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osprey_archerI don’t remember where precisely we bought Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Headless Cupid, or exactly how old I was at the time; but I remember that it was on sale on a special rack, and it was summer and sunny and I sat in the car and read.
Or maybe I just remember it as sunny and summery because the book itself takes place in summer, although not always in the sun - although there is one scene, where David and his new stepsister Amanda go to gather herbs, and there’s a sense almost of heat shimmering off the page as they go down the dusty lane to the crossroads, for herbs gathered at the crossroads will have more occult powers.
In a sense The Headless Cupid is most important to me because it led me to Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s other works: The Egypt Game and the Greensky books (the ending of the second Greensky book is one of the most sublime endings I’ve ever read) and especially The Changeling.
But it’s also important to me for its own sake: it has a permanent place on the shelves in my bedside table. You can read The Headless Cupid (and I did, as a child) as simply a cracking good story. I loved the occult themes, which start in the realm of make-believe and edge toward reality - yet becoming more mysterious and numinous the more real they become.
(To me the balance of the evidence suggests that there is an actual ghost, although it’s not totally definite.)
Snyder is excellent at portraying the way that children play, particularly the way that they like to play with magic. The sequences of tests that Amanda prepares for the Stanley children before she’s willing to initiate them into the world of the occult is great: a day where they can’t touch metal, a day when they’re not allowed to touch hardwood floor (an early version of “the floor is lava!”), a day of silence…
As a child, I reacted to Amanda much the way that David does: he’s fascinated by her, and he goes along with her initiation tests because they’re interesting and he’s hoping they’ll help him understand her better - but he doesn’t understand her. Yet her actions always had an internal logic, and even when I didn’t understand what it was, I always felt that it was there - that Snyder was playing fair.
Rereading as an adult, it’s much clearer to me that Amanda is lashing out because she’s angry about her parents’ divorce (which David’s dad does mention to David, but he doesn’t beleaguer the point), and why that would seep into areas of her life that didn’t (to a child’s mind) seem particularly connected.
Lots of Snyder’s books have this subterranean layer - often more than one subterranean layer. They give her work a sense of depth that I could feel even as a child and which means that they almost always reward rereading - and yet the stories work even if you don’t understand that they’re not just about poltergeists & friendship but also divorce, or child abuse, or lonely children.
(The one exception IMO is The Witches of Worm, which I neither liked nor understood as a child - I think you have to see and understand the underpinnings in that story in order to find Jessica sympathetic. But that may just have been me. If anyone else read it - what did you think?)
And, of course, I have to mention the illustrations. A lot of Snyder’s books were illustrated by Alton Raible (particularly in the sixties and seventies, her golden years, although some of her later books are very good too), and it’s hard to imagine a more felicitous marriage of author and illustrator. Although now I’m thinking: The Perilous Gard and Richard Cuffari, Beth and Joe Krush and their illustrations for The Borrowers and Gone-Away Lake...
It’s a little disturbing how many of my favorite books also have my favorite illustrations. Maybe I’m simply too susceptible to the lure of a good picture.
Nonetheless. Alton Raible’s pictures always seemed to me perfectly in harmony with the atmosphere of Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s books - that delicate blend of magic and realism. Who could beat his picture of Amanda slipping down the dark hallway like a ghost, the picture all dark but for the reflected gleam of her flashlight?
Or maybe I just remember it as sunny and summery because the book itself takes place in summer, although not always in the sun - although there is one scene, where David and his new stepsister Amanda go to gather herbs, and there’s a sense almost of heat shimmering off the page as they go down the dusty lane to the crossroads, for herbs gathered at the crossroads will have more occult powers.
In a sense The Headless Cupid is most important to me because it led me to Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s other works: The Egypt Game and the Greensky books (the ending of the second Greensky book is one of the most sublime endings I’ve ever read) and especially The Changeling.
But it’s also important to me for its own sake: it has a permanent place on the shelves in my bedside table. You can read The Headless Cupid (and I did, as a child) as simply a cracking good story. I loved the occult themes, which start in the realm of make-believe and edge toward reality - yet becoming more mysterious and numinous the more real they become.
(To me the balance of the evidence suggests that there is an actual ghost, although it’s not totally definite.)
Snyder is excellent at portraying the way that children play, particularly the way that they like to play with magic. The sequences of tests that Amanda prepares for the Stanley children before she’s willing to initiate them into the world of the occult is great: a day where they can’t touch metal, a day when they’re not allowed to touch hardwood floor (an early version of “the floor is lava!”), a day of silence…
As a child, I reacted to Amanda much the way that David does: he’s fascinated by her, and he goes along with her initiation tests because they’re interesting and he’s hoping they’ll help him understand her better - but he doesn’t understand her. Yet her actions always had an internal logic, and even when I didn’t understand what it was, I always felt that it was there - that Snyder was playing fair.
Rereading as an adult, it’s much clearer to me that Amanda is lashing out because she’s angry about her parents’ divorce (which David’s dad does mention to David, but he doesn’t beleaguer the point), and why that would seep into areas of her life that didn’t (to a child’s mind) seem particularly connected.
Lots of Snyder’s books have this subterranean layer - often more than one subterranean layer. They give her work a sense of depth that I could feel even as a child and which means that they almost always reward rereading - and yet the stories work even if you don’t understand that they’re not just about poltergeists & friendship but also divorce, or child abuse, or lonely children.
(The one exception IMO is The Witches of Worm, which I neither liked nor understood as a child - I think you have to see and understand the underpinnings in that story in order to find Jessica sympathetic. But that may just have been me. If anyone else read it - what did you think?)
And, of course, I have to mention the illustrations. A lot of Snyder’s books were illustrated by Alton Raible (particularly in the sixties and seventies, her golden years, although some of her later books are very good too), and it’s hard to imagine a more felicitous marriage of author and illustrator. Although now I’m thinking: The Perilous Gard and Richard Cuffari, Beth and Joe Krush and their illustrations for The Borrowers and Gone-Away Lake...
It’s a little disturbing how many of my favorite books also have my favorite illustrations. Maybe I’m simply too susceptible to the lure of a good picture.
Nonetheless. Alton Raible’s pictures always seemed to me perfectly in harmony with the atmosphere of Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s books - that delicate blend of magic and realism. Who could beat his picture of Amanda slipping down the dark hallway like a ghost, the picture all dark but for the reflected gleam of her flashlight?
no subject
Date: 2019-02-08 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-08 02:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2019-02-08 03:43 pm (UTC)And I agree with you about Alton Raible's illustrations (and also Richard Cuffari's!).
The Witches of Worm terrified and upset me, and I haven't ever tried rereading it.
I've never actually read The Headless Cupid!
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Date: 2019-02-08 04:17 pm (UTC)Witches of Worm -- I don't remember exactly liking it as a kid, but it was very mesmerizing. To me Jessica projects her own self-image onto Worm -- unloved, unlovely, possibly dangerous and supernatural, although as always with Snyder's works, the supernatural is never quite dismissed. There's an eerie quality both about Jessica's anger and pain, and how her internal emotional world manifests itself in lashing out in a direct comparison to the Salem girl-witches. It's Shirley Jackson-esque -- vivid, memorable, deeply unsettling.
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Date: 2019-02-09 12:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2019-02-09 12:21 am (UTC)(I only realized a year or two ago that there were actually four, and I had somehow missed the last two in my childhood.)
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Date: 2019-02-09 02:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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