors of chil- dren’s books), 7 are critical schools or modes such as “postmodernism”, 9 are genres, 3 are literary devices, and 6 are on other topics, such as “animation”. The topics chosen for inclusion here are for the most part ones that arise in the essays; overall, therefore, it is a somewhat haphazard collection. For example there is an article on “animation” with descriptions of cel animation and CGI, and an article on “Disney- fication”, but no article on “film”. The only three liter- ary devices that earn an article are “focalization”, “free indirect discourse”, and “metafiction”. At least fifteen of the articles are about professors here and there who specialize in children’s literature, an unusual emphasis for a general book of this kind.