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About Caroline McAlister
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Blog postFinding Narnia is my second book with Macmillan; the release date is November 19. For both John Ronald's Dragons and Finding Narnia the production process feels a little mysterious from my end. Out of the blue I'll get an e-mail from editor Katherine Jacobs informing me of the release date. Then an ARC, advance release copy, will land on my doorstep. Then e-mails arrive with copies of the reviews. If a review is negative, my agent, Jennifer Mattson, will try to provide soothing words and c
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Blog post,So I've been trying to expand my repertoire beyond the picture book biography, and to that end, I have been reading a lot of middle grade novels. My favorite at the moment is Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell. I found out about her because she had reviewed The British Library's Harry Potter exhibition for the London Review of Books. www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n24/katherine-rundell/at-the-british-library. She grew up on Rowling's books and shares with her a genius for the tropes
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Blog postWhat I most love about Philip Pullman's La Belle Sauvage is the attention to the minute details of making things by hand, for example, the locks that Mr. Taphouse builds for the priory at Godstow, the hoops in neat brackets that Lord Asriel has affixed to Malcolm's canoe, and even the food prepared by Sister Fenella: "Nothing was wasted at the priory. The little pieces of pastry Sister Fenella had left after trimming her rhubarb pies were formed into clumsy crosses or fish shapes, or rolled
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Blog postI work at Guilford College, a historically Quaker institution and my colleague, Diya Abdo has begun an initiative, Every Campus a Refuge, to house refugees on college campuses, using student and faculty volunteers to help settle and work with the families. I have done a little work with ECAR, but after reading Alan Gratz’s book Refugee, I will definitely try to do more.
There are many reasons kids (and their parents) should read Refugee. First -
Blog postI have found blogging discouraging. I write and post and then nobody responds. However, I recently received an intriguing message from the other side of the world (Australia) to one of my earliest posts. I had read a New York Times Op-Ed by Alberto Manguel about a secret library at Auschwitz. I was haunted by the idea of children in a concentration camp seeking comfort in books. Here is the blog I posted.
It turns out I was not the only person -
Blog postFirst I want to thank Eliza Wheeler's amazing husband who had the computer skills to put together this trailer for John Ronald's Dragons. The way he makes the figures in the background move is called parallaxing. As someone who struggles daily with simple classroom management software (moodle an canvas ugh!) I am forever impressed by and grateful to those who can combine technical and creative skills with grace.
Second, I want to point out that last Saturday, March 25th, was T -
Blog postJohn Ronald's Dragons has launched, and it is thrilling to hear from all of the people who are reading and enjoying it. As the book has come out so have the reviews. Publishers Weekly really understood the purpose of the book, to introduce younger readers to Tolkien before they encounter him in middle or high school. Here is their review:
The dragons of imagination are always there, but sometimes it takes time for them to breathe fire—that’s what McAlister (Holy Mol&eacut -
Blog postIn my book, John Ronald's Dragons, I mention the origins of J. R. R. Tolkien's supremely nerdy hobby of inventing his own languages. As a child, with his cousin, Mary Incledon, he made up a language based on animal words.
Later, as an adult, of course, he developed languages with full fledged grammars and histories: Quenya, and Sindarin.
In the essay "A Secret Vice" he describes this pastime as lonely and embarrassing. Although the word nerd had no -
Blog postThis week I got a surprise package in the mail. It was two beautiful, shiny copies of John Ronald's Dragons wrapped in a blue ribbon. They have that new book smell of fresh paper and ink. The title is embossed, and I love touching it, but what I love most of all is the cover illustration with the green tree that is also a green dragon whose head is turned towards the young John Ronald. He stares up at the dragon with wonder and delight. Eliza Whe
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Blog postBefore Tolkien was a member of the Inklings, he was a member of the TCBS. TCBS stood for Tea Club and Barrovian Society, so named because the members had surreptitious tea parties in the school library and also drank tea together at the Barrows Store. The core members of the club were four young men who had attended King Edward's School in Birmingham together, Robert Gilson, the son of the school's headmaster, Christopher Wiseman, J. R. R. Tolkien, and G.B Smith. The young men all wrot
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