By Carol Birch
November 7, 2007
When words and images form well-constructed sentences and paragraphs that grow into delectable stories and novels, my life is enriched.
In the novel “Fly By Night,” by Frances Hardinge, a 12-year-old orphan named Mosca knows how to read in a world where books are deemed dangerous. She is dazzled by her smooth-talking employer Eponymous Clent, even though she doubts his trustworthiness. When another man asks her why she continues to work for Clent, she thinks:
Because I’d been hoarding words for years, buying them from peddlers and carving them secretly onto bits of bark so I wouldn’t forget them, and then he turned up using words like ‘epiphany’ and ‘amaranth.’ Because I heard him talking in the marketplace, laying out sentences like a merchant rolling out rich silks. Because he made words and ideas dance like flames and something that was damp and dying came alive in my mind, the way it hadn’t since they burned my father’s book. Because he walked into [town] with stories from exciting places tangled around him like maypole streamers. . . .
Mosca shrugged.
“He’s got a way with words.”
The contrast between her inflated thoughts and her understated responses
weaves humor through this layered story. Humor in the book also comes from Mosca’s feisty pet goose. Mosca’s world is rich in subterfuge, and so one of the main issues is how a lonely child learns when and whom to trust in a duplicitous world of complex characters.
Come to the children’s room at the Chappaqua Library, where authors who’ve “got a way with words” can be found on shelf after shelf. Your librarians are itching to help you find the ones you’ll enjoy.
Carol Birch is the head of services to children at the Chappaqua Library.
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