Paranormal activity

Paranormal is the new normal, especially in teen fiction. Ask teens if they’ve read any good books lately, and nine times out of 10, they’ll name a fantasy. Make that 10 out of 10. For this year’s recent Teen Read Week, 9,000 teens across the country voted at their local libraries for the 2011 Teens’ Top Ten, http://tinyurl.com/3hwnpy Steampunk, dystopia, [...]

Read Full Post »

Magical mystery tour

The circus is coming . . . Thrilling news, but only the reveurs — the dreamers sweetly obsessed by the mysterious night circus –  hear it ahead of time. Otherwise, the circus appears without warning, its black-and-white tents suddenly there. Le Cirque de Reves:  Opens at nightfall, closes at dawn.  Step right up! This way to [...]

Read Full Post »

Magic kingdom

I once wrote a column about imaginary places that would be interesting choices for summer vacations: Neverland, Treasure Island, Oz, Middle-Earth, Avalon, Wonderland, Narnia. The latter was my favorite because of the thrill of pushing aside stuffy coats in the wardrobe to walk into a snowy world infused with magic. Narnia remains high on my list, [...]

Read Full Post »

Fear faction

Would you jump off a moving train? Climb a crumbling Ferris wheel? Zipline from a skyscraper into the pitch of night? Me neither. But maybe that’s why I got such a rush reading Veronica Roth’s first YA novel, Divergent. Narrator Beatrice never thought of herself as a physically brave person. After all, in futuristic, dystopian Chicago, [...]

Read Full Post »

Cast a spell on me

The new normal is the paranormal in much of today’s fiction, both literary and commercial. Here a ghost, there a zombie, everywhere a vampire or a werewolf. But several recent novels enchant with the magic of storytelling even as they trip the light fantastic. Alice Hoffman, of course, is one of the leading practitioners of American magical [...]

Read Full Post »

End in sight, or apocalypse wow

Coming soon to this space my take on Justin Cronin’s The Passage, but we are having a helluva thunderstorm and I’m logging off for now…. If the lights go out, it will be so appropriate. Ok, it’s two hours later, I’m back, and so’s the electricity. Made me think of the residents of First Colony [...]

Read Full Post »

Destination imagination

I’m going to wait on butterbeer. My Theme Park Ranger pal Dewayne assures me it’s kind of yummy, but I can’t imagine that it’s good enough to make me stand in line when the the Wizarding World of Harry Potter opens June 18th at Universal Studios here in Orlando. Snow may be glistening on the turrets of Hogwarts, but it’s [...]

Read Full Post »

Something magic

A modern-day Medusa with anger-control issues. A snarky vampire worried about his 800-year-old looks. Blades of grass growing like sharp knives in a suburban backyard. These were just three of the fantastic images generated by participants in a recent writing workshop on magical realism sponsored by MAD About Words and moderated by current Kerouac House [...]

Read Full Post »

Wrapping Up Books

Happy birthday, Thor! I’ve started calling my brother “Thor’’  since his genealogy research last fall showed us as belonging to the Thor line of Pates. No, it doesn’t mean we’re descended from Vikings (although we might be) but from a Thoroughgood Pate who lived in Virginia or North Carolina during the 1700s. Supposedly “Thoroughgood’’ was [...]

Read Full Post »