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More Personal Archaeology
Nov. 18th, 2021 08:39 amThe next leg of Sorting Through All My Stuff has involved sorting three boxes of papers (artwork, schoolwork, old stories, etc), which is now… one box of papers, which is a significant decrease but still Many. I kept only a few representative samples of my drawings, but when push came to shove I couldn’t bear to get rid of my old writing. My precious juvenilia! Would future literary researchers ever forgive me for recycling it??
Actually, they’ll probably struggle to forgive the fact that I kept so much material. “What the hell kind of eight year old writes and illustrates this many picture books and KEEPS THEM ALL?” they will weep.
Things I have found!
1) The Treacherous Journey, a novel (well, okay, chaptered short story) that I wrote in the third grade about a girl escaping from the Nazis. I can neither confirm nor deny that it was heavily inspired by Number the Stars. My proud parents took the printout down to Kinko’s and had it bound like A REAL BOOK and that was one of the shining moments of my life, and I may now put it on the shelf with all my other books.
The heroine is missing a hand, because apparently I have been lobbing limbs off characters for as long as I have had characters to lob limbs off of.
2) On that theme, I also found a picture (in gel pen, no less) of a fairy girl with a pegleg. Who is she? What is her story? This one has no writing attached, so who can say.
3) Multiple picture books, including one about the Rolocs, which is “color” backwards, because the Rolocs are basically crayons in the form of people. This sounds like it ought to have an earnest message about prejudice but in fact the Rolocs spend the entire book frolicking: having a three-legged race, enjoying a picnic (of which there is a stunning overhead shot), and climbing trees.
4) I also have one and a half copies of a picture book about a teddy bear gymnast. Apparently I finished the first and decided to copy it out by hand (both words and pictures) like some kind of medieval scribe.
Actually, they’ll probably struggle to forgive the fact that I kept so much material. “What the hell kind of eight year old writes and illustrates this many picture books and KEEPS THEM ALL?” they will weep.
Things I have found!
1) The Treacherous Journey, a novel (well, okay, chaptered short story) that I wrote in the third grade about a girl escaping from the Nazis. I can neither confirm nor deny that it was heavily inspired by Number the Stars. My proud parents took the printout down to Kinko’s and had it bound like A REAL BOOK and that was one of the shining moments of my life, and I may now put it on the shelf with all my other books.
The heroine is missing a hand, because apparently I have been lobbing limbs off characters for as long as I have had characters to lob limbs off of.
2) On that theme, I also found a picture (in gel pen, no less) of a fairy girl with a pegleg. Who is she? What is her story? This one has no writing attached, so who can say.
3) Multiple picture books, including one about the Rolocs, which is “color” backwards, because the Rolocs are basically crayons in the form of people. This sounds like it ought to have an earnest message about prejudice but in fact the Rolocs spend the entire book frolicking: having a three-legged race, enjoying a picnic (of which there is a stunning overhead shot), and climbing trees.
4) I also have one and a half copies of a picture book about a teddy bear gymnast. Apparently I finished the first and decided to copy it out by hand (both words and pictures) like some kind of medieval scribe.
