Comments, reviews & discussion
of the nominees for the Mythopoeic Fantasy and Scholarship Awards, awarded
at
Mythcon
XXVII,
on Sunday, July 28, 1996.
I'm including comments on this page on various nominees for the awards.
For the full list, and to see which books received the awards, check out
the official Society page listing, at http://home.earthlink.net/~emfarrell/mythsoc/awards.html
The Scholarship Awards.
for Inklings Studies
Here's a review by UW Tolkien Society member Phil Kaveny.
J.R.R Tolkien Artist
& Illustrator, By Wayne G. Hammond & Christiana Scull.
Houghton Mifflin Company Boston and New York.
for Fantasy Studies
When Toys Come Alive: Narratives of Animation, Metamorphosis, and Development,
by Lois Rostow Kuznets (1994: Yale U Pr, New Haven and London) 257 pp.
a mini-review by David Lenander. This is the first paragraph of a much longer
review that I am submitting for consideration by Mythlore.
This is a book that transcends its possibly limited focus for those interested
in fantasy scholarship or studies in children's literature. It's simply
so well-done. I had looked forward to reading this book because I was so
taken with a paper that Ms. Kuznets read at the Children's Literature Association
Conference in Mankato a few years ago. That paper was about Clarke's Return
of the Twelves, a book that comes in for more discussion in this study.
It also impressed Eleanor Cameron who refers to it in her recent Seed
and the Vision. It's interesting that in her Preface Kuznets tells how
this book grew from a talk that she gave in 1986, after which "Everything
I have always known abou thte secret lives of toys in literature began to
emerge then." (p.xi). Her interest led her into many other fields of
knowledge, and such interesting field work as reading the tiny print of
Bramwell Brontë with a magnifying glass and watching Russell Hoban
wind up the tiny toy mice that inspired his book. What she does for her
reader is to convey not only the excitement of discovery that she found
on the way to writing this book, but to make it all so interesting and worthwhile
that the reader must find an interest mirroring her own, one that (s)he
may previously have not discovered.
The Fantasy Awards.
for Adult Fantasy
Comments on Michael Bishop's Brittle
Innings
Comments on James P. Blaylock's All
the Bells of Earth
Comments on Elizabeth Hand's Waking the Moon
Comments on Kenneth Morris's The Dragon's
Path
Comments on Patricia McKillip's The Book of Atrix Wolfe [to be added]
for Children's Fantasy
From COWS AND CATS AND SEALING WAX, inOnce
Upon a Time, a children's fantasy apa, ed. by Laura Krentz. Laura
discusses Waugh's The Mennyms and Gray's Falcon's Egg.
From RR#1, inOnce Upon
a Time, a children's fantasy apa, ed. by Laura Krentz. Grace Funk
discusses Cooper's The Boggart, Gray's Falcon's Egg, Jones's
Crown of Dalemark, and Smith's Wren's War.
Return to Rivendell.
Back to the Bird & Baby.
This page is maintained by David Lenander, please forward comments or criticism
to
d-lena@maroon.tc.umn.edu