Stories of My Life

Writers tend to write a book to answer their own questions. My question was: How would I feel if the world regarded me as disposable? And I decided I would be very angry. After the book was published, I realized, belatedly, that I had put two foster children in the story. I might not have been Gilly. I might well have been William Ernest. Although I love to perform, I am shy in social situations like publishers’ cocktail parties and church coffee hours. When I feel that people are treating me as though I’m disposable, I want to disappear, and I would, if Maime Trotter’s broad back were available for me to hide behind.

I’m better now that I’m old, but I’ve had to work to become less shy. I’ve had to think of all the other people in the room who are probably just as shy as I am.

Jean Little, Claire Mackay, and me.

Dedications and Other Miscellanea

If you’ve read this far, you will know that my first five books were dedicated to my husband and four children. As in-laws came into the family, they got books, as have the grandchildren, including our “adopted” grandchild, Kate Greene. My terrific sisters were cited in The Same Stuff as Stars, as was my brother’s widow. My first collection of Christmas stories, Angels and Other Strangers, remembers my parents. My mother died before it was published, but I was able to tell her about the inscription, which also includes Takoma Park Presbyterian Church, where the stories were first read aloud. The second volume, A Midnight Clear, was for the two congregations that heard those stories. Husband John is also honored in The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks, which started out as an exercise for How to Use a Computer and then became an anniversary present.

Teachers and librarians have enriched my life, and my books of essays were for four of my great teachers, and Bread and Roses, Too was for Karen Lane, who is the kind of librarian every town should have. I wrote of Barbara Thompson in an earlier chapter, and if you see her name linked with Hazel Horton’s in Marvin One Too Many, it is because both of them have spent their lives as exemplary teachers of the very young. Hazel was my college roommate and also remains a dear friend. She is from the Appalachian hills and used to sing the old songs that are echoed in Come Sing, Jimmy Jo.

I dedicated Jacob Have I Loved to Gene Namovicz. I was trying to be a bit clever with it, saying I wish it were Emma (a Jane Austen we both loved). People of my generation know the famous quotation from Helen Hayes’s autobiography about the peanuts that Charles McArthur put in her hand, saying, “I wish they were emeralds.” Gene would have rather had a good book any day than emeralds.

Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom is my thanks to Virginia Buckley. No one ever had a better editor, and since the book was set in China, I thought a Chinese saying was appropriate: “A thousand thoughts; ten thousand thanks,” though ten thousand would still be far too few. Lauren Wohl, one of the great library promotion people I have worked with, has the distinction of being the dedicatee of both the authors and the illustrator for Consider the Lilies.

With the dedicatee of Come Sing, Jimmy Jo I have the longest history. Mary Watt Sorum’s mother and my mother were friends at the General Assembly’s Training School before her mother went to the Belgian Congo and my mother went to China. We can’t remember a time when we didn’t know about each other. If, as children, we whined, Mother would remind us that Georgia Watt’s children in Africa all had polio and she had TB. Whereas when the Watt children whined, their mother would tell them how Mary Goetchius’s children were running away from war and occupation. You’d think that would make Mary and me never want to meet, but meet we did when we were both teen-agers. We knew that first day that we would be friends for life and we are.

Jean Little and her dear friend and mine Claire Mackay got a book. Jean, who is often referred to as “Canada’s most beloved writer for children,” recently recalled an interviewer who asked what she wanted to be called. “Why, Jean Little,” she said, a bit surprised by the question. “No,” he said, “I mean, do you want to be called ‘visually challenged’ or—” “How about blind?” she said. “Oh, no,” said the shocked interviewer, “they don’t like to be called that.” I once went to England as Jean’s seeing-eye dog. I am proud to say that I was quite a good one and laughed louder at her stories than the actual dog or dogs ever did.

Virginia Buckley, my editor for forty years.

Ted and Alice Vial were our dearest friends from Princeton Seminary days. At nine and a half months, John Jr. took his first steps on their living room floor. Grace Greene and Nancy Graff of Jip, His Story are chief among the many friends who have made Vermont feel like my real home. In her introduction, Nancy has already told you about our weekly lunches at Wayside that continue to be more important to me than she will ever know, and Grace, the mother of our adopted grandchild, starred in chapter one.

Stephanie Tolan and I have waged peace together as well as co-written four plays, three of which we collaborated on with Steve Liebman. With few of my long-time friends have I shared more joys and grief than with Kathryn Morton, to whom I dedicated Park’s Quest. The Day of the Pelican is dedicated to the Kosovar family that inspired it and to Mark Ofila, whose knowledge and love of Kosova made it possible for me to write the story. Margaret Mahy was a writer both John and I admired extravagantly, as well a cherished friend. Steven and Helen Kellogg have brightened our lives for more than a quarter of a century. The three of them share the page in The Flint Heart, a book wonderfully illustrated by John Rocco. Mary Brigid Barrett is the incomparable President of the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance, and she and her whole family are an inspiration as well as just plain fun to be with. I felt this family of artists needed a truly beautiful book, and when I saw Pamela Dalton’s exquisite paper-cut illustrations for Brother Sun, Sister Moon I knew it must be inscribed for them. Christopher Franceschelli was the publisher of that book and also much earlier at Dutton, the publisher of Parzival: The Quest of the Grail Knight, my re-telling of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s epic poem, which I dedicated to him.

Any of these wonderful friends is worthy of a book, but it’s like that T-shirt. She wrote a whole book and all I got was this lousy line. And some people, who have been really important to me, didn’t even get a line. I beg forgiveness of them all.

Accepting the Wilder from Martha Parravano, chair of the committee.

Awards, Etc.

People often ask about awards, and there are always stories surrounding such events. When The Master Puppeteer was nominated for the National Book Award, Sophie Silberberg called from Thomas Y. Crowell to tell me. She told me not to worry about winning, as just to be nominated was honor enough, but that since the award would be given in three days, it would be a good idea to prepare a five-hundred-word acceptance speech just in case one would be needed. There was no way I was going to write

a speech for a prize I wasn’t going to win, so when Sophie called with the unbelievable news that I had actually won, I was, of course, unprepared.

John Sr. was out of town. (It is a rule of nature that spouses are always out of town when they are most needed.) It was a school holiday, and Lin and John had taken off on their bikes with several friends for a ride to a park in Silver Spring where they planned to have a picnic lunch. While I was still trying to recover from Sophie’s call, the telephone rang. This time it was a woman telling me that there had been a bike accident involving my daughter. One of the children in the outing had gone to her house and asked her to call me.

There was no more thought of the award or of any speech. I hopped in the car and raced to the address the woman had given me. After I made sure Lin was fine, though her bicycle wasn’t rideable, I told her and John the news and that I had to write five hundred deathless words by evening, so that Sophie and Virginia Buckley could vet them and turn them over to the press the next morning. I drove Lin and her broken bike home and set to work. I promised the children that if they would leave me alone for the entire afternoon I would take them to supper at any restaurant they chose and they could order anything they wanted.

With such an offer, they happily complied. I mean, at that point in our lives, going to a fast-food place and splitting the hamburgers in half was “going out for dinner.” I think it was well after six before Sophie and Virginia agreed that the speech was okay, and the children and I could go out and celebrate. They chose a new place that served the usual hamburger fare, but was noted for monster ice cream dishes. It was very loud and ordinary, but I didn’t care. We were a happy bunch. Suddenly, I was aware that our booth was surrounded by the entire waitstaff singing: “For she’s a jolly good fellow,” at the end of which they shouted in unison: “Congratulations to Katherine Paterson, the greatest children’s writer in the world!”

Virginia Buckley and me at the National Book Awards for The Master Puppeteer 1977.

Even in that noisy restaurant, heads were turning. My face was red, but my smug children were beaming.

The prize for winning the National Book Award in 1977 was one thousand dollars—more undesignated cash than my family had ever seen, so it seemed to me that it shouldn’t go for beans or bills. I asked the children what they would like to do with the prize money. With one voice they voted to go to Busch Gardens, an amusement park that had just opened near Williamsburg, Virginia. Now, I do not like crowds or rides; therefore, an amusement park would be my last choice on where to spend prize money, but I’d asked, and this was their choice.

The motel had a swimming pool. At this point in our lives, we hadn’t frequented motels. It never occurred to me that I should have packed swim gear. The sign at the pool strictly forbade swimming in unsuitable gear, but it was hot, and I had four children panting to leap into the water. Heck, I’d just won the National Book Award. What could they do if my kids swam in shorts and T-shirts, sue me? “Go ahead,” I said. “Jump in!” I felt reckless and gleeful, flaunting the rules.

The next day was one of the hardest days of motherhood. I had to avert my eyes as my precious children rode and re-rode the most terrifying thrill rides I had ever imagined. Their father even took a ride or two. I sat huddled over a table in the shade trying not to look. Near the end of the day, Mary was delegated to make sure I had some fun. She decided to take me on the baby roller coaster—the one they let wee children ride. I hated every stomach-churning minute of it.

When we were at last safely in the car, I was breathing normally but the children were still giddy from their great day. “When can we do this again?” they demanded. I wanted to say “Never,” but I said what I thought was the same thing: “The next time I win the National Book Award.” Two years later when Gilly won, they reminded me of my promise. I made their father take them. I stayed at home, where there was no chance that I might inadvertently see what they were daring to ride or how often.

Years ago, my friend Phyllis Naylor made a speech in which she said: “Katherine Paterson and I discovered that we share a certain neurosis, which is this: As long as we are being rejected, ignored, and unreviewed, we prove ourselves strong and tenacious and resilient. The harder the wind blows, the taller we stand. We’re sad, of course, but strong. Let some success blow our way, however, and while we are, of course, happy, we’re terrified, dyspeptic, and sleepless.”

So what happens to a writer who has lived out a comfortable fourteen-odd years of genteel failure and modest attention, only to be suddenly pronounced an overnight success? Or, how does it feel, Mrs. Paterson, to win the National Book Award in 1977, the Newbery Medal in 1978, the National Book Award and Newbery Honor in 1979, and the Newbery Medal in 1981? Well, as I said earlier, I felt like Job backwards. “Why me, Lord? Why me?” These days I’m grateful, not worthy, but very grateful. At the beginning, it cost me more stomach churning than catching a glimpse of my children screaming with glee atop Die Wildkatze roller coaster in Busch Gardens.

On the morning of Wednesday, January 25 at 5:49 a.m., the phone rang. My husband gave a sleepy grunt and handed it to me. On the other end an incredibly wide-awake voice gave me the news that Bridge to Terabithia had won the Newbery Medal. Peter Spier, the Caldecott winner, said his wife went down and got the leftover New Year’s champagne. John went down to the kitchen and brought me up a cup of warm milk.