Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Book signing from the Edge (chronicle) My nephew Lucas, My sister Ann, and I went to a book signing for his current favorite writers back on Saturday. He noticed they were going to be at this bookstore Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse near their house later that day. Back before Christmas my other sister, Susan, embarked upon a grand multi-errand quest for a rumoured box set of the first six books in this extended series called the Edge Chronicles. The books are written by author Paul Stewart with Illustrator Chris Riddell a British writing team who started collaborating fifeteen years ago. They seem to have done many other projects together, most of which seem directed at younger readers. They claimed during the talk to have met while outside their sons' nursery school (this anecdote is repeated on one of their publisher bio pages. Looking over these I see Chris Riddell was born in South Africa. He's put on a bit of weight over the years judging from some of the pictures Chris Riddell - Walker Books. Stewart taught writing before turning to writing full-time and has lived in Germany and Sri Lanka. For the Edge Chronicles they conciously decided on no magical abilites for their protagonists. Just a dreamy magical realism to the settings and populace. To me at this point, not having read their stuff, it seems similar in a way to the approach and attitude of Mervyn Peake's work Mervyn Peake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Maybe if I can get my niece or nephew to read Peake as well I could get a comparison out of them.  While Stewart talked, Riddell drew a 'Banderbear' (I'm told) and injected comments at intervals. The Series is conceived currently as a trilogy of trilogies with an ending coda. Read that as 10 books to the series. They have completed eight. The last is out in the UK only the seventh is the most recent released in the U S. At that point they view it will be time to quit, pointing out they are both married and have families (teenagers). The talk shifted to a brief Q & A. Someone asked which charactor (protagonist) did the creators like best? They settled on Rook, after considering Twig for a moment. During this part of the discussion I came to the conclusion that all the heroes of this series seemed more interesting than the one I read as a kid, who never seemed to have as much personality as his inventions ("Ned, my girlfriend left me to date the Repellatron Skyway, Tom said Ruthlessly.") Some one else asked: "Do I need to start at the beginning to read these?" Stewart and Riddell seemed delighted to get this question; explaining that they have deliberately crafted the stories to be independent, with the overlapping events, charactors and places adding depth but not subtracting meaning. I read the Alexandria quartet out of order without noticing, so what do I know. After the questions. Stewart read a short selection from book seven on picking a Plowgrim, which seems to be some sort of Tasmanian devil riding steed.  After this they moved over to a little table in order to sign books and draw pictures. Someone asked Riddell how much time he takes on the illustrations he indicated that on ones for books he takes a long time, but in his other life as a political cartoonist for the Guardian Independant newspapers ap artists - chris riddell portfolio, he will complete drawings in only a matter of hours. Lucas came away with a drawing in his book, in addition to getting his book signed, which Riddell was able to complete in only a few minutes. 11:33:05 PM    comment [];trackback [];

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. 2006 Paul Bushmiller. Last update: 3/17/06; 3:25:30 PM.